- Communist Party of Canada
-
For other uses, see Communist Party of Canada (disambiguation).
Communist Party of Canada 
Active federal partyLeader Miguel Figueroa President Miguel Figueroa Founded May 1921 Headquarters 290A Danforth Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
M4K 1N6Ideology Communism International affiliation Comintern (1921-1943),
International Conference of Communist and Workers' PartiesOfficial colours Red, Yellow Fiscal policy Far left Social policy Far left Website www.communist-party.ca Politics of Canada
Political parties
ElectionsThe Communist Party of Canada (CPC) is a communist political party in Canada. Although is it currently a minor or small political party without representation in the Federal Parliament or in provincial legislatures, historically the Party has elected representatives in Federal Parliament, Ontario Legislature and Manitoba Legislature as well as in various municipal governments. The party has also contributed significantly to trade union organizing and history in Canada, peace and anti-war activism, as well as many other social movements.
The Communist Party of Canada is the second oldest registered party after the Liberal Party of Canada, and the only registered political party to historically have been once declared illegal.
Contents
2011 election platform
As outlined in its campaign for the 2011 federal election, the party advocates for "fundamental change to end corporate control, and open the door to socialism and working class power" including the following goals and policies:[1]
- Labour and trade union rights including full employment, higher minimum wage, 36 hour work week with no loss in pay and services.
- The creation of a "Bill of Rights for Labour" protecting the right to organize, strike and collective bargain.
- Progressive taxation including eliminating taxes on incomes below $36,000 and restoring the capital gains tax
- Electoral reform, abolishing the Canadian Senate, enacting MMP, lowering voting age to 16, implementing the right of recall for MPs.
- Expand public ownership and reverse privatization such as ending P3 programs.
- Nationalize energy and natural resources and shift emphasis from fossil and nuclear sources to renewable energy.
- An independent Canadian foreign policy based on peace and disarmament, ending involvement in Afghanistan and Libya and withdrawing from NATO and NORAD.
- Preserve and expand public health care
- Affordable, accessible, quality, public, child care
- Emergency Environmental reforms and immediate action to reverse climate change
- Withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement.
- Expanding public housing and banning evictions and foreclosures due to unemployment.
- Repeal state security legislation like the no-fly list; put the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canadian Security Intelligence Service under democratic, civilian and community control, abolish racial profiling
- A new constitution for Canada recognizing sovereignty and self-determination for Aboriginal People's and Quebec, up to and including the right to separation
- Legislate pay equity and support equity in hiring practices
- Reduce then eliminate tuition fees for post-secondary education;
- Democratic immigration reform, no one is illegal.
- Support food sovereignty, family and organic farming.
The Communist Party also presents a more detailed programmatic document, "Canada's Future is Socialism," (2001) which outlines the Parties perspective on Canada today and the road to a socialist and ultimately communist society.
History
Origins
The Communist Party was organized in conditions of illegality in a rural barn near the town of Guelph, Ontario, on May 28 and 29, 1921. Many of its founding members were labour organizers and anti-war activists and had belonged to groups such as the Socialist Party of Canada, One Big Union, the Socialist Labor Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, and other socialist, Marxist or Labour parties or clubs and organizations. Its first members were also inspired by the Russian Revolution, and radicalised by the negative aftermath of World War I as well as the fight to improve living standards and labour rights, including the experience of the Winnipeg General Strike. The party affiliation as the Canadian section of the Comintern was acceptedin December of 1921, and was thus it adopted a similar organizational structure and policy to Communist parties around the world.
The party alternated between legality and illegality during the 1920s and 1930s. As the War Measures Act was in effect at its time of creation, the Party worked as the "Workers' Party of Canada" in February, 1922 as its public face, and in March began publication of a newspaper, The Worker. When the War Measures Act was finally allowed to lapse by Canadian Parliament in 1924, and the underground organization was dissolved and the party's name changed to the Communist Party of Canada.
