However, only Alberta Provincial Treasurer Solon Low and Major Andrew Henry Jukes, the leader of the British Columbia Social Credit League since 1937, were nominated for the leadership.
The split would not be healed until the 1970s by which time Social Credit had been wiped out on the federal level in English Canada and its five remaining English Canadian MPs had either been defeated or crossed the floor to join other parties – including Thompson who joined the Progressive Conservatives prior to the 1968 election after his attempt to negotiate a merger between Social Credit and the Tories failed.
[2] Réal Caouette, the only MP from the 15-member caucus in the contest, won the leadership on the first ballot over Phil Cossette, an advertising businessman from Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Quebec, Dr. James McGillivray, a surgeon from Collingwood, Ontario, and Fernand Bourret, the party’s director of policy research and a former journalist.
Cossette attracted younger delegates, and proposed recognizing the principle of self-determination for all provinces, and creating parallel civil services and government administrations in English and French.
Fortin presented a young, dynamic image, but campaigned on traditional social credit economic theory and supporting small business.
Reznowski was an English Professor at the University of Manitoba and a former national secretary of the party and aide to former leader Robert N. Thompson.
Hattersley, an Edmonton lawyer, was the party's president, former director of research of the Social Credit Association of Canada and was also a former aide to and speechwriter for Thompson.
Less doctrinaire than Reznowski on the issue of social credit economic theory, Hattersley argued in favour of broadening the party's base and appealing to a wider spectrum of voters.
Former British Columbia cabinet minister Philip Gaglardi was also a candidate but dropped out days before the convention after his demands for $1 million and a jet plane to fight the next federal election were rejected.
Reznowski resigned as leader five months after being elected to the position after winning only 2.76% of the vote in an October 1978 federal by-election in Saint Boniface, Manitoba.
At the convention he distributed hundreds of copies of the Canadian Bill of Rights, which he claimed was signed into law by Queen Elizabeth under duress and therefore was illegal.
Hattersley resigned as leader in 1983 after the executive overturned his decision to expel Holocaust denier Jim Keegstra and two other anti-Semites from the party.
Sweigard, an evangelist, was appointed interim leader and led the party through the 1984 federal election in which it failed to win any seats.
[7] A fourth candidate, retired grocer James Green of Bentley, Alberta, dropped out before the first ballot to support Keegstra.
[8] White supremacists Don Andrews and Robert Smith along with Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel were at the convention supporting Keegstra.
"[9] The party executive ousted Lainson as leader in July 1987 after he attempted to abandon the Social Credit name in favour of "Christian Freedom".