The Parti communiste du Québec or PCQ (in English: Communist Party of Quebec) is a name that has been claimed by two distinct communist political parties in Quebec, which split from one another in 2005 at a national convention on the question of Quebec independence. However, as of 2012, there is no registered political party with this name.
From 2006 to July 30, 2012, the Quebec Director General of Elections authorized a Quebec political party led by André Parizeau to use the name "Parti communiste du Québec". However, this authorization was withdrawn because the party no longer had one hundred card-carrying members. Meanwhile, the Communist Party of Canada recognizes a different group led by Robert Luxley which also claims the name "Parti communiste du Québec" and maintains the original programme of the PCQ.
Communists in Quebec have run as candidates in Quebec and Federal general elections from 1936 to the present day. The Communist Party was made illegal and banned in 1941, and henceforth the party operated as Parti ouvrier-progressiste (in English: "Labour-Progressive Party") until 1959. In 1965, members of the Communist Party of Canada in Quebec created the Parti communiste du Québec. Sam Walsh was leader of the party from 1962 to 1990.
In 2002, the PCQ joined in a federation with the Rassemblement pour l'alternative progressiste and the Parti de la démocratie socialiste to form the Union des forces progressistes, which in turn merged with Option Citoyenne to form Québec solidaire. Both PCQs are now a collective in Québec solidaire.
Read more about Communist Party Of Quebec: Origins of Communist Party 1921-1965, Repression and Resistance, 1930s-1950s, The PCQ: From The End of The Cold War To Perestroika, The Reorganization of The PCQ and Forming QS, The Split in The PCQ, Historic General Secretaries
Famous quotes containing the words communist and/or party:
“I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)
“The success of a party means little more than that the Nation is using the party for a large and definite purpose.... It seeks to use and interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)