The Party's first campaigns included establishing a youth organization, the Young Communist League of Canada as well as solidarity efforts with the Soviet Union. By 1923 the Party had raised over $64,000 for the Russian Red Cross, a very large sum of money in that time. It also initiated a Canadian component of the Trade Union Education League (TUEL) which quickly became an organic part of the labour movement with active groups in 16 of 60 labout councils as well as mining and logging camps. By 1925 Party membership stood at around 4,500 people -- composed mainly of miners and lumber workers, but also railroad, farm, and garment workers.[2] Most of these people came from immigrant communities like Finns and Ukrainians.
The Party, working with the TUEL played a vital role in many bitter strikes and difficult organizing drives, and in support of militant industrial unionism. In 1922–29, the provincial wings of the WPC/CPC also affiliated with the Canadian Labour Party, another expression of the CPC's "united front" strategy. The CLP was a federated labour party. The CPC came to lead the CLP organization in several regions of the country including Quebec and did not run candidates during elections. In 1925 William Kolisnyk was the first communist elected to public office in North America, under the banner of the CLP. The CLP itself, however, never became an effective national organization. The Communists withdrew from the CLP in 1928-29, following a shift in Comintern policy, as the organization itself folded with its right-wing separating to form a new organization.
Debates, arguments and expulsions
From 1927 to 1929, the Party went through a series of policy debates and internal ideological struggles which saw the expulsion of both advocates of the ideas of Leon Trotsky and the theory of what the Party called "North American Exceptionism." This included Maurice Spector, the editor of the party's paper The Worker and party chairman, and Jack MacDonald (who had supported Spector's expulsion) who resigned as the party's general secretary for factionalism, and was ultimately expelled with the support of the majority of party members.
Persecution of Clarté under the Padlock Law
Strikers of the On-to-Ottawa Trek
Bethune in ChinaMacDonald also was sympathetic to Trotskyist ideas and joined Spector in founding the International Left Opposition (Trotskyist) Canada, which was part of Trotsky's so-called Fourth International Left Opposition. Also expelled were supporters of Nikolai Bukharin and Jay Lovestone's Right Opposition, such as William Moriarty. The communists disagreed over strategy and tactics, as well the socialist identity of the Soviet Union and Canada's status as an imperialist power. While some communists like J. B. Salsberg were initially sympathetic to these positions, after debates that dominated party conventions for several years by the early 1930s the vast majority of members had clearly decided to continue with the party.
Tim Buck was elected as party general secretary in 1929. He would remain in the position until 1962, steering the party through perhaps its most dynamic period of history, including continued staunch support of the Soviet Union.
Great Depression
The stock market crash in late 1929 singled the beginning of a long and protracted economic crisis in Canada and internationally. The crisis quickly led to widespread unemployment, poverty, destitution and suffering among working families and farmers. The general election of 1930, brought to power the notorious R.B. Bennett Conservative government who attacked the labour movement and established "relief camps" for young unemployed men.
The CPC was the only party to make a systemic critique of the depression as a crisis of capitalism. It was also the first political party in Canada to call for the introduction of unemployment insurance; a national health insurance scheme; making education universally accessible; social and employment assistance to youth; labour legislation including health and safety regulations, regulation of the working day and holidays, as well as a minimum wage for women and youth; and state-run crop insurance and price control for farmers. As an indication of the Parties influence on Canadian history, many of these demands campaigned for in the 1930s would finally be legislated federally and provincially in the coming decades.
However in 1931, eight of the CPC's leaders were arrested and imprisoned under Section 98 of Canada's Criminal Code of Canada. The party continued to exist, but was under the constant threat of legal harassment, and was for all intents and purposes an underground organization until 1934 when a massive campaign finally pushed back many of the police's practice of repression, and the communists were released. On the release of Tim Buck, the party held a mass rally attended by an overflow crowd of over 17,000 supporters and sympathizers in Maple Leaf Gardens.
Although the party was banned, it organized large mass organizations such as the Workers' Unity League, and the Canadian Labour Defence League that played an important role in historic strikes like that of the miners in Estevan. From 1933 to 1936, the WUL lead 90 per cent of the strikes in Canada. Already, conditions had taught the social democratics and reformists, as well as the communists, important lessons of cooperation. In 1934, in accordance with the re-examined posistion of the Comintern, the CPC adopted strategy and tactics based on a united front against fascism.
