What was the founding of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation?

The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was founded at a conference in Calgary on July 31 to August 1, 1932 as a democratic-socialist political party drawing together farmer, labour, and socialist organisations. The party adopted its founding constitution and platform (the Regina Manifesto) at its second convention in Regina from July 19 to 21, 1933. The CCF elected its first MPs in the October 14, 1935 federal election (winning 7 seats) and became Canada's first major social-democratic party, eventually evolving into the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1961.

The Calgary founding conference brought together several existing organisations: the United Farmers of Alberta and other prairie farmer groups, the Independent Labour Party of Manitoba, the Canadian Labour Party, the Socialist Party of Canada, and various Ginger Group MPs (a small group of Progressive and Labour MPs led by J.S. Woodsworth in the federal House of Commons). The conference was chaired by James Shaver Woodsworth (1874 to 1942), the Independent Labour MP for Winnipeg North Centre and the dominant figure of early Canadian democratic socialism. Woodsworth was a former Methodist minister and one of the strike leaders arrested during the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919.

The Regina Manifesto of 1933, drafted by League for Social Reconstruction members including Frank Underhill, Frank Scott, Eugene Forsey, and Graham Spry, set out a comprehensive social-democratic programme. Major commitments included social ownership of the financial system, key industries, transportation, communications, and natural resources; planned economic management; socialised health care, public housing, and education; agricultural co-operatives; and workers' rights. The Manifesto's most quoted line was its conclusion: 'No CCF Government will rest content until it has eradicated capitalism and put into operation the full programme of socialised planning which will lead to the establishment in Canada of the Co-operative Commonwealth'.

The CCF won its first major electoral victory in the June 15, 1944 Saskatchewan provincial election, when Tommy Douglas's CCF formed the first social-democratic government in North America with 47 of 53 seats. Douglas's government introduced public auto insurance (1944), provincial Hospital Services Act (1947), the Saskatchewan Bill of Rights (1947, North America's first such), and Medicare (1962, the first universal public health insurance in North America). At the federal level, the CCF peaked with 28 MPs in 1945. After several disappointing elections in the 1950s, the CCF merged with the Canadian Labour Congress to form the New Democratic Party at the founding convention in Ottawa in August 1961. The Saskatchewan CCF remains active under the NDP name and has governed the province for much of the period since 1944.