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Leader: Sandra
L. Smith (the widow of the party founder and long-time
leader, Hardial
Bains).
Web
Site: http://www.cpcml.ca/
Platform: Party
Program
Candidates:
Read
the list of nominated candidates here.
As of May 27, 2004, the party had candidates
named for approximately 25% of Canada's ridings.
The
Party: The Communist
Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) is registered
with Elections Canada by the name "Marxist-Leninist
Party of Canada" only so as to avoid confusion
with the other Communist
Party of Canada. The party takes the stand
that Canada's other Communist Party is "revisionist",
in the sense of not being true to Stalinism/Maoism.
Essentially Maoist/Stalinist, the nature and
history of the CPC-ML is probably best seen as
the history and nature of its founder, Hardial
Bains (see below). The
party ran 84 candidates in the 2000 federal general
election.
Hardial
Bains: Born
in India into a communist family in the Punjab,
Bains became a member of the youth wing of the
Communist Party of India ("CPI"). He
was dismayed by the revisionism of Nikita Khrushchev
following the death of Stalin and he broke with
the CPI when it supported Khrushchev's criticisms
of Stalin. He came to Canada in the late 1950s
to pursue his studies and ultimately became a university
professor. In 1961, he founded the Internationalists,
an anti-revisionist party that supported Mao's
Chinese Communist Party in the Sino-Soviet split.
This party ultimately became the Communist Party
of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) of which Bains was
the founding leader; it was also the origin of
anti-revisionist parties in Britain and Ireland.
Bains was a leader of the anti-revisionist movement
internationally and founded or helped found anti-revisionist
parties around the world including the Hindustani
Ghadar Party (Organisation of Indian Marxist-Leninists
Abroad), the Revolutionary
Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist),
and the Communist Party of Ireland (Marxist-Leninist)
and the Communist
Ghadar Party of India. He was also a leading
influence in the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA (which
dissolved in 1993) in the 1970s. Bains was a Maoist
in the 1960s and 1970s but in 1978 (following Mao's
1976 death) he became a supporter of the views
of Enver Hoxha (an admirer of Joseph Stalin) and
the Party of Labor of Albania.
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