page_title: Robert Borden
section_title: Conservative Party in opposition
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Borden / Conservative Party in opposition
caption_attribution_description: English: Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden (1854-1937) and Winston Churchill (then First Lord of the Admiralty) in 1912. Location unknown. Français&#160;: Premier ministre du Canada Robert Borden (1854-1937) et Winston Churchill (premier lord de l'amirauté) en 1912. Lieu inconnu.
context_page_description: Sir Robert Laird Borden, GCMG PC KC was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the eighth prime minister of Canada, in office from 1911 to 1920. He is best known for his leadership of Canada during World War I.
  Borden was born in Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia. He worked as a schoolteacher for a period and then served his articles of clerkship at a Halifax law firm. He was called to the bar in 1878, and soon became one of Nova Scotia's most prominent barristers. Borden was elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1896, representing the Conservative Party. He replaced Charles Tupper as party leader in 1901, and became prime minister after the party's victory at the 1911 federal election.
  As prime minister, Borden led Canada through World War I and its immediate aftermath. His government passed the War Measures Act, created the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and eventually introduced compulsory military service, which sparked the 1917 conscription crisis. On the home front, it dealt with the consequences of the Halifax Explosion, introduced women's suffrage for federal elections, and used the North-West Mounted Police to break up the 1919 Winnipeg general strike.
context_section_description: Borden was a Liberal until he broke with the party in 1891 over the issue of Reciprocity.
  He was elected to Parliament in the 1896 federal election as a Conservative and in 1901 was selected by the Conservative caucus to succeed Sir Charles Tupper as leader of the Conservative Party. He was defeated in his Halifax seat in the 1904 federal election and re-entered the House of Commons the next year via a by-election in Carleton. Over the next decade he worked to rebuild the party and establish a reform policy, the Halifax Platform of 1907 which he described as "the most advanced and progressive policy ever put forward in Federal affairs". It called for reform of the Senate and the civil service, a more selective immigration policy, free rural mail delivery, and government regulation of telegraphs, telephones, and railways and eventually national ownership of telegraphs and telephones. Despite his efforts, his party lost the 1908 federal election to Wilfrid Laurier's Liberals. Borden was however elected again for Halifax. His party's fortunes turned around in the 1911 federal election, however, when the Conservatives successfully campaigned against Laurier's proposals for a Reciprocity (free trade) agreement with the United States. Borden countered with a revised version of John A. Macdonald's National Policy and appeals of loyalty to the British Empire and ran on the slogan "Canadianism or Continentalism". In British Columbia, the party ran on the slogan "A White Canada", playing to the fears of British Columbians that resented the increasing presence of cheap Asian labour and the resulting depression in wages. In Quebec, concurrently, Henri Bourassa led a campaign against what he saw as Laurier's capitulation to British imperialism, playing a part in the defeat of Laurier's government and the election of Borden's Tories.
caption: Borden and Winston Churchill in 1912
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