A. A. MacLeod - Provincial Politics

Provincial Politics

In the 1943 Ontario provincial election, the still banned Communist Party ran "Labor-Progressive" candidates. MacLeod was elected as Member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario for the downtown Toronto riding of Bellwoods and became the party's leader in the legislature. His colleague, J.B. Salsberg, was elected in the neighbouring riding of St. Andrew. The Labor-Progressive Party was officially formed later that year and became the legal face of the banned Communist Party. MacLeod and Salsberg were re-elected in the 1945 provincial election and 1948 Ontario provincial election but lost his seat in the 1951 election - Salsberg remained as the sole LPP MPP for a term until his defeat in the following election.

Though his views were politically unpopular, MacLeod won the respect of his fellow legislators. Former Premier Mitchell Hepburn said MacLeod "had the finest mind in the legislature."

MacLeod left the Labor-Progressive Party along with the majority of its members following Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech at the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that revealed the crimes of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.

Despite their ideological differences, MacLeod was a personal favourite of Progressive Conservative Premier of Ontario Leslie Frost who gave MacLeod an office on the fourth floor of the legislative building at Queen's Park following his defeat and made him a paid adviser and one of Frost's speechwriters. One of MacLeod's initiatives was the naming of Highway 401, a major new cross-province expressway, the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway after Sir John A. Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier. MacLeod was also involved in the establishment of the Ontario Human Rights Commission in 1961. He kept his office into the 1970s acting as an advisor to premiers John Robarts and Bill Davis.