Platform of the Communist Party of Canada

2025 Federal Election

Create Jobs

1. Develop and implement a comprehensive, full employment strategy based on massive public investments to increase value-added jobs in environmentally sustainable manufacturing and secondary industry, including steel, machine tools, green energy, and shipbuilding.
2. Rebuild industries destroyed by corporate offshoring and free trade.
3. Rebuild and expand Canada’s public infrastructure and carry out a massive public utility construction program to create jobs.
4. Carry out a massive program to build 2 million units of social housing across the country to create jobs and tackle the housing crisis.
5. Develop a pan-Canadian shipbuilding strategy focusing on building non-military vessels such as ferries.
6. Expand vital universal social programs.
7. Introduce plant closure legislation to protect jobs, requiring corporations to appear at public tribunals and, where appropriate, face fines, jail time, and public takeover.
8. Ban “market-based dismissals,” where workers are laid off from profitable corporations solely to increase share prices.
9. Make Employment Insurance non-contributory and expand it to include all workers, including part-time workers and first-time job seekers, for the full duration of unemployment, at 90% of previous earnings (or the average wage).
10. Enact and enforce pay and employment equity legislation covering women and racialized workers in every sector of the economy.

Raise Wages, Pensions and Living Standards

1. Legislate a 32-hour work week with 40 hours of pay; ban mandatory overtime while ensuring a livable wage with the reduced work week.
2. Raise the minimum wage to $25/hour across Canada and ensure it rises automatically with the cost of living.
3. Legislate a minimum of four weeks of statutory paid vacation and 14 employer-paid sick days annually.
4. Ban two-tier wage systems for new hires and unpaid internships.
5. Include part-time, home-based, contract, and gig workers under federal and provincial labour laws.
6. Ban private, for-profit temp agencies.
7. Ban payday loan sharks.
8. Provide agricultural workers and workers in other industries who are currently excluded from labour protections the same labour rights, standards, and minimum wages as industrial workers.
9. Protect free collective bargaining; make unionizing easier through card check legislation.
10. Strengthen workplace health and safety laws with stronger penalties for employers; if you kill a worker, you go to jail.
11. Enshrine a Labour Bill of Rights in the Constitution, guaranteeing workers the right to strike, picket, and organize.
12. Require that any introduction of new technology in the workplace, including AI, allows for an immediate re-opening of collective agreements if requested by the union.
13. Increase employer-paid severance pay and retraining, and strengthen bankruptcy laws to prioritize workers’ wages and pensions above other creditors in bankruptcies.
14. Substantially increase Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security benefits and reduce the pension age to 60 while maintaining full pension benefits, including access to the Guaranteed Income Supplement.
15. Introduce a Guaranteed Annual Livable Income to replace sub-poverty provincial welfare and disability programs, securing health and dignity for those unable to work.
16. Double the Canada Disability Benefit and ensure provincial disability pensions are not clawed back until a Guaranteed Annual Livable Income is created.

Act for Environmental Justice – Public Ownership of Energy to Halt Climate Change

1. Establish public ownership and democratic control of all energy and natural resources, including extraction, production, and distribution.
2. Replace cap-and-trade and carbon tax schemes with strict legal limits on pollution and hard caps on emissions, especially from industrial sources, to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
3. Impose strong penalties for corporations that break emissions and pollution laws, including jail time for corporate executives.
4. Ban fracking.
5. Phase out tar sands operations, compensate First Nations affected, and guarantee jobs for energy industry workers in the renewable energy sector and other industries.
6. Slash the huge carbon footprint related to the deployment of fighter-bomber jets, the naval fleet, and other military purposes by implementing a 75% cut to military spending.
7. Invest heavily to create jobs through renewable energy and conservation programs and phase out coal-fired plants.
8. Significantly expand urban public transit and eliminate bus and transit fares.
9. Build high-speed rail and create a publicly owned bus service, fueled by renewable energy, to replace and expand the service previously provided by Greyhound and other for-profit operators.
10. Ban resource extraction in protected parks and conservation areas.
11. Stop urban sprawl by enforcing strict land-use policies that protect farmland, watersheds, and ecologically sensitive areas; halt corporate land speculation; and uphold Indigenous land rights through free, prior, and informed consent.
12. Ban cryptocurrency mining and ensure data centres are powered exclusively by renewable energy.
13. Rebuild publicly owned and democratically controlled provincial electrical utility systems to include production, distribution, transmission, and a bulk electricity market.

