Ontario general election, 1926

Last updated
Ontario general election, 1926
Flag of Ontario.svg
←  1923 December 1, 1926 1929  →
112 seats in the 17th Legislative Assembly of Ontario
57 seats were needed for a majority

  First party Second party
  Howard Ferguson.jpg LIB
Leader George Howard Ferguson W.E.N. Sinclair
Party Conservative Liberal
Leader since December 2, 1920 1923
Leader's seat Grenville Ontario South
Last election 75 14
Seats won 72 15
Seat changeDecrease2.svg3Increase2.svg1
Percentage 57.6% 24.6%
SwingIncrease2.svg7.8%Decrease2.svg1.0%
  Third party Fourth party
  WilliamEdgarRaney.jpg UFO
Leader William Raney Leslie Oke
Party Progressive United Farmers
Leader since January 1925 -
Leader's seat Prince Edward Lambton East
Last election 17 (UFO) 17
Seats won 10 3
Seat changeDecrease2.svg3Decrease2.svg14
Percentage 7.2% 1.3%
SwingDecrease2.svg18.4%Decrease2.svg24.3
Premier before election

George H. Ferguson
Conservative

Premier-designate

George H. Ferguson
Conservative

The Ontario general election, 1926 was the 17th general election held in the Province of Ontario, Canada. It was held on December 1, 1926, to elect the 112 Members of the 17th Legislative Assembly of Ontario ("MLAs").

Ontario Province of Canada

Ontario is one of the 13 provinces and territories of Canada and is located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province accounting for 38.3 percent of the country's population, and is the second-largest province in total area. Ontario is fourth-largest jurisdiction in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are included. It is home to the nation's capital city, Ottawa, and the nation's most populous city, Toronto, which is also Ontario's provincial capital.

The Ontario Conservative Party, led by George Howard Ferguson, was re-elected for a second term in government, despite losing a few seats in the Legislative Assembly. The principal issue of the campaign was the government's proposal to repeal the Ontario Temperance Act and replace prohibition with government control of liquor sales. The Opposition Liberal and Progressive parties both campaigned against repeal and one of Ferguson's ministers, William Folger Nickle, resigned from the cabinet and ran for re-election against the government as a Prohibitionist candidate.

Legislative Assembly of Ontario single house of Legislature of Ontario

The Legislative Assembly of Ontario is one of two components of the Legislature of Ontario, the other being the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario. The Legislative Assembly is the second largest Canadian provincial deliberative assembly by number of members after the National Assembly of Quebec. The Assembly meets at the Ontario Legislative Building at Queen's Park in the provincial capital of Toronto.

The Ontario Temperance Act was a law passed in 1916 that led to the Prohibition of alcohol in Ontario. When the act was first enacted, the sale of alcohol was prohibited, but liquor could still be manufactured in the province or imported. Strong support for prohibition came from religious elements of society such as pietistic Protestants, especially Methodists, seeking to eliminate what they considered the evil effects of liquor, including violence, family abuse, and political corruption. Historically, temperance advocates in Ontario drew inspiration from the movement in the United States.

Prohibition the outlawing of the consumption, sale, production etc. of alcohol

Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage, transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic beverages. The word is also used to refer to a period of time during which such bans are enforced.

The Ontario Liberal Party, led by W.E.N. Sinclair, maintained its 14 seats. After the defeat of the United Farmers of Ontario in the previous election, the farmers organization decided to withdraw from electoral politics and most UFO MPPs redesignated themselves as Progressives with former UFO Attorney-General William Edgar Raney becoming party leader. Nevertheless, several MPPs, including Raney himself, continued to run as candidates endorsed by local UFO associations despite the decision of the organization as a whole not to run in elections. The Progressive/UFO faction won 13 seats. As well, four Liberal-Progressive candidates were elected, along with various independents. Karl Homuth of Waterloo South was the only Labour MLA returned; a former UFO-Labour MLA, he would run as a Conservative in the 1929 election.

The Ontario Liberal Party is a provincial political party in the province of Ontario, Canada. The party is ideologically aligned with the Liberal Party of Canada but the two parties are organizationally independent and have separate, though overlapping, memberships.

The United Farmers of Ontario (UFO) was an agrarian and populist provincial political party in Ontario, Canada. It was the Ontario provincial branch of the United Farmers movement of the early part of the 20th century.

The Progressive Party of Canada was a federal-level political party in Canada in the 1920s until 1930. It was linked with the provincial United Farmers parties in several provinces, and it spawned the Progressive Party of Saskatchewan, and the Progressive Party of Manitoba, which formed the government of that province. The Progressive Party was part of the farmers' political movement that included federal and provincial Progressive and United Farmers' parties.

Results

  Party Leader 1923 Elected% changePopular vote
%change
  Conservative George Howard Ferguson 7572-4.0%57.6% +7.8%
  Liberal W.E.N. Sinclair 1414-24.6% +2.8%
  Liberal-Prohibitionist*1* *
Progressive William Raney 1710-23.5%7.2% -12.4%
United Farmers [1] Leslie Oke 31.3%
     Labour [2]  41 [3] -75.0%1.3% -3.4%
Liberal–Progressive  *4* *
 Liberal Independent *4*  *
 Conservative Independent *2* *
 Progressive Independent *1*  *
 Independent  1-    
Total Seats 111112 +0.9% 100% 

Notes:

* Party did not nominate candidates in previous election.

  1. ↑ Leslie Oke and Beniah Bowman broke with the Progressives as they were opposed to William Raney's leadership as he was not a farmer and were also opposed to the creation of a new Progressive Party which would not exclusively be a farmers party. Bowman resigned from the legislature before the election but was succeeded in his Manitoulin riding by Thomas Farquhar. The UFO picked up a third seat, Grey South, where Farquhar Oliver won with the assistance of federal MP Agnes MacPhail. The three UFO members did not join the Progressive caucus after the election.
  2. ↑ The Labour candidates were not a unified bloc in this election. Labour MLAs caucused with the Progressives in the previous legislature and were often referred to as Progressive-Labour MLAs. They were not united behind Progressive leader Raney over the main issue of the campaign, prohibition, with Karl Homuth, the sole Labour MLA who was re-elected in 1926, supporting the Conservative government's policy in favour of allowing the sale of liquor. Another Labour candidate, H.A. Stevenson in London South ran as a Labor-Prohibitionist while a fourth, A.E. Smith in Hamilton Centre was the candidate of the Canadian Labour Party and a member of the Communist Party of Canada.
  3. ↑ Karl Homuth is the sole Labour MLA elected. He ran for re-election on a platform supporting Premier Ferguson's policy on repealing the Ontario Temperance Act and supported the government in the legislature. Joins the Conservatives in the next election.

See also

The Province of Ontario is governed by a unicameral legislature, the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, which operates in the Westminster system of government. The political party that wins the largest number of seats in the legislature normally forms the government, and the party's leader becomes premier of the province, i.e., the head of the government. Ontario's primary political parties are the centre-right Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario (PC), the centre-left to left Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP), the centre-left Ontario Liberal Party and the left-wing Green Party of Ontario.

Premier of Ontario first minister of the government of Ontario

The Premier of Ontario is the first minister of the Crown for the Canadian province of Ontario and the province’s head of government. The position was formerly styled "Prime Minister of Ontario" until the ministry of Bill Davis formally changed the title to premier.

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