Fred Rose (politician)

Early life

Rose was born to a Polish Jewish family in Lublin, then part of the Russian Empire and in what is now contemporary Poland. He emigrated to Canada as a child in 1916.

Communist activism

He became involved with the Young Communist League of Canada, and then joined the Communist Party of Canada while working in a factory.

Rose was jailed during the 1930s for sedition, and won the hatred of Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis for writing about the close connections between the Duplessis government and the fascist governments of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. He was a close associate of Norman Bethune, a doctor who had aided anti-fascist and communist fighters first in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and later in China.

Political candidate

Rose was a candidate for the Communist Party of Canada in the working class Montreal-area riding of Cartier in the 1935 federal election, coming in second with 16% of the vote. He ran in the Quebec general election, 1936 in the riding of Montréal–Saint-Louis for the Communist Party of Quebec and came in third with 16.8%.

Election to parliament

Early in World War II, the Communist Party of Canada was formally banned and many of its leaders interned. After a major public campaign the CPC was legally reorganized as the Labor-Progressive Party. Rose won election to the House of Commons as an LPP candidate from Cartier in a 1943 by-election. He won with 30% of the vote in a tight four-way race, beating among others, David Lewis of the social democratic Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). Rose was re-elected in the 1945 election with 40% of the vote. Most of the riding's immigrant Jewish population voted for Rose, who benefitted from the perception that the Soviet Union was the main hope for saving Europe's Jews from Hitler; his main rival, Paul Massé, of the anti-war Bloc Populaire, who came second, was supported by the French Canadian population of the constituency.

As a Member of Parliament, Rose proposed the first medicare legislation and the first anti-hate legislation.

Gouzenko affair

Fred Rose was caught up in the world political sea change following World War II when the Soviet Union, a major wartime ally, was now perceived as an enemy in the new Cold War reality. Igor Gouzenko, a young cipher clerk in the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, was recalled to his homeland in July 1945. Rather than return home, Gouzenko defected with documents in September 1945 claiming to show evidence of a massive Soviet spy ring operating in Canada and the United States.

Few took Gouzenko's accusations and evidence seriously at first. A Royal Commission of inquiry, the Kellock-Taschereau Commission, was ultimately established by the government of William Lyon Mackenzie King in February 1946 to investigate Gouzenko's evidence. Headed by two Supreme Court justices, Roy Kellock and Robert Taschereau, the commission arrested and sequestered Canadians named in Gouzenko's documents without legal counsel and barred them from all contact with the outside world until summoned before the commission.

Rose was alleged to lead the ring of up to 20 Soviet spies, which were primarily targeting atomic weapon research from the Manhattan Project. Raymond Boyer, an alleged co-conspirator, testified that Rose was involved in the operation. Rose refused to testify before the commission, which he said was designed to "smear honest and patriotic Canadians". Rose was ultimately found guilty of conspiring to turn over information about the explosive RDX to the Soviets, and was sentenced to prison for a term just one day longer than was required to deprive him of his elected seat in the House of Commons

Rose wrote to Speaker Gaspard Fauteux from St. Vincent de Paul Penitentiary on January 24, 1947:

Mr. Speaker: If the will of the people is to prevail, if justice is to be done, there can be no question of my expulsion from the house. To the contrary, I should be in my seat in the House of Commons and not in the penitentiary. Parliament is the highest of Courts. Through its actions in my case it will decide whether hysteria is to continue or whether reason and justice are to prevail. Respectfully, Fred Rose, M.P.

His letter was returned to him, unread, and on January 30, 1947 he was formally expelled from the House of Commons.

Later life

Rose was released from prison in 1951 after four and a half years with his health broken. Attempting to find work in Montreal, he was tailed from jobsite to jobsite by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), who pointed out to employers and workmates that he was a convicted spy.

In 1953 he went to Poland to attempt to set up an import-export business and to obtain health treatment he could not afford in Canada. He worked for many years as English-language editor of Poland, a magazine of Polish culture and civilization designed for sale in the West. While living in Poland, his Canadian citizenship was revoked in 1957, and he was unable to return to Canada to lead the fight to clear his name.

His appeal against revoking his citizenship was denied, although in 1958 Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Ellen Fairclough amended the Citizenship Act with the Fred Rose amendment so that such a removal of Canadian citizenship could never happen again. Years later, former federal cabinet minister Allan MacEachen acknowledged the pages of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King's diary dealing with Rose had gone missing, as had most of the other records dealing with his case.