In the prairies, the Communists organized the Farmers Unity League which mobilized against evictions and rallied hundreds of farmers into protest Hunger Marches, despite police brutality. Party members were also active in the Congress of Industrial Organizations attempt to unionize the auto and other industrial sectors including Steelworkers, the Canadian Seaman's Union, the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union, the International Wood workers of America, and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America.
Among the poor and unemployed, Communists organized groups like the left-wing Workers Sports Association, one of the few ways that working-class youth had access to recreational programmes. The Relief Camp Workers' Union, and the National Unemployed Workers Association played a significant role in organizing the unskilled and the unemployed in protest marches and demonstrations and campaigns such as the "On-to-Ottawa Trek" and the 1938 Vancouver Post-Office sit-down strike.
Internationally, the party initiated the mobilization of the 1,500+ person Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion to fight in the Spanish Civil War as part of the International Brigade. Among the leading Canadian Communists involved in that effort was Dr. Norman Bethune, who is known for his invention of a mobile blood-transfusion unit, early advocacy of Medicare in Canada, and work with the Communist Party of China during the Chinese war of independence.
Solidarity efforts around the Spanish Civil War, as well as many labour and social struggles during the Depression, saw much cooperation between members of the CPC and the CCF. After 1935 the CPC advocated for electoral alliances and unity with the CCF on key issues. The proposal was debated in the CCF, with the 1936 BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan conventions generally supporting cooperation while the Ontario convention opposed. While the motion was defeated at that Parties third federal convention, the Communists continued to call for a united front.
The call was particularly urgent in Québec, where in 1937 the far-right Duplessis government passed "an act to protect Québec against communist propoganda" giving the police the power to padlock any premises used by "communists" (which was undefined in the legislation). Fascist groups attacked Jews, people from racialized communities, and communists.
World War II
Communist Labour and Total War Committee meeting, with Tim BuckAlthough the Communist Party had worked hard to war Canadians about the growing fascist danger, after some debate the Party saw the opening of World War II not as an anti-fascist war but a battle between capitalist nations. Most likely this conclusion was supported by the policies of the big powers. Many voices in the British establishment, for example, called loudly for support of Hitler against the USSR. Meanwhile, having failed in reaching agreement with Britain and other world powers, the USSR signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, to bide time before an inevitable war between the two.
The Communist Parties opposition to Canada's entry into World War II led to it being banned under the Defence of Canada Regulations of the War Measures Act in 1940. In many cases Communists were interned long before fascists. As growing numbers of Communist Party leaders were interned, some members went underground or exile in the United States. Conditions in the camps were harsh. A civil rights campaign was launched by the wives of many of the interned men for family visits and their release.
With 1941 invasion of the USSR and the collapse of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact the party argued that the nature of the war had changed to a genuine anti-fascist struggle. The CPC reversed its opposition to the war and argued the the danger to the working class on the international level superseded its interests nationally.
During the Conscription Crisis of 1944, the banned CPC set up "Tim Buck Plebiscite Committees" across the country to campaign for a "yes" vote in the national referendum on conscription. Following the vote, the committees were renamed the Dominion Communist-Labor Total War Committee and urged full support for the war effort, a no-strike pledge for the duration of the war and increased industrial production. The National Council for Democratic Rights was also established with A.E. Smith as chair in order to rally for the legalization of the Communist Party and the release of Communists and anti-fascists from internment.
The party's first elected Member of Parliament (MP) was Dorise Nielson. Nielson was elected in North Battleford, Saskatchewan in 1940 under the popular front Progressive Unity label, with the support of many individual CCFers. Nielsen kept her membership in the party a secret until 1943.