A Foreign Policy of Peace and Disarmament

1. Adopt an independent Canadian foreign policy of peace and disarmament.
2. Cut military spending by 75% and redirect it to social spending on health, education, childcare, and social housing construction, which would create more jobs per dollar than military expenditures.
3. Withdraw from NATO, NORAD, and any other imperialist alliance immediately; stay out of AUKUS.
4. Defend the United Nations and its charter against imperialist attacks; respect international law and the sovereignty of all states—no to regime change operations.
5. Demand an end to the 63-year-old U.S. blockade of Cuba, the lifting of sanctions imposed by Trump and Biden, and Cuba’s removal from the U.S. list of “state sponsors of terrorism.”
6. Reject nuclear first strikes, sign the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty, and support the abolition of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
7. Cancel the order for 88 F-35 fighter jets, 15 new warships, and armed drones.
8. Repatriate all troops deployed outside Canada and transform the Canadian army into a strictly defensive force.
9. Lift all sanctions imposed by U.S. imperialism on countries such as Russia, Iran, and the DPRK.
10. Publicly oppose and denounce Israel’s war crimes; recognize the ongoing genocide and enact boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) measures against Israel, including a moratorium on all diplomatic and commercial relationships.
11. Support a just and lasting peace in the Middle East based on Israel’s withdrawal from all Occupied Territories within 12 months (as prescribed by the UN), the formation of a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital (as agreed to by all Palestinian political parties in the 2024 Beijing Declaration), the right of return for 1948 refugees, the liberation of all political prisoners, and the establishment of a denuclearized and secular Israel.
12. Immediately recognize Palestinian statehood and support Palestine’s full UN membership.
13. Stop the criminalization of Palestine solidarity.
14. Oppose the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which falsely equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
15. Oppose any deployment of troops to the Middle East; no war on Iran.
16. Support Sudanese democrats resisting the overthrow of the government by military and paramilitary forces; prosecute warlords responsible for crimes in Sudan who are operating out of Canada.
17. Stop arms exports to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, and Ukraine.
18. Oppose the U.S.-NATO-led New Cold War against China and block any efforts for Canada to join AUKUS (a Pacific NATO equivalent).
19. Oppose Canada’s Asia-Pacific strategy and rebuild respectful diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China.
20. End Canada’s support for so-called peacekeeping missions in Haiti, which violate Haiti’s sovereignty and fuel the ongoing crisis initiated by imperialist-backed coups.
21. Support a peaceful, negotiated agreement to end the conflict between NATO and Russia in Ukraine, respecting both Ukraine’s and Russia’s sovereignty.
22. Oppose NATO and EU expansion eastward in Europe.

Expand Universal Public Social Programs – Expand the Social Wage

1. Establish a universal system of quality public childcare, with Canada-wide standards, that’s free to users.
2. Raise the wages of childcare workers and make Early Childhood Education qualifications mandatory.
3. Enforce the Canada Health Act and close private, for-profit clinics and labs.
4. Expand Medicare to include public and universal long-term care, vision, mental health care, pharmacare, and dental care.
5. End fee-for-service; put doctors and dentists on public salaries.
6. Expand Pharmacare to include all essential drugs and put the pharmaceutical industry under public ownership.
7. Address the drug overdose crisis with the goal of ending deaths caused by toxic supply, through policies of decriminalization of use, a regulated, publicly managed safe drug supply, and expanded public delivery and access to substance use rehabilitation programs.
8. Increase funding to provinces and territories earmarked specifically for health, education, social programs, social housing, and equalization; ensure that Quebec and Indigenous peoples have full control over their own programs while strengthening nationwide minimum standards.

Public Ownership Under Democratic Control

1. Put key sectors of the economy under public ownership and democratic control to provide good jobs and ensure that profits are reinvested into public needs.
2. Implement public ownership and democratic control of banks and insurance companies, energy and natural resources, telecommunications, and internet service providers.
3. Implement public ownership and democratic control of Air Canada, Bombardier, the basic steel industry, and the Canadian operations of automakers.
4. Reverse the privatization and contracting-out of public services, Medicare, education, and social programs.
5. Stop Public-Private Partnerships (P3s) and build public infrastructure using public funds.
6. Restore door-to-door mail delivery, implement postal banking, and restore a public monopoly over mail and package delivery through Canada Post.

