The Labor-Progressive Party (LPP; ) was the legal front of the

Communist Party of Canada The Communist Party of Canada is a federal political party in Canada. Founded in 1921 under conditions of illegality, it is the second oldest active political party in Canada, after the Liberal Party of Canada. Although it does not currentl ...

and its provincial wings from 1943 to 1959. It was established amid

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

after a number of prominent Communist Party members were released from wartime internment, with Communist Party general secretary

Tim Buck Timothy Buck (January 6, 1891 – March 11, 1973) was the general secretary of the Communist Party of Canada (known as the Labor-Progressive Party from 1943 to 1959) from 1929 until 1962. Together with Ernst Thälmann of Germany, Maurice ...

serving as the LPP's leader. The LPP had one elected member of parliament during its history, trade unionist Fred Rose, who won a 1943 federal by-election in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

. The party also saw provincial- and municipal-level victories, particularly in Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec.

Origins and initial success

In the 1940 federal election, the Communist Party led a popular front in several constituencies in

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada. It is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and to the south by the ...

and

Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

under the name Unity, United Progressive or United Reform and elected two MPs, one of whom, Dorise Nielsen, was secretly a member of the Communist Party. After the Communist Party of Canada was banned in 1940, under the wartime '' Defence of Canada Regulations'', it established the Labor-Progressive Party (LPP) as a front organization in 1943 after the release of Communist Party leaders from internment. Nielsen declared her affiliation to the LPP when it was founded in August 1943. She was defeated in the 1945 election when she ran for re-election as an LPP candidate. Only one LPP Member of Parliament (MP) was elected to the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of ...

under that banner, Fred Rose, who was elected in a 1943 by-election in

, sitting with Nielsen. Rose was re-elected in 1945. In 1947, he was charged and convicted for spying for the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, and was expelled from the House of Commons. The leader of the party was

. Other prominent members were Margaret Fairley, Stewart Smith, Stanley Ryerson and Sam Carr. While "labour" is generally spelled with a 'u' in Canadian English, and English in the former British Empire, the Labor-Progressive Party used the American spelling as did the

Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also known as the Labor Party or simply Labor, is the major Centre-left politics, centre-left List of political parties in Australia, political party in Australia and one of two Major party, major parties in Po ...

Provincial campaigns

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

, two LPP members, A. A. MacLeod and J. B. Salsberg, sat in the

Legislative Assembly of Ontario The Legislative Assembly of Ontario (OLA; ) is the legislative chamber of the Canadian province of Ontario. Its elected members are known as Members of Provincial Parliament (MPPs). Bills passed by the Legislative Assembly are given royal as ...

from 1943 to 1951 and 1955 respectively. The LPP also jointly nominated several Liberal-Labour candidates with the

Ontario Liberal Party The Ontario Liberal Party (OLP; , PLO) is a political party in the province of Ontario, Canada. The party has been led by Bonnie Crombie since December 2023. The party espouses the principles of liberalism, with their rival the Progressive Co ...

. Alexander Parent, who was also president of UAW Local 195, was elected as the Liberal-Labour MPP for Essex North in 1945. In January 1946, Parent announced he was breaking with the "reactionary" Liberals and sat the remainder of his term in the legislature as a Labour representative while voting with LPP MPPs MacLeod and Salsberg. He did not run for re-election in 1948. The Manitoba party had amongst its leading members Jacob Penner who was a popular

aldermen An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law with similar officials existing in the Netherlands (wethouder) and Belgium (schepen). The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking membe ...

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Manitoba. It is centred on the confluence of the Red River of the North, Red and Assiniboine River, Assiniboine rivers. , Winnipeg h ...

, Manitoba, as well as

Bill Kardash William Arthur Kardash (June 10, 1912 – January 17, 1997) was a politician and member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1941 until 1958. He served as Winnipeg MLA from 1941 to 1958, as Worker's Candidate at first, then as a repres ...

who was a

Manitoba Manitoba is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population ...

Member of the Legislative Assembly A Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) is a representative elected to sit in a legislative assembly. The term most commonly refers to members of the legislature of a federated state or an autonomous region, but is also used for several nation ...

. The party also ran candidates in

Quebec general elections This article provides a summary of results for the general elections to the Canadian province of Quebec's unicameral legislative body, the National Assembly of Quebec (and its predecessor, the Legislative Assembly of Quebec). The number of ...

from 1944 to 1956 as the ''

Parti ouvrier-progressiste The Communist Party of Quebec (, , PCQ-PCC) is a List of political parties in Quebec, provincial political party in Quebec. It is affiliated with, but officially independent from, the Communist Party of Canada (CPC). The PCQ-PCC publishes the n ...

''.

