The Wikipedia article [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_tory]"Red Tory"[/url] is interesting. It seems that the term used today seems to mean "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" Conservatives (i.e. Belinda Stronach before she crossed the floor) and is often used for the old PC's - i.e. Mulroney was a Red Tory, as was Clark, Stanfield, Diefenbaker and the rest. But in the past, it seems to have had a more specific definition - and if anything it seems to mean cultural conservatism and opposition to business liberalism.
Red Toryism derives largely from a British Tory and imperialist tradition that maintained the unequal division of wealth and political privilege among social classes can be justified, if members of the privileged class contribute to the common good. Red Tories supported traditional institutions like religion and the monarchy, and maintenance of the social order. Later, this would manifest itself as support for the welfare state.
Many of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada's leaders have been labeled Red Tories, including Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir Robert Borden, John Diefenbaker, Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark, and Brian Mulroney. Many others have been influential as cabinet ministers and thinkers, such as E. Davie Fulton, Dalton Camp, and John Farthing
The dominance of Red Toryism can be seen as a part of the international post-war consensus that saw the welfare state embraced by the major parties of most of the western world. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the Progressive Conservative Party suffered a string of electoral defeats under Red Tory leaders Robert Stanfield and Joe Clark. Pressure began to grow within the party for a new approach. Joe Clark's leadership was successfully challenged, and in the 1983 PC leadership convention, members endorsed Brian Mulroney who rejected free trade with the United States as proposed by another right-wing candidate, John Crosbie. Despite this early perception, the eagerness in which Mulroney's ministry embraced the MacDonald Commission's advocacy of bilateral free trade would come to indicate a sharp drift toward neo-liberal economic policies, comparable to such contemporaries as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
