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Like today’s “Leap Manifesto”, the Regina Manifesto was met with a mix of disbelief, denial and doubt about its goal of changing Canada for the better. To the status quo, it was a fantasy; to determined socialists, it was milquetoast.
Adopted at the first national convention of Canada’s newest political party, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), the Regina Manifesto imagined a socialized economy, calling for a nationalized system of transportation, communications, electrical power and other services. It called for a National Labour Code that included the right for workers to organize unions, “insurance” to cover illness, accident, old age and unemployment and social programs such as publicly-funded health care.
National health care, old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, national labour standards, family allowances, and crown corporations for services including telecommunications, transportation and energy – the Regina Manifesto outlined economic and political reforms and proposed approaches to issues that still resonate and are in fact still key election issues today.