Labour-Progressive Party
Fred Rose re-election posterThe Communist Party remained banned, but with the entry of the Soviet Union into the war and the eventual release of the Canadian party's interned leaders, Canadian Communists founded the Labour-Progressive Party in 1943 as a legal front and thereafter ran candidates under that name until 1959. At its height in the mid-1940s, the party had fourteen sitting elected officials at the federal, provincial and municipal level. Several prominent elected party members were:
- Fred Rose was elected to represent a Montreal riding in the Canadian House of Commons as an LPP MP, and was removed from office after being convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.
- Dorise Nielsen, a Saskatchewan MP elected as a "Unity" candidate, declared her affiliation with the LPP when it was formed in August 1943 and ran unsuccessfully for re-election as an LPP candidate.
- Mary Kardash and William Ross were LPP and then Communist school trustees in Winnipeg
- Jacob Penner and Joseph Zuken were popular aldermen in Winnipeg. Zuken was an LPP school trustee before succeeding Penner on city council by which time the LPP had changed its name back to the Communist Party.
- W. A. Kardash and James Litterick were Manitoba LPP Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs).
- A.A. MacLeod and J.B. Salsberg were LPP members of the Ontario legislature.
- Stanley Brehaut Ryerson, Sam Carr, Charles Simms and Norman Freed were LPP Toronto aldermen while Stewart Smith was elected to the city's Board of Control.
- Harry Rankin sat on Vancouver's city council on behalf of the Committee of Progressive Electors which he helped found in the late 1960s. Though not officially a Communist Party member he was a fellow traveller.
In 1946, Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk at the Soviet Embassy, defected to Canada alleging several Canadian communists were operating a spy ring which provided the Soviet Union with top secret information. The Kellock-Taschereau Commission was called by Prime Minister Mackenzie King to investigate the matter. This let to the convictions of Fred Rose and other communists.
Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 Secret Speech exposing the crimes of Joseph Stalin and the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary shook the faith of many Communists around the world. As well, the party was riven by a crisis following the return of prominent party member J.B. Salsberg from a trip to the Soviet Union where he found rampant party-sponsored antisemitism. Salsberg reported his findings but they were rejected by the party, which initially suspended him from its leading bodies. Ultimately, the crisis resulted in the departure of the United Jewish Peoples' Order, Salsberg, Robert Laxer and most of the party's Jewish members in 1956.
Many, perhaps most, members of the Canadian party left, including a number of prominent party members. In the mid 1960s the United States Department of State estimated the party membership to be approximately 3500.[3] The Soviet Union's 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia caused more people to leave the Canadian Communist Party.
Collapse of the Soviet bloc and party split
William KashtanIn common with most communist parties, it went through a crisis after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and subsequently split. Under then general secretary George Hewison (1988–91), the leadership of the CPC and a segment of its general membership began to abandon Marxism-Leninism as the basis of the Party's revolutionary perspective, and ultimately moved to liquidate the Party itself, seeking to replace it with a left, social democratic entity.
The protracted ideological and political crisis created much confusion and disorientation within the ranks of the Party, and paralysed both its independent and united front work for over two years. Ultimately, the Hewison-led majority in the Central Committee (CC) of the party voted to abandon Marxism-Leninism. An orthodox minority in the CC, led by Miguel Figueroa, Elizabeth Rowley and former leader William Kashtan, resisted this effort. At the 28th Convention in the fall of 1990, the Hewison group managed to maintain its control of the Central Committee of the CPC, but by the spring of 1991, the membership began to turn more and more against the reformist policies and orientation of the Hewison leadership.
Key provincial conventions were held in 1991 in the two main provincial bases of the CPC - British Columbia and Ontario. At the B.C. convention, delegates threw out Fred Wilson, one of the main leaders of the Hewison group. A few months later in June 1991, Ontario delegates rejected a concerted campaign by Hewison and his supporters, and overwhelmingly reelected provincial leader Elizabeth Rowley and other supporters of the Marxist-Leninist current to the Ontario Committee and Executive.
The Hewison group moved on August 27, 1991 to expel eleven of the key leaders of the opposition, including Rowley, Emil Bjarnason, and former central organizer John Bizzell. The Hewison-controlled Central Executive also dismissed the Ontario provincial committee.
