| dc.description.abstract | Has the Conservative Party of Canada, created in a merger of two parties in 2003, shifted Canadian conservatism to the right? If so, what does such an ideological shift imply, and how can it be investigated? I created an analytical tool capable of performing detailed ideational analysis of the ideological profiles of political parties on the right in Canada. Drawing on a historical review of ideological currents on the right in Canada, I constructed a tool that includes four types of Canadian conservatism: toryism, neoliberalism, populism and social conservatism, and that allowed me to define policy along four dimensions: economics, welfare, institutions, and moral issues. I used this tool to analyze party platforms from the four parties that have been a force on the right since 1968: the Progressive Conservative Party, the Reform Party, the Canadian Alliance, and the current Conservative Party of Canada. I found that the Conservative Party of Canada has a neoliberal profile, and has lost some of the populist and social conservative ideas that once defined one of its predecessors, the Reform Party, while also committing to tory welfare policies, preserving the legacy from its other predecessor on the right, the Progressive Conservative Party. | eng |