Book Review of \u3ci\u3e The Limits of Participation: Members and Leaders in Canada\u27s Reform Party\u3c/i\u3e by Faron Ellis

The Reform Party began as a populist party of regional protest in western Canada in 1987. Its policies were mostly on the right of the political spectrum, and from the early 1990s it developed ambitions to become a national party. In 2000 it amalgamated with some Progressive Conservatives (PC) to form the Canadian Alliance (CA), and in 2003 the CA and a rump of the PC Party united to form the Conservative Party of Canada; in January 2006 the Conservatives won a minority government. Although Faron Ellis\u27s book was completed too early to include much about the denouement of this process, it does provide some of its background