The vast majority of local clubs and committees of the CPC opposed the expulsions, and called instead for an extraordinary convention of the party to resolve the deepening crisis in a democratic manner. There were loud protests at the CC's October 1991 meeting, but an extraordinary convention was not convened. With few remaining options, Rowley and the other expelled members threatened to take the Hewison group to court. After several months of negotiations between the Hewison group and the opposition "All-Canada Negotiating Committee", an out-of-court settlement resulted in the Hewison leadership agreeing to leave the CPC and relinquish any claim to the party's name, while taking most of the party's assets to the Cecil-Ross Society, a publishing and educational foundation previously associated with the party.
Following the departure of the Hewison-led group, a convention was held in December 1992 at which delegates agreed to continue the Communist Party (thus the meeting was titled the 30th CPC Convention). Delegates rejected the reformist policies instituted by the Hewison group and instead reaffirmed the CPC as a Marxist-Leninist organization. Since most of the old party's assets were now the property of the Hewison-led Cecil Ross Society, the CPC convention decided to launch a new newspaper, the People's Voice, to replace the old Canadian Tribune. The convention elected a new central committee with Figueroa as Party Leader. The convention also amended the party constitution to grant more membership control and lessen the arbitrary powers of the CC, while maintaining democratic centralism as its organizational principle.
Meanwhile, the former Communists retained the Cecil-Ross Society as a political foundation to continue their political efforts. They also sold off the party's headquarters at 24 Cecil Street, having earlier liquidated various party-related business such as Eveready Printers (the party printshop) and Progress Publishers. The name of the Cecil-Ross Society comes from the intersection of Cecil Street and Ross Street in Toronto where the headquarters of the party was located. The Cecil-Ross Society took with it the rights to the Canadian Tribune, which had been the party's weekly newspaper for decades, as well as roughly half of the party's assets. The Cecil-Ross Society ended publication of the Canadian Tribune and attempted to launch a new broad-left magazine, New Times which failed after a few issues and then Ginger [2] which only published twice.
The Figueroa Case
The renovated party, although with a much smaller membership and resources (including the party's headquarters at 24 Cecil Street in Toronto) now faced new challenges and threats to its existence. New anti-democratic electoral laws mandated that political parties run fifty candidates in Federal elections. The CPC was not in a position to run fifty (50) candidates in the 1993 federal election, and therefore its assets were seized as the party was de-listed.
A prolonged legal battle, Figueroa v. Canada ensued, which won the support of a number of outspoken democratic members of parliament, resulting in a Supreme Court of Canada ruling in 2003 that overturned a provision in the Elections Act requiring fifty candidates for official party status and historically redefined a political party. The case was one of the most significant recent democratic reforms in Canadian election law. Earlier in the legal battle, the party had its deregistration overturned and its seized assets restored. This victory was celebrated by many of the other small parties – regardless of political differences – on the principle that it was a victory for the people's right to democratic choice.
During this time the CPC began to publish a fortnightly newspaper called People's Voice. Its Quebec section, le Parti communiste du Québec, publishes Clarté. The CPC also periodically publishes a theoretical/discussion journal Spark!. These publications and other information about the party is available on its site – [3].
YCL rebuilding conventionThe CPC is active in trade unions, in the civic reform movement, and in a number of social justice, anti-war and international solidarity groups and coalitions. The Party has also helped refound the Young Communist League of Canada. Local YCL groups have sprung up in several centres across the country, which has held two Central Conventions since 2007.
Quebec communists
The Communist Party of Canada formed the Communist Party of Quebec in 1965, reflecting the national reality of Canada as a state with more than one nation within its boarders. The PCQ advanced many policies including the idea of a federated party of labour, which proved its prescience with the formation of Quebec solidaire. The PCQ remained as a component of the CPC, with control over its policies and administration.
During the crisis in CPC during the 1990s, the PCQ became disorganized and its remaining members drifted apart from the CPC, adopting positions sympathetic to nationalism. It was not until 1997 that a range of communists and communist groups came together to re-organize the PCQ. A few years later the party brought together different tendencies in the left to form the Union of Progressive Forces or UFP which became Quebec solidaire.
