The Liberal Party, after some hiccups in the lead-up to the 2025 federal election, is back in the saddle, with its leader Mark Carney all set to continue as the country's Prime Minister. It will take a day or two to get the final seat count, but early results show the Liberal Party will retain power.
And while Canadians voted in what turned out to be a neck-and-neck battle between the Liberals and the Conservatives, many, especially those outside Canada, also wondered if the country ever had a Communist Member of Parliament. Only once in its history has Canada had a Communist MP. His name was Fred Rose, and he was later convicted as a Soviet Spy.
Mr Rose was born to a Polish-Jewish family on December 7, 1907, in Lublin and moved to Canada in 1920. After five years, he joined the Young Communist League of Canada.
In 1943, Mr Rose contested and won on the ticket of the Labour Progressive Party, a communist party alias, from Cartier, which is part Le Plateau, part Mile End today. Two years later, he was re-elected.
But it was Igor Gouzenko, a Soviet encryption specialist at the Ottawa embassy, who turned out to be the man behind Mr Rose's misfortune.
Days after the end of World War II, Mr Gouzenko was told that he'd be recalled to Moscow. He fled the Ottawa embassy with dozens of documents, which revealed the embassy was the focal point of Soviet espionage with MP Fred Rose at the centre of operations.
Months later, Mr Rose was arrested, accused of being in charge of a network of up to 20 Soviet spies who were mainly targeting Manhattan Project research on atomic weapons. He was convicted of conspiracy to violate the Official Secrets Act of Canada and sentenced to six years in jail. Mr Rose was the only sitting MP to be convicted of espionage.
After serving four years in prison, he was released in 1951 on parole. He tried looking for jobs but was closely monitored by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who used to inform his employers about his past as a convicted spy. So, in 1953, he decided to leave Canada and move to Poland to start an import-export business. During his stay in Poland, his Canadian citizenship was revoked.
Fred Rose spent the rest of his life in Warsaw and died in 1983 aged 75.