Progressive Tax Reform – Based on Ability to Pay

1. Defend Canadian sovereignty in the face of tariffs and threats.
2. Adopt a trade policy of multilateral and mutually beneficial trade with all countries.
3. Get out of the USMCA (NAFTA 2.0) and other pro-corporate ‘trade’ pacts, which allow for the free flow of capital while driving down wages, cutting jobs, and stripping Canada of good jobs in value-added manufacturing and secondary industry.
4. Withdraw from the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the Canada-European Union Trade Agreement (CETA), the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA), and other capitalist investment pacts that supersede and undermine sovereignty and democracy.
5. Stop and reverse the expansion of U.S. and transnational corporate control over key sectors of the domestic economy.
6. Defend Arctic sovereignty by rejecting the U.S.-led militarization of the North; invest in sustainable infrastructure, transportation, and social services for Northern and Indigenous communities instead of funding NATO’s Arctic expansion.
7. Protect Canada’s supply management system in agriculture and support the family farm, both threatened by corporate free trade pacts.
8. Scrap the tariffs on electric vehicles from China.

End “Security State” Laws, Expand Democratic Rights

1. End CSIS’ so-called “foreign interference” allegations, which are aimed at justifying militarization and expanding intelligence powers while posing a threat to civil, labour, and democratic rights.
2. Stop government spying, police violence, the use of agents provocateurs, and the use of the courts to repress civil and democratic rights.
3. Press for stronger public oversight and civilian control of provincial and municipal police forces.
4. Disband the RCMP, CSIS, and the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) to safeguard labour and democratic rights.
5. Reduce police budgets and reallocate funding to develop civilian crisis response teams for mental health and domestic incidents.
6. Increase funding for life-saving measures that address the root causes of crime, such as social services, poverty reduction, housing, and accessible mental health and addiction services.
7. Ban private funding of police forces.
8. Prosecute police for illegal activities, including the unlawful use of force, sexual assault, and murder.
9. Ban the sale and possession of handguns.
10. Withdraw from the Five Eyes imperialist intelligence alliance.
11. Repeal all undemocratic and repressive “anti-terrorism” legislation.
12. Rescind the “border security declaration,” which allows U.S. troops to enter Canada during “emergencies.”
13. No to “preventive arrest” laws.
14. Defend the right to free speech and dissent.
15. Defend and expand online privacy rights.

A New Equal and Voluntary Partnership and the Right to National Self-Determination – Justice for Indigenous Peoples

1. Take immediate and urgent measures to end genocidal policies against Indigenous Peoples.
2. Recognize the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Acadians, and Québec to national self-determination, including the right to secession.
3. Draft a new, democratic constitution based on an equal and voluntary partnership of Indigenous Peoples (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit), Québec, the Acadian people, and English-speaking Canada.
4. Rescind legislation that negates Quebec’s right to self-determination, including the Clarity Act.
5. Replace the Senate with a House of Nationalities, composed of an equal number of elected representatives from the nations within Canada.
6. Guarantee the rights of Francophones across Canada to education and services in French.
7. Support and fund Indigenous proposals and projects to protect and enhance Indigenous languages and cultures devastated by genocidal government policies.
8. End the seizure and removal of Indigenous children and youth into state care by taking emergency action to improve living conditions, employment, healthcare, education, and housing for Indigenous Peoples.
9. Implement the Calls to Action set out by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
10. Ensure that Residential School denialism is included under anti-hate speech laws.
11. Enforce Indigenous Treaty fishing and hunting rights.
12. Implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ensuring Indigenous rights to full, free, prior, and informed consent over all development, including resource extraction and pipelines affecting their lands and livelihoods.
13. Act now for the just settlement of land claims, including natural resource-sharing agreements, without requiring the extinguishment of inherent Indigenous title.
14. Allow Indigenous nations to enact public ownership and democratic control over their resources and industries.
15. Remove all vestiges of colonialism from federal legislation.

Full Gender Equality Now

1. Establish a universally accessible, free, and quality public childcare system with Canada-wide standards.
2. Close the wage gap – legislate pay and employment equity.
3. Guarantee the rights of women for equal access to social, medical, and educational facilities and services.
4. Protect women’s right to EI maternity coverage; expand parental benefits to 52 weeks with full income replacement.
5. Guarantee universally accessible and publicly funded abortion and reproductive rights services.
6. Strengthen legislation against gender-based violence and provide adequate funding for crisis centres and transition houses.
7. Replace Harper’s “Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act” with a decriminalization framework to protect the human and legal rights of sex workers, as proposed by the Supreme Court ruling in the Canada v. Bedford case.
8. Legislate and enforce protections for sexual orientation and gender identity, gender expression, and the bodily integrity of intersex people.
9. Ensure that sex education curricula in schools are 2S/LGBTIQ-positive.
10. Make Canada a safe haven for refugees fleeing state-sponsored homo-, trans-, and bi-phobia.

