Canada's political labour movement gradually grew from running independent labour-oriented local candidates (usually unsuccessfully), to founding provincial labour parties or socialist-inclined labour parties such as BC's Nationalist Party and the Socialist Party of Canada, finally to a couple nation-wide parties expressing positions positive toward labour interests.
During that process, from the 1870s until the 1960s various groups in Canada nominated candidates under the label Labour Party or Independent Labour Party, Dominion Labor Party, or other variations. These were usually local or provincial groups backed by a local labour council made up of many union locals in a particular city, or provincial union federations, or individual trade unions. There was an attempt to create a national Canadian Labour Party in the late 1910s and in the 1920s, but these were only partly successful.
The Communist Party of Canada (CPC), formed in 1921, fulfilled some of labour's political yearnings from coast to coast, and then the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) – Worker Farmer Socialist was formed in 1932. With organic ties to the organized labour movement, this was a labour party by definition. Prior to the CCFs formation in 1932, the Socialist Party of Canada was strong in British Columbia and in Alberta before World War I, while the Dominion Labour Party and the Canadian Labour Party were strong in Alberta through the 1920s and 1930s, and the Independent Labour Party led by J. S. Woodsworth was strong in Manitoba in the 1920s and 1930s.
An Edmonton-based Independent Labour Party ran candidates in the 1921 Alberta general election. It was independent in the sense that it was separate from the Edmonton Labour Council, which was dominated by international craft unions. Later, many of its proponents joined the Communist Party. Several local Labour parties and clubs participated in the formation of the Communist Party in 1921. The Independent Labour Party (Manitoba), the Canadian Labour Party, the Dominion Labour Party, and other labour groups helped found the CCF in 1932.
The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, formed in 1932, and the New Democratic Party, founded in 1961, later took on the task of organizing labour, farmer and Canadian-style socialist political activism.
Proponents of labour, many running under a labour party banner, were elected to municipal councils in Edmonton, Calgary and other large cities in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s. This includes Calgary's Annie Gale, Edmonton's James East, and Vancouver's Richard Parmeter Pettipiece.
Members of Parliament The first Labour Member of Parliament (MP) was Arthur Puttee who founded the Winnipeg Labour Party, and was elected to the House of Commons from Winnipeg, Manitoba in a 1900 by-election and kept his seat at the 1900 federal election held later the same year. George Ritchie Maxwell, a founder of the pro-nationalization Nationalist Party, said to be BC's first labour party, was elected MP in the Burrard riding in 1896.Encyclopedia of BC, p. 486
Other MPs elected under the Labour or Independent Labour label include: Ralph Smith, a miner, ran as an Independent Labour candidate in Vancouver in the 1900 federal election but took his seat in the Canadian House of Commons as a Liberal. He was subsequently re-elected as a Liberal in the 1904 and 1908 before being defeated in 1911. Alphonse Verville was elected as a Labour candidate in a 1906 by-election in Maisonneuve, Quebec. He was re-elected in 1908 and 1911. He grew close to the Liberals during his service as MP, and he ran and was re-elected as a Laurier Liberal in the 1917 federal election. James Lockwood ran as a Labour party candidate in the 1917 federal election in Algoma West, but was defeated. John Wilfred Kennedy was elected as a United Farmers of Ontario-Labour MP for Glengarry and Stormont in a 1919 by-election. He was re-elected as a Progressive MP in the 1921 federal election and was defeated in 1925. William Irvine, a close friend of J.S. Woodsworth, represented the riding of East Calgary (Calgary East), Alberta as a Labour MP from 1921 to 1925. He also served as a United Farmers of Alberta MP for Wetaskiwin from 1926 to 1935, during which time he helped found the CCF. He sat as a CCF MP for Cariboo, British Columbia from 1945 to 1949. Joseph Shaw represented West Calgary (Calgary West), Alberta as a Labour MP from 1921 to 1925. (He later also sat as a Liberal MLA from 1926 to 1930.) Herbert Bealey Adshead was Labour MP for Calgary East from 1926 to 1930. Angus MacInnis was an Independent Labour Party MP from 1930 to 1935 and sat as a CCF MP from 1935; A. A. Heaps was elected as a Labour MP for Winnipeg North in 1925, 1926 and 1930 and was re-elected as a CCFer in 1935; J. S. Woodsworth founded the Manitoba Independent Labour Party in December 1920. He served as an MP from 1921 until his death in 1942, at first as an ILP MP, later as a CCF MP. He was the first leader of the CCF after its founding in 1932. Humphrey Mitchell was elected as a Labour MP representing Hamilton East in a 1931 by-election. Close to William Lyon Mackenzie King's Liberals, he did not get along with other Labour and Independent Labour MPs and refused to join the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation when it was founded in 1932. The CCF ran a candidate against Mitchell in 1935 (the Liberals did not) and the vote split resulted in Mitchell's defeat by the Conservative candidate. In 1941 he was appointed to the federal Cabinet as Minister of Labour and soon after returned to the House of Commons as a Liberal MP via a by-election in Welland.
MacInnis, Heaps and Woodsworth joined the Ginger Group of left wing MPs prior to forming the CCF. Alberta Labour MPs Irvine and Shaw, and its UFA MPs, also were in the Ginger Group.
See also List of Labour MPs (Canada)
Members of provincial legislatures
In Nova Scotia Four Independent Labour Party (ILP) MLAs and one Farmer-Labour MLA (all but one from Cape Breton) were elected to the Nova Scotia House of Assembly in the 1920 general election.
