Labour Candidates and Parties in Canada - Members of Parliament

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.

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 straight Liberal in the 1904 and 1908 before being defeated in 1911.
• Alphonse Verville was elected as a Labour candidate in the 1904 federal election in Maisonneuve, Quebec. He grew close to the Liberals through subsequent elections until he ran and was re-elected as a Laurier Liberal in the 1917 federal election.
• 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.
• Herbert Bealey Adshead was Labour MP for Calgary East from 1926 to 1930.
• Angus MacInnis who was an Independent Labour Party MP from 1930 to 1935 and sat as a CCF MP from 1935;
• A. A. Heaps, who 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, who founded the Manitoba Independent Labour Party in December 1920. Woodsworth sat as an Independent Labour Party MP from 1921 until he became the founding leader of the CCF in 1932.
• William Irvine, was a close friend of Woodsworth, represented Calgary, Alberta as a Labour MP from 1921 to 1925 and as a United Farmers of Alberta MP from 1926 to 1935. He was a founding member of the CCF and sat as a CCF MP from British Columbia from 1945 to 1949.
• 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.

• See also List of articles about Labour MPs (Canada)