Fight Racism

1. Oppose all forms of racism and discrimination.
2. Enforce hate speech laws and prosecute white supremacist and neo-fascist organizations as criminal organizations.
3. End racial profiling and carding.
4. Remove police from schools and end streaming in education, and discrimination in the justice system.
5. Enforce laws banning discrimination in housing and employment.
6. Raise wages with pay and employment equity.
7. Oppose Quebec’s discriminatory “secularism law” while denouncing the efforts of chauvinist and right-wing forces to attack Quebec’s right to self-determination through their cynical and hypocritical “defense” of minority rights.

A Democratic Immigration Policy

1. Stop the deportation of immigrants and refugees.
2. Stop scapegoating immigrants for the capitalist economic crisis and the crisis in housing.
3. Repeal the ‘Safe Third Country’ agreement and stop criminalizing refugees who are forced to enter Canada illegally and in dangerous conditions.
4. Scrap the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program, and the “Live-in Caregiver” Program, and provide a clear and accessible path to permanent residency and citizenship for all migrant workers, including undocumented workers.
5. Recognize international educational credentials and establish a clear, accessible path to equivalency for immigrants to ensure fair recognition of their qualifications.
6. Reverse cuts to legal aid.
7. Prosecute war criminals and human traffickers living in Canada.
8. Expand and increase funding for refugee housing to ensure safe, adequate, and dignified accommodations for all newcomers.
9. Maintain and expand family reunification programs to ensure that families are not separated by arbitrary caps and long processing delays.

A Future for Youth

Free Public and Post-Secondary Education is a Right

1. Make universal, quality public and post-secondary education free for all, including international students, and cover textbook and lab costs.
2. End unpaid internships.
3. Eliminate student debt.
4. Provide stipends to cover students’ living expenses.
5. Stop the drive to corporatize schools, colleges, and universities by giving corporations control over research and curricula and commodifying public education.
6. End public funding of private and religious schools.
7. Deliver equitable funding for Francophone education for Francophone minorities and ensure equitable funding for Indigenous education across Canada.
8. Protect students’ right to organize.
9. Restore and strengthen liberal arts education and include labour, Indigenous, and women’s studies in the curriculum.
10. Enforce hate speech laws on campuses and wherever racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, misogynist, homophobic, and transphobic speakers and groups attempt to test the law.
11. Increase funding, quality, and access to training and apprenticeship programs; eliminate tuition and all fees; establish a cross-Canada apprenticeship program; expand subsidies and grants for women; ensure that tools for the trade and protective equipment are provided free to apprentices.
12. Re-invest in primary and secondary education.
13. Sharply increase the number of teachers, Early Childhood Educators (ECEs), and other childcare workers while increasing wages.
14. Restore direct federal funding for education through transfer payments.

Housing is a Basic Human Right

1. Enact a federal housing policy that recognizes housing as a fundamental human right and treats it as a public utility.
2. Build 2 million units of truly rent-geared-to-income, affordable public and social housing, creating hundreds of thousands of new green jobs in construction and manufacturing.
3. Ensure that all RGI housing is genuinely accessible to low-income earners by setting rents based on actual income levels, including shelter rates for those on social assistance, rather than manipulated income thresholds that exclude those in greatest need.
4. End homelessness now: Expropriate derelict or vacant rental properties and convert them into rent-geared-to-income social housing; enact legislation to give municipalities the right of first refusal (pre-emption rights) across the country to develop new units of social housing.
5. Ensure that no one pays more than 20% of their income on housing by implementing rent controls and rent rollbacks; extend rent control legislation to cover all rental units, including vacant ones.
6. Establish land banks to preserve land for social housing, schools, hospitals, parks, and public works while preventing developers from inflating housing prices and rents for profit.
7. Build emergency shelters and transition housing to support those in immediate need.
8. Ban evictions, mortgage foreclosures, and utility cut-offs due to unemployment, strikes, or lockouts.
9. Guarantee tenants the right to organize.

A Democratic Culture

1. Restore funding for the CBC – Radio-Canada and invest in the National Film Board (NFB-ONF), the Canada Council for the Arts (Conseil des arts du Canada), the Canadian Museums Association (Association des musées canadiens), and other publicly owned cultural institutions.
2. Support the non-profit Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, which is unique in North America.
3. Allow free access to publicly funded museums, galleries, films, concerts, and other cultural events.
4. Create state agencies to ensure stable and decent jobs for creators and workers in the cultural industry.
5. Tax all foreign for-profit cultural businesses at a substantial rate and use the funds to support public and democratic cultural work and workers across Canada, including in Quebec, Acadia, and Indigenous communities and nations.
6. Regulate digital media platforms under the CRTC, ensuring that all digital platforms—including social media—are subject to public broadcasting and media standards.
7. Increase state support for Canadian writers and publishing.
8. Increase public funding for amateur and community arts, culture, and sports, including capital funding, and make them widely accessible and free to the public.
9. Oppose the Online News Act and the Media Protection Act, which fail to challenge corporate media monopolies and instead funnel money into existing for-profit news giants.
10. Prohibit AI-generated fake news and disinformation; regulate AI content to prevent corporate and state manipulation of public discourse.
11. Ensure that arts funding is protected from reactionary political interference and prioritize funding for cultural works that promote progressive values, social justice, and peace.
12. Implement public ownership of scientific and technological research institutions.

