René Matte

René Matte, one of the last remaining Créditiste MPs in the House of Commons, was expelled from what remained of the Social Credit/Créditiste caucus in 1978. By this point, the once-vibrant Quebec populist movement was reduced to a handful of squabbling MPs. The Social Credit caucus was so small that each internal dispute resulted in another expulsion or departure, accelerating the party's terminal decline.

Matte sat as an Independent until the end of the Parliament. He was part of the final generation of Créditiste politicians — a uniquely Quebec phenomenon that had electrified rural Quebec politics in the 1960s under Réal Caouette but was now extinct as a political force.