The UFP agreed to place the question of Quebec independence as secondary to social or class issues. This was hotly debated as the party transformed into Quebec solidaire. The debate moved over into the PCQ as well. The Communist Party of Canada supports the right of "national self-determination, up to and including separation". It does not however support the fragmentation of Canada, however, and has called for "a new, democratic constitutional arrangement based on the equal and voluntary union of Aboriginal peoples, Québec, and English-speaking Canada".
These positions were questioned by the Quebec leader of the party, Andre Parizeau, who formulated a series of amendments in support of immediate independence in 2004. Rejected by both the Central Executive Committee (by a vote of 7-1) and the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Quebec Party (by a vote of 4-2), by January 2005, Parizeau wrote a letter to PCQ members declaring that the party was in crisis and, describing the four NEC members who opposed his amendments as a pro-federalist "Gang of Four", he summarily dismissed them.
At the PCQ convention of April 2005 Parizeau held a majority, but who was granted voting rights was highly disputed. Parizeau was subsequently expelled for "factional activity and the pursuit of a right opportunist line" and the Central Committee of the Party affirmed the authority of the previous Quebec National Executive Committee in June 18–19, 2005. Around the same time, Parizeau's group published a letter of withdrawal from the CPC accusing the Party of holding "des idées chauvines vis-à-vis du Québec" (chauvinistic ideas relative to Quebec).
Thus, by 2005, the Parti communiste du Québec had split into two rival groups with the same name over the issue of Quebec sovereignty with the pro-Quebec nationalist group lead by André Parizeau continuing the electoral registration of the Parti communiste du Québec [4].
Parizeau's opponents in the PCQ on the other hand have re-started a new periodical, Clarté, reorganized the party with clubs across Montreal, opened an office and small reading room, launched an active website, and are also are re-affiliating with Quebec Solidaire as an organized group. The work closely with the youth and student organization, the League de la jeunesse communitse du Quebec. The CPC's account of this situation is available online,[5] as is the letter from Parizeau's PCQ group.[6]
Recent developments
The CPC held its 36th Central Convention on February 2010 in Toronto. According to a Toronto Star article the assembly drew 65 delegates most of whom were from Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec with a few from Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nova Scotia. Party leader Miguel Figueroa called for the Communists to field 25 candidates in the upcoming federal election.
Allied organizations
Traditionally, the Communist Party and Labour-Progressive Party have had allied organizations which were not formally affiliated with the party but were largely under its control. These groups often originated from left wing labour and socialist movements that existed prior to the creation of the Communist Party and operated political and cultural activities amongst various immigrant groups, published magazines and operated their own cultural centres and meeting halls. From the 1920s through the 1950s the largest immigrant groups represented in the party were Finns, Ukrainians and Jews who were organized in the Finnish Organization of Canada (founded in 1911 as the Finnish Socialist Organization of Canada), the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians (known as the Ukrainian Labor Farmer Temple Association until 1946) and the United Jewish Peoples' Order (known as the Labour League until 1945) respectively. Also active in the 1930s and 1940s was the Hungarian Workers Clubs, the Polish People's Association (formerly the Polish Workers' and Farmers' Association), the Serbian People's Movement and Croatian Cultural Association (formerly the Jugoslav Workers' Clubs) and the Carpatho-Russian Society. The Russian Farmer-Worker Clubs were formed in the early 1930s but closed by the government under the Defence of Canada Regulations at the outbreak of World War II. When the Soviet Union became Canada's ally in 1942, they re-appeared as the Federation of Russian Canadians. The Canadian Slav Committee was formed in 1948 in an attempt to put party-aligned cultural associations for Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Yugoslavs and Carpatho-Russians under one umbrella. The UJPO broke with the party in 1956 over the revelations of antisemitism in the Soviet Union. An influx of left-wing Greek and Portuguese immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in the creation of the Greek Democratic Association and the Portuguese Democratic Association which remain close to the Communist Party.