Support Family Farms –

Defend Canada’s Food Sovereignty

1. Enact price controls on food and basic necessities.
2. Implement strict price regulations in the North to end severe food insecurity and exploitation by corporate grocery monopolies.
3. Prosecute the big grocery chains for price-fixing schemes.
4. Put food distribution monopolies (Sobeys, Loblaws, Metro, etc.) under public ownership and redistribute profits from skyrocketing food prices to consumers.
5. Ensure Canada’s food sovereignty through policies that benefit family farms, fishers, and other primary producers, including income supports.
6. Expand Canada’s supply management system (which is threatened by free trade agreements), to raise farm incomes and protect food safety and security.
7. Restore the Canadian Wheat Board as elected by farmers and re-establish single-desk grain sales.
8. Legislate to protect agricultural land from speculation.
9. Curb the power of agro-industrial monopolies; set price controls to reduce the cost of farm inputs and encourage the shift to environmentally sustainable farming methods through financial support for such practices.
10. Put food production inputs for farms (fertilizers, seeds, equipment, feed, irrigation systems, etc.) and distribution systems under public ownership and reduce rates for farms.
11. Increase food safety inspections.
12. Support organic farming, reduce the use of antibiotics, fertilizers, pesticides, and other potentially harmful farm inputs.
13. Enact a new Seed Act for Farmers to recognize the right to save, reuse, select, exchange, and sell seeds.
14. Require mandatory labeling of genetically modified food products and reduce the scale of the GMO food system.

A New Financial Deal for Cities

1. Restore local democracy and autonomy and adequately fund municipal governments and services through a new financial deal.
2. Give constitutional status and expand taxing powers to include wealth taxes for municipalities.
3. Shift the burden for municipal services from property taxes to progressive wealth taxes.
4. Increase statutory grants and upload 100% of the costs of education, healthcare, housing, transit, and social assistance to senior levels of government.
5. Retain 50% of gas and licensing taxes within cities.
6. Abolish toll roads, reverse infrastructure privatization, and substantially increase funding for capital and operating costs to expand mass urban transit and social housing construction and repairs.
7. Rebuild deteriorating municipal infrastructure.
8. Re-establish low-interest loans to cities and towns, and facilitate municipal land banking for public development.

Transportation for People, Not Profit

1. End privatization and deregulation (including Open Skies) in the airline and rail industries.
2. Put Air Canada, Bombardier, Alstom, and CN/CP Rail under public ownership to develop a publicly owned transportation system focused on delivering affordable and environmentally sustainable transportation for people and goods across Canada, including service to remote and northern communities.
3. Introduce a high-speed rail system across Canada, beginning with the Québec-to-Windsor corridor.
4. Create a publicly owned bus service, powered by renewable energy, to replace privatized routes, expand service, and complement rail transit while meeting the needs of rural and remote communities.
5. Build an electric car in Canada that is environmentally sustainable and affordable, both for domestic use and export.
6. Put the Canadian operations of the auto industry under public ownership and democratic control.
7. Build publicly owned mass rapid transit vehicles and systems for municipalities to reduce private car dependence and curb carbon emissions.
8. Make public transit free at the point of use, with dedicated lanes and expanded right-of-ways to encourage usage; fund transit systems through federal and provincial governments, covering both capital and operating costs.

Make Every Vote Count

1. Enact a mixed-member proportional representation electoral system.
2. Guarantee equal treatment for all registered political parties, including amending the Broadcasting Act to ensure equal time for all parties so that voters can make informed choices.
3. Lower the voting age to 16.
4. Conduct comprehensive enumeration before every election and strengthen legal action against all forms of voter suppression.
5. Dramatically cut spending limits for political parties both during and prior to election campaigns.
6. End subsidies for the Big Business parties.
7. Remove restrictions on the right of unions to donate to political parties.
8. Enforce the ban on corporate donations, including those made to Third Parties registered with Elections Canada.
9. Require Members of Parliament to receive the average worker’s wages and benefits;
10. Enact legislation establishing the right to recall MPs.