than in 1956. The Liberals also argued that the steep devaluation in the Canadian dollar was increasing the cost of living for Canadians. The 1962 election was the first contested by the social democratic New Democratic Party, which had been formed from an alliance between the old Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the Canadian Labour Congress. The party chose longtime Premier of Saskatchewan Tommy Douglas as its first leader. The new party recovered ground lost by the CCF in the 1958 federal election, when it was nearly wiped out. It won almost 50% more votes than the CCF had ever managed, but it failed to achieve the major breakthrough that had been hoped for when the party was created. The NDP was shut out in Saskatchewan, its political base, where Douglas failed to win his own seat. Douglas' campaign was hurt by chaos in Saskatchewan brought about by the introduction of Medicare and a resulting strike by the province's doctors. Douglas was forced to enter the House of Commons through a by-election in British Columbia. Despite the initial problems, medicare proved popular, spread throughout the country, and is considered the NDP's (and Douglas') major contribution to the Canadian social fabric. Social Credit returned to the House of Commons after being shut out in the 1958 election. While leader Robert N. Thompson and three other Socreds were elected in the party's traditional base in western Canada, the party's real success came in Quebec. Réal Caouette led the party's Quebec wing to victory in 26 ridings. Indeed, their win of 30 seats overall represented the party's greatest federal showing ever. They would never again equal, let alone surpass, that number—though the party gained its highest share of the vote in the 1963 election (1962 being its second-highest by a very close margin), it had a net loss of six seats. The Socreds' success in Quebec was the result of several factors. Diefenbaker's poor French impaired the Tories' ability to communicate their message to francophone voters. In 1958, the PC's had successfully compensated for this handicap by utilizing the powerful electoral machine of the Union Nationale government under Maurice Duplessis. By 1962, Duplessis was dead and the Union Nationale was out of government. Nevertheless, many francophone Quebecers remained hostile to the Liberal Party. French-speaking voters had not yet warmed to the anglophone Pearson, and the controversy surrounding the new Liberal provincial government's radical