General Secretaries of the CPC
- Tom Burpee 1921
- William Moriarty 1921–1923
- Jack MacDonald 1923–1929
- Tim Buck 1929–1962
- Leslie Morris 1962–1964
- William Kashtan 1965–1988
- George Hewison 1988–1992
- Miguel Figueroa 1992–Present
Central Executive Committee
The Communist Party of Canada's 35th convention held in February 2010 elected the following members to its leading body, the Central Executive Committee: Miguel Figueroa (Party leader), Elizabeth Rowley (leader of the Communist Party of Ontario), Robert Loxley (Editor of Clarte, newspaper of the Parti communiste du Québec), Sam Hammond, Chair of the Trade Union Commission of the Party and leader of British Columbia Communist Party, and Kimball Cariou (editor of People's Voice).
There is also a larger body, the Central Committee, which is elected at convention and meets in intervening years. The Central Committee nominates the members of the Central Executive Committee and the composition of the CEC is ratified by convention.
Election results
Election # of candidates nominated # of seats won # of total votes % of popular vote % in ridings contested 1930 6 0 4,557 0.12% 1935 13 0 27,456 0.46% 19401 9 0 14,005 0.36% 19452 68 1 111,892 2.13% 19492 17 0 32,623 0.56% 19532 100 0 59,622 1.06% 19572 10 0 7,760 0.12% 19582 18 0 9,769 0.13% 1962 12 0 6,360 0.08% 1963 12 0 4,234 0.05% 1965 12 0 4,285 0.06% 1968 14 0 4,465 0.05% 19723 n.a n.a. n.a. n.a. 1974 69 0 12,100 0.13% 1979 71 0 9,141 0.08% 1980 52 0 6,022 0.06% 1984 52 0 7,551 0.06% 1988 51 0 7,066 0.05% 19934 n.a n.a. n.a. n.a. 19974 n.a n.a. n.a. n.a. 2000 52 0 8,779 0.07% 0.39% 2004 35 0 4,564 0.03% 0.31% 2006 21 0 3,022 0.02% 0.32% 2008 24 0 3,639 0.03% 0.35% 2011 20 0 2,894 0.02% 0.31% Notes:
1: A ninth candidate, Dorise Nielson was a member of the Communist Party but ran and was elected as a Progressive Unity candidate.
2: The Communist Party was banned in 1941. From 1943 until 1959 they ran candidates under the name Labour Progressive Party.
3: In 1972 the party ran its candidates as independents. It is unknown how many party members ran in that election.
4: The party failed to register at least 50 candidates in time for the 1993 election. As a result the party was deregistered and its candidates ran as independents. Party status was not regained until prior to the 2000 general election. It is unknown how many party members ran in the 1993 and 1997 elections as independents.
See also
- Communist Party candidates, 2011 Canadian federal election
- Communist Party candidates, 2008 Canadian federal election
- Communist Party candidates, 2006 Canadian federal election
- Communist Party candidates, 2004 Canadian federal election
- Communist Party candidates, 2000 Canadian federal election
- Communist Party candidates, 1997 Canadian federal election
- Communist Party of Alberta
- Communist Party of Ontario
- Communist Party of British Columbia
- Parti communiste du Québec
- PROFUNC
- People's Voice
- Young Communist League
- Rebel Youth
- List of political parties in Canada
- United Jewish Peoples' Order, which was aligned with the party until 1956.
- Organization for Jewish Colonization in Russia (IKOR)
- Canadian communists including many leading figures in the party.
References
- ^ Canadian Communist Party 2011 Federal Election Platform
- ^ Communist Party of Canada (1982). Canada's Party of Socialism. Toronto: Progress Books. pp. 29, 33, 34. ISBN 0-919396-45-3.
- ^ Benjamin, Roger W.; Kautsky, John H.. Communism and Economic Development, in The American Political Science Review, Vol. 62, No. 1. (Mar., 1968), pp. 122.
- ^ http://www.electionsquebec.qc.ca/fr/ppc_liste_partis_candidats.asp?sect=prov&parti=PCQ#texteP
- ^ [1]
- ^ June 2005
External links
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