D. W. Morrison, ILP, (Cape Breton), 1920–1925 Arthur R. Richardson, Farmer-Labour, (Cape Breton), 1920–1925 Joseph Steele, ILP, (Cape Breton), 1920–1925 Arthur Forman Waye, ILP, (Cape Breton), 1920–1925 Archibald Terris, ILP, (Cumberland), 1920–1925, 1928–1933
The five joined with six United Farmer MLAs to form the official opposition in the legislature with United Farmer MLA Daniel G. MacKenzie as leader. All the United Farmer and ILP MLAs were defeated in the 1925 general election, but one of them, Archibald Terris, was elected in 1928 representing Cumberland County; he did not run for re-election in 1933.
The Nova Scotia Co-operative Commonwealth Federation began running candidates with the 1933 general election and became the New Democratic Party in 1961. In 1982 the Cape Breton Labour Party was formed by MLA Paul MacEwan after he was expelled from the NDP. It ran 14 candidates in the 1984 general election but MacEwan was the only candidate to win the seat. The party soon dissolved. MacEwan was re-elected in 1988 as an independent before joining the Nova Scotia Liberal Party in 1990.
In Quebec
A number of members of the Legislative Assembly of Quebec were labelled Parti ouvrier (Labour Party) from the 1890 election until the 1931 election. They represented predominantly labour-class neighbourhoods in Montreal and Quebec City and consisted of:
Joseph Béland, MLA for the district of Montréal n°1 from 1890 to 1892; Joseph-Alphonse Langlois, MLA for Saint-Sauveur from 1909 to 1916; Aurèle Lacombe, MLA for Montréal-Dorion from 1919 to 1923; Adélard Laurendeau, MLA for Maisonneuve from 1919 to 1923; Joseph Gauthier, MLA for Montréal-Sainte-Marie from 1921 to 1923; Pierre Bertrand, MLA for Saint-Sauveur from 1923 to 1927; William Tremblay, MLA for Maisonneuve from 1927 to 1931;
In Ontario
Daniel John O'Donoghue was the first Labour candidate elected to a Canadian legislature when in 1874 he was elected to the Ontario legislature as the candidate of the Ottawa Trades Council. Allan Studholme was elected the first Labour Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) in the Ontario legislature in a 1906 by-election in Hamilton East. He remained in office until his death in 1919.
A number of Labour MLAs were elected in the 1919 provincial election which led to the formation of a United Farmers of Ontario-Labour coalition government. Labour MLAs included: James Bertram Cunningham, Labour, Sault Ste Marie John Govenlock, Labour, Huron Centre, (1919) Frank Greenlaw, Labour, St. Catharines, (1919) George Grant Halcrow, Labour, Hamilton East, (1919) Peter Heenan, Labour, Kenora, (1919, 1923, returned as Liberal 1934, 1937 see Liberal-Labour)) Karl Homuth, Labour-UFO, Waterloo S., (1919, as Labour 1923, 1926, Conservative 1929, d. 1930) Morrison MacBride, Labour, Brantford (1919, 1923, returned as Independent 1934, Ind. Liberal 1937 d. 1938) Harry (Henry) Mills, Labour, Fort William, (1919) Walter Rollo, Labour, Hamilton W., (1919) Minister of Labour and leader of the Labour group in the legislature (1919–1923) Hugh Stevenson, Labour, London, (1919) Charles Swayze, Labour, Niagara Falls, (1919) Thomas Tooms, Labour, Peterborough W., (1919)
The last Labour MLA elected to the legislature was Earl Hutchinson who was elected in Kenora in 1929 and re-elected in 1934. He agreed to resign shortly after his re-election to allow former Labour MLA Peter Heenan to seek the Kenora seat in a by-election so that he could be appointed to the provincial cabinet by the newly elected Liberal government of Mitchell Hepburn. Hutchinson accepted an appointment by Hepburn to the post of vice-chairman of the Workmen's Compensation Board shortly after leaving politics.
The Ontario Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was formed in 1932 with the support of a number of Independent Labour Party clubs and won its first seat in the 1934 provincial election, Samuel Lawrence in Hamilton East.
In 1944, two CCF MPPs, Arthur Nelson Alles (Essex North) and Leslie Hancock (Wellington South) left the CCF to sit as Independent Labour MPPs after the CCF rejected a proposal by the Communist Labor-Progressive Party to form a CCF-Liberal-LPP coalition to oust the Progressive Conservative government of George Drew. The two did not run in the 1945 Ontario general election and Alles was succeeded in Essex North by Alexander Parent, running as a Liberal-Labour candidate with the support of both the Liberal Party and the LPP. Parent initially joined the Liberal caucus but left in January 1946 in order to sit as a "straight Labor representative", caucusing with Labor-Progressive MPPs J.B. Salsberg and A. A. MacLeod.Parent Quits Liberal Party, The Globe and Mail (1936-); Toronto, Ont. [Toronto, Ont]. 14 Jan 1946: 8.
In Manitoba
Reverend A. E. Smith was a Dominion Labour Party (DLP) MLA for the Brandon district from 1920 to 1922. In 1925 he joined the Communist Party of Canada and was a prominent party figure in Ontario until his death. Fred Dixon was the DLP's leader in the early 1920s and a MLA for the district of Winnipeg from 1914 to 1923. He was the leader of the eleven Labour MLAs elected in the 1920 Manitoba election. William Ivens was a DLP and then an Independent Labour Party MLA for the district of Winnipeg from 1920 to 1926. John Queen was an MLA for the district of Winnipeg from 1921 to 1941 under various Labour labels. In 1920 he was elected as a candidate for the Social Democratic Party of Canada. He went on to be leader of the ILP from 1923 to 1935. He joined the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation party upon the ILP's affiliation to it in 1930s. He was also Mayor of Winnipeg for much of the time from 1934 to 1942.
In Alberta Donald McNabb, elected from Lethbridge in a 1908 by-election to become the first Labour MLA in Alberta. Defeated in the 1909 general election.