Westerners of multiple political convictions including small-"c" conservatives saw the party as being largely uninterested in the economically unstable Prairie regions of the west at the time and instead holding close ties with the business elite of Ontario and Quebec.
Bennett's government suffering a landslide defeat in the 1935 election, and then an even worse result under the leadership of Robert Manion in 1940.
After party leader Arthur Meighen failed to win a seat in the 1942 York South byelection, a group of younger Conservatives decide to meet in Port Hope to develop a new Conservative policy they hoped would bring them out of the political "wilderness".
The participants, known as the Port Hopefuls, developed a program including many Conservative dogmas such as support for free enterprise and conscription.
Yet the charter also included more "radical" goals, such as full-employment, low-cost housing, trade union rights, as well as a whole range of social security measures, including a government financed medicare system.