The Patrons of Industry in Canada was a movement and political party based on the Patrons of Industry of Michigan that had formed in 1889. The party was dedicated to upholding and encouraging the moral, social, intellectual, political and financial situation of farmers and to preserving the way of life that existed in farming communities in the late nineteenth century at a time of encroaching industrialization. It cooperated with the urban labour movement to address the political frustrations of both groups with big business.
The party first appeared in Canada as the Grand Association of the Patrons of Industry in Ontario, founded in 1890. It declared itself independent of the U.S. group in 1891.
Although centred in Ontario, the organization branched out into Manitoba (see Patrons of Industry in Manitoba), Alberta, Quebec and the Maritime provinces. The Patrons' membership exceeded 30,000 at its peak.
In the Maritimes, the Patrons of Industry had some successes but soon collapsed. In the 1895 New Brunswick general election, two Patrons of Industry MLAs were elected. Duncan Marshall, who would later become a cabinet minister in the provincial legislatures of Alberta and Ontario, and later a Canadian senator, organized for the party on Prince Edward Island and also edited a Charlottetown weekly newspaper, The Patron of Industry. He contested a provincial by-election in 1896, but the organization was unable to break into the established two-party alignment in the province and was soundly defeated. Marshall left the province soon after the election, and the movement in the region collapsed.
The Patrons ran candidates in the 1894 Ontario provincial election. Three Patrons of Industry candidates were elected, and 13 other members of the Legislative Assembly were elected with Patrons of Industry support — 12 Liberals and one Conservative.
The Patrons of Industry ran 31 candidates (including three in Manitoba and one in Quebec) in the 1896 federal election (see below). Several, including David Dickson Rogers (by acclaimation), William Varney Pettet, John Tolmie and Douglas Moffat, were elected.
The party was soon divided on the question of cooperation with the Ontario Liberal Party, and the group was virtually extinct by 1900. Both Rogers and Pettet unsuccessfully ran for re-election in the 1900 federal election, but not under the Patrons banner.
The party achieved a few of its goals, such as the institution of a cooling-off period to ban defeated politicians in Ontario from holding office in government for one year after defeat and a cut in tariffs effected in 1894.