Municipal strength

The LPP had strong pockets of support in working-class neighbourhoods of Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg as well as in the

Crowsnest Pass Crowsnest Pass (sometimes referred to as Crow's Nest Pass, ) is a low mountain pass across the Continental Divide of the Canadian Rockies on the Alberta–British Columbia border. Geography The pass is located in southeast British Columbia an ...

mining region of

and

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

elected a number of its members to local city councils and school boards. In Winnipeg, Jacob Penner was a long-time member of the city council while Joe Zuken sat on the school board. In Toronto, Charles Simms and Norman Freed served as aldermen while Smith was elected to the city's powerful Board of Control. From

1944 Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. January * January 2 – WWII: ** Free France, Free French General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny is appointed to command First Army (France), French Army B, part of the Sixt ...

to 1947, Helen Anderson Coulson sat on Hamilton's City Council as an Alderman (from 1944–1946) and, after the 1946 municipal election, as a member of the city's highest decision making body, the Board of Control. She played a significant role in the

Stelco Stelco Holdings Inc. (known as U.S. Steel Canada from 2007 to 2016) is a Canadian steel company based in Hamilton, Ontario. Stelco was founded in 1910 by the amalgamation of several smaller firms. It continued on for almost 100 years until it ...

Strike of 1946, and paid for her stances in the 1947 election, being shut out of the 4-person body after receiving the second highest number of votes in

1946 1946 (Roman numerals, MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1946th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' (AD) designations, the 946th year of the 2nd millennium, the 46th year of the 20th centur ...

. She would unsuccessfully seek election numerous times over the next decade, most prominently opposing Mayor Lloyd Jackson in 1950. Dr. Harry Paikin was elected a school trustee on the Hamilton Board of Education in 1944 and remained in office for three decades, until his death in 1985, including ten years as chair.

World War II

Following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the Canadian Communist Party reversed its earlier position urging Canadian neutrality in

and instead urged full support for the Soviet, not Canadian, war effort. The party formed the "

Plebiscite Committees" urging support for

conscription Conscription, also known as the draft in the United States and Israel, is the practice in which the compulsory enlistment in a national service, mainly a military service, is enforced by law. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it conti ...

in the 1942 referendum. After the vote the committees were renamed the Dominion Communist – Labour Total War Committee and were the main public face of the Communist Party, and became the main wartime activity of the Labor-Progressive Party, helping it raise its profile and encouraging the federal government to release Communist leaders who had been detained early in the war.

Cold War

The LPP faced repression during the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

anti-Communist Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communist beliefs, groups, and individuals. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when th ...

sentiment increased in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

, particularly after the revelations of

Igor Gouzenko Igor Sergeyevich Gouzenko (; ; January 26, 1919 – June 25, 1982) was a cipher clerk for the Soviet embassy to Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, and a lieutenant of the Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). He defected on September 5, 1945, th ...

following his defection from the Soviet embassy in Ottawa. Gouzenko's revelations led to the downfall of Fred Rose. Nevertheless, the party continued to elect a handful of members to provincial legislatures, city councils and school boards across Canada well into the 1950s.

1956–1957 crisis

An almost fatal blow for the party was the crisis that enveloped it following

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...

Secret Speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" () was a report by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 Februa ...

to the Twentieth Party Congress of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),. Abbreviated in Russian as КПСС, ''KPSS''. at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (RCP), All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet ...

and the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, the first event shattered the faith many LPP members had in the Soviet Union and

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

while the second caused many to doubt that the USSR had truly changed. Aggravated as well by revelations of widespread

antisemitism in the Soviet Union The February Revolution in Russia officially ended a centuries-old regime of antisemitism in the Russian Empire, legally abolishing the Pale of Settlement. However, the previous legacy of antisemitism was continued and furthered by the Soviet s ...

(a serious blow to Jewish members of the LPP such as Salsberg and Robert Laxer), the party underwent a serious split with more than half of its membership including many in the leadership, including Salsberg, Stewart Smith, Harry Binder, Sam Lipshitz and other prominent LPP leaders, ultimately leaving with the remaining party being a remnant of what it once had been. The United Jewish Peoples' Order, which had been one of the largest organizations allied with the LPP, broke with the party in December 1956 as a result of Salsberg's revelations after his fact-finding mission to the USSR to investigate reports of systemic

antisemitism Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

and repression of

Jewish culture Jewish culture is the culture of the Jewish people, from its formation in ancient times until the current age. Judaism itself is not simply a faith-based religion, but an orthopraxy and Ethnoreligious group, ethnoreligion, pertaining to deed, ...

.Gerald Tulchinsky
Family Quarrel: Joe Salsberg, the 'Jewish' Question, and Canadian Communism
Labour/Le Travail, 56 (Fall 2005)

Decline

The LPP last ran a federal candidate in a December 1958 by-election and ran nine candidates in the 1959 Ontario election. Shortly thereafter, it renamed itself the Communist Party of Canada once again. The LPP had a youth wing, the National Federation of Labour Youth which had formerly been known as the Young Communist League. The NFLY was renamed the Socialist Youth League of Canada in the 1950s but became defunct later in the decade due to internal party turmoil.

Election results

; Notes:

References

Notes

External links

"A BETTER CANADA TO FIGHT FOR, TO WORK FOR, TO VOTE FOR – Electoral Program of the Labor-Progressive Party" (circa 1944)
{{Ontario provincial political parties Defunct political parties in Canada Communist Party of Canada mass organizations Federal political parties in Canada Labour parties in Canada Political parties established in 1943 Political parties disestablished in 1959 Defunct provincial political parties in Ontario Provincial political parties in Manitoba 1943 establishments in Manitoba 1959 disestablishments in Canada Defunct communist parties Socialism in Manitoba