The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 was a massive work stoppage laden with
revolutionary and socialist rhetoric that took place soon after the end of World War One. The strike led federal policy makers to introduce radical legislation with severe consequences for many Canadians. Specifically, section 41 (enacted in June 1919) of the Immigration Act allowed officials to deport any alien or Canadian citizen not born in Canada for advocating the overthrow of the government by force. Trade unions and communists by the hundreds were deported through this legislation. In 1931-32 alone, deportations peaked at 7,034. With a population of 2,307,525 in 1931, 23 per cent of the population was in danger of being deported under the provisions of the Immigration Act.

To complement the new immigration laws was one of the most draconian laws ever passed in Canadian history. Section 97 of the Criminal Code was introduced in 1919 following the Winnipeg General Strike and was designed to suppress the radical political Left. In practice, this section of the criminal code was used to prosecute and imprison members of the Communist party of Canada and to harass political radicals, including union leaders. The legislation included the general provision that

Any association ... whose professed purpose ... is to bring about any governmental, industrial or economic change within Canada by use of force, violence or physical injury to person or property, or by threats of such injury, or which teaches, advocates, advises or defends the use of force, violence, terrorism, or physical injury to person or property ... in order to accomplish such change, or for any other purpose, or which shall by any means persecute or pursue such purpose ... or shall so teach, advocate, advise or defend, shall be an unlawful association.

Section 97 characterized a member of an unlawful association as someone who
had attended meetings, spoken out in favour or distributed literature for the
organization. Property belonging to the association could be seized by police without a warrant and forfeited to the Crown, and any person claiming to be a representative of the unlawful association was guilty by association.

Three prosecutions emerged from Section 97 before its repeal in 1936, the most famous being the trial of eight members of the Communist Party of Canada in 1931. In R v Buck the Ontario Court of Appeal held that the provisions of Section 98 were broad enough to include members of the Communist Party of Canada under the definition of unlawful association.

Further Reading

• Thomas R. Berger, Fragile Freedoms: Human Rights and Dissent in Canada, 2nd ed. Toronto: Irwin Publishing, 1982.
• Greg Kealey, “State Repression of Labour and the Left in Canada, 1914-20: The Impact of the First World War,” Canadian Historical Review (Vol.73, No.3, 1992): 281-314.
• Ross Lambertson, Repression and Resistance: Canadian Human Rights Activists, 1930-1960 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004).