Editing Canadian Alliance (section)

=== Creation of the Conservative Party of Canada ===
On October 15, 2003, the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party (under its new leader [[Peter MacKay]]) announced that they would merge to form a new party, called the [[Conservative Party of Canada]]. The union was ratified on December 5, 2003, with 96 per cent support of the membership of the Canadian Alliance, and on December 6, 90.04 per cent support of elected delegates in the PC Party. On December 8, the party was registered with [[Elections Canada]], and on [[2004 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election|March 20, 2004]], former Alliance leader [[Stephen Harper]] was elected as leader of the party with MacKay serving as deputy leader. The new party was dubbed "the Alliance Conservatives" by critics who considered the new party a "hostile takeover" of the old Progressive Conservatives by the newer Alliance. However, some grassroots Alliance supporters who had adhered to the old populist ideas of the Reform Party feared that the merger would signal a return to what they saw as indifference to Western Canadian interests. The Alliance also subsequently shed some of its populist and socially conservative policies during the merger.

The new Conservative Party formed the Canadian government on February 6, 2006, and won two additional elections ([[2008 Canadian federal election|2008]] and [[2011 Canadian federal election|2011]]) under the leadership of Stephen Harper; of these, the [[2006 Canadian federal election|2006]] and 2008 votes resulted in the party governing only as a minority; only in 2011 was a majority mandate achieved. The party was defeated in 2015, by the Liberals, and became the official opposition party in the House of Commons.