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TheWestern Canada Concept was aWestern Canadian federal political party founded in 1980 to promote the separation of the provinces ofManitoba,Saskatchewan,Alberta andBritish Columbia, and theYukon andNorthwest Territories (which included present-dayNunavut) from Canada in order to create a new nation.
The party argued that Western Canada could not receive fair treatment while the interests ofQuebec andOntario dominated Canadian politics. The party gained popularity in Alberta whenwestern alienation was at its height following the federalLiberal government announcement of theNational Energy Program in October 1980.
The most prominent leader of the party wasDoug Christie, a British Columbia lawyer best known for having representedneo-NazisJames Keegstra,Ernst Zündel andWolfgang Droege. To distance itself from Christie, the national party expelled him from the leadership in 1981 and denied him a membership in the party's Alberta branch. He later became leader of British Columbia's provincial branch of the party and ran for the party at the national and provincial levels several times. In 2005, he announced the creation of theWestern Block Party which would be a western version of theBloc Québécois.
At the time of his death in 2013, Christie maintained a website with the "Western Canada Concept" name; however, Western Canada Concept was no longer a registered political party.
The Alberta wing first ran for office in by-elections to the 19th Alberta Legislature. One member of the party,Gordon Kesler, was elected in a 1982 provincial by-election inOlds-Didsbury riding that drew national attention. Kesler became leader of the Alberta WCC with his election to the legislature. The best showing for the party came later in the same year in the1982 Alberta general election, where they ran almost a full slate of candidates and took 11.8 per cent of the vote. But the party did not elect any MLAs, and Kesler lost his own seat.
In 1984, Kesler was replaced byJack Ramsay, later a federalReformMember of Parliament. Some of the more doctrinaire figures in the party opposed Ramsay's leadership, claiming that he was not genuinely committed to western independence. The party ran 20 candidates in the1986 Alberta general election, but won less than one percent of the popular vote.
In 1987, a group of Alberta members who were dissatisfied with the party's leadership and direction left the party to establish theWestern Independence Party.
In British Columbia, the party continued to exist far longer than in other provinces. It ran candidates from the early 1980s until the mid-2000s, under the leadership of Doug Christie. It never won a seat.
The Manitoba branch of the party only ran in the1986 Manitoba general election and some by-elections, never winning a substantial portion of the votes.
The Saskatchewan branch of the party attracted two sitting members of the Legislative Assembly who represented the party for a few months in 1986 before being kicked out of the party.