Unionist Party (Canada)

[1] As an alternative to a coalition with Laurier, on October 12, 1917, Borden formed the Union government with a Cabinet of twelve Conservatives, nine Liberals and Independents, and one "Labour" member.

To represent "labor" and the working class, Borden was appointed to the Cabinet Conservative Senator Gideon Decker Robertson who had been appointed to the Senate in January and had links with the conservative wing of the labor movement through his profession as a telegrapher.

In the 1921 general election, most of the Liberal-Unionist MPs did not join this party and ran as Liberals under the leadership of its new leader, William Lyon Mackenzie King.

Prominent Liberal-Unionists who stayed with the Conservatives include Hugh Guthrie and Robert Manion.

However, King's Liberals won a landslide victory and continued to rule as an ordinary majority government throughout the war.