Jun 242021
Aug 252016
As the economic crisis continues, more progressive people are drawing partisan conclusions and deciding they need to take action, get organized and involve themselves in resistance. Some are becoming active in their unions and mass organizations. The most advanced are being won to the struggle for socialism, and some are joining our ranks.
The urgent question today is to forge a plan of united class action linking the struggle for reforms with the revolutionary struggle for socialism.
Neither social reformism nor ultra-leftism can forge such a way forward. Socialist theory and practice will not arise spontaneously. Only the work of the Communist Party, as our programme says, Afuses scientific socialism with the class struggle and by so doing spreads political and socialist consciousness among the workers B an awareness of their historic mission as a class,@ to lead the peoples of Canada from capitalism to socialism and ultimately communism. Continue reading »
Jun 192016
Keynote address delivered by Elizabeth Rowley, leader of the Communist Party of Canada at the occasion of the Parties 38th Central Convention in Toronto.
Comrade Chair and Comrades:
We open this convention with a warm welcome to all of the Delegates and Alternates who have traveled from all over Canada to attend this 38th Convention of our Party, which takes place just one week short of the 95th anniversary of our Party’s birth on May 28, 1921. Continue reading »
May 172016
The labour movement across Canada, and especially in Winnipeg, will mark the anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike this year. The Communist Party of Canada welcomes these celebrations and will work for the success of these important tributes.
The 1919 Winnipeg General Strike is one of the greatest working class struggles in Canadian history, a strike that combined the militancy, enthusiasm and solidarity of the overwhelming majority of Winnipeg’s workers against the capitalist big shots who still trample on the rights and lives of workers. Continue reading »
Feb 162016
Feb 162016
Big challenges were on the table for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada, when it met Jan. 30-31 to launch preparations for the party’s upcoming 38th Central Convention in Toronto. The centrepiece of the meeting was the Draft Political Resolution for the May 21-23 convention, a document which will be debated by members at club meetings and provincial gatherings over the next three months. Continue reading »
Jul 152015
July 1 marked the 80th anniversary of the brutal police attack against the On to Ottawa Trek. On that date in 1935, the citizens of Regina and Trek participants were holding a peaceful mass rally in that city’s Market Square. Suddenly, at 8:17 pm, RCMP officers emerged from vans parked at the square with batons and tear gas to break up the rally, injuring hundreds and sparking the infamous “Regina Police Riot”. Continue reading »
Jun 292015
July 1 will mark the 80th anniversary of the brutal police attack against the On to Ottawa Trek. On that date in 1935, the citizens of Regina and Trek participants were holding a peaceful mass rally in that city’s Market Square. Suddenly, at 8:17 pm, RCMP officers emerged from vans parked at the square with batons and tear gas to break up the rally, injuring hundreds and sparking the infamous “Regina Police Riot”.
The On to Ottawa Trek was organized by the Relief Camp Workers Union, and led by Arthur “Slim” Evans, one of the most popular trade union and Communist leaders of the “Dirty Thirties” Depression era. In the spring of 1935, after weeks of political organizing in Vancouver to demand “Work and Wages”, hundreds of RCWU members and other unemployed workers boarded freight trains, intending to take their struggle directly to the federal government in Ottawa. Continue reading »
Jun 242015
Special Resolution on the 80th anniversary of the On to Ottawa Trek, adopted by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada, June 13-14, 2015
This meeting of the Central Committee CPC salutes the 80th anniversary of the 1935 On to Ottawa Trek – one of the most iconic episodes in the history of the working class struggle in Canada. On this occasion, we pay tribute to the leaders of the Trek – Arthur “Slim” Evans, Robert “Doc” Savage and other working class heroes who fearlessly took on the bosses, the police, the military, and right-wing politicians.
At the same time, we stress the need to understand the lessons of the past in today’s context.
The On to Ottawa Trek was initiated by the communist-led Relief Camp Workers Union at the height of the Great Depression, after five years of vicious ruling class attacks on the living standards and rights of the working class across the country. Today we are experiencing another period of economic crisis for the capitalist system, which has seen a rebound of corporate profits since 2008, but no real economic recovery for working people. Once again, the gap between the ultra-wealthy and the mass of the people has increased sharply, reflecting the intensified exploitation of workers as bosses use the “reserve army of labour” to drive down wages and impose austerity cuts. Continue reading »
May 092015
Joint Resolution adopted by Communist and Workers’ Parties, May, 2015
The liberation of Berlin by Soviet troops in May of 1945 marks the victory of the peoples in World War II and the defeat of Nazi-fascism – the most violent form of class domination generated by capitalism and the direct cause of the war and of the death of tens of millions of human beings.
The decisive role in the victory of May 9, 1945 was played by the Soviet Union, its people and Red Army, under the leadership of its Communist Party. It was on the Eastern Front that the major battles which determined the outcome of World War II were fought. To mark the 70th anniversary of the Victory is to recall and celebrate the heroism, the courage and determination of millions of Soviet men and women who, at the cost of enormous sacrifice and of over 27 million dead, resisted and fought, giving a decisive contribution to the defeat of the Nazi-fascist barbarity. To celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Victory is to remember and praise the heroism, courage and determination of millions of other resistance fighters and anti-fascist strugglers from all over the world who dedicated and committed their lives to the struggle for Victory. Continue reading »