page_title: Communist Party of Canada
section_title: Debates, arguments and expulsions
hierarchical_section_title: Communist Party of Canada / History / Debates, arguments and expulsions
caption_attribution_description: English: Strikers from unemployment relief camps en route to Eastern Canada during "March on Ottawa" in June 1935 in Kamloops, B.C. From http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/026020/f1/c029399-v5.jpg Information on image from ArchiviaNet REFERENCE NUMBERS: ACCESSION: 1967-113 REPRODUCTION: C-029399 (copy negative number); CONSULTATION/REPRODUCTION: Graphics: photos Restrictions on access: Nil USE/REPRODUCTION: Restrictions on use/reproduction: Nil Copyright: Expired Credit: Library and Archives Canada / C-029399 As the author cannot be readily identified, the Copyright Act of Canada [1] only grants copyright for 50 years since the first publication.--Jusjih 00:33, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
context_page_description: The Communist Party of Canada is a communist political party in Canada founded in 1921 under conditions of illegality. Although it is now a political party without any parliamentary representation, the party's candidates have been elected to the Parliament of Canada, the Ontario legislature, the Manitoba legislature, and various municipal governments across the country. The party has also contributed significantly to trade union organizing and labour history in Canada, peace and anti-war activism, and many other social movements.
  The Communist Party of Canada is the second oldest active party after the Liberal Party of Canada. In 1993 the party was de-registered and had its assets seized, forcing it to begin a successful thirteen-year political and legal battle to maintain registration of small political parties in Canada. The campaign culminated with the final decision of Figueroa v. Canada, changing the legal definition of a political party in Canada.
context_section_description: From 1927 to 1929, the party went through a series of policy debates and internal ideological struggles in which  advocates of the ideas of Leon Trotsky, as well as proponents of what the party called "North American Exceptionism", were expelled. Expellees 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 expelled. The Secretary of the Women's Bureau and later, general editor of the Woman Worker (1926-1929) Florence Custance was only saved from expulsion from the Party due to her untimely death in 1929. Her feminism and advocacy of birth control, for example, were well known to the mainstream press, but her radical contemporaries questioned her political sympathies and gave her few chances to shine.
  MacDonald, also sympathetic to Trotskyist ideas, joined Spector in founding the International Left Opposition (Trotskyist) Canada, which formed part of Trotsky's so-called Fourth International Left Opposition. The party also expelled supporters of Nikolai Bukharin and of Jay Lovestone's Right Opposition, such as William Moriarty. The communists disagreed over strategy, tactics, the socialist identity of the Soviet Union, and over Canada's status as an imperialist power. While some communists like J. B. Salsberg expressed sympathy with these positions, after debates that dominated party conventions for a couple of years by the early 1930s, the vast majority of members had decided to continue with the party.
  Tim Buck won election as party general secretary in 1929. He remained in the position until 1962.
caption: Strikers of the On-to-Ottawa Trek
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