Elizabeth Rowley

Elizabeth Rowley
File:Elizabeth Rowley, Ontario Communist Party Leader.jpeg
Leader of the Communist Party of Canada (Ontario)
Incumbent
Assumed office 2001
Preceded by	Hassan Husseini
Personal details
Born	British Columbia
Nationality	Canadian
Political party	Communist Party of Canada (Ontario)
Residence	Toronto
Alma mater	University of Alberta
Occupation	Politician

Elizabeth (Liz) Rowley is a politician, writer, and political activist in Ontario, Canada. A former school trustee in the region of East York, Rowley is the current leader of the Communist Party of Ontario, and a leading member of the Communist Party of Canada, Rowley has campaigned for office many times at both the municipal, federal and provincial levels.

Political history

Born in British Columbia, Rowley attended university in Edmonton, Alberta and was active with the Young Communist League of Canada campaigning on issues such as women's reproductive rights and an end to the Vietnam War. After traveling across the country, she subsequently moved to southern Ontario, and worked as a typesetter apprentice and secretary in Windsor and later Hamilton. In Hamilton in the 1980s she was involved in campaigns against the Ku Klux Klan and had her home destroyed and car burnt. She also became active the local labour movement and municipal politics.

Rowley moved to Toronto in the late 1980s after being elected leader of the Ontario Committee of the Communist Party, one of the first women leaders of an Ontario political party, and led the Ontario Committee of the Communist Party in the 1990 general election. Shortly after, during the Communist Party's internal dispute on dissolution following the fall of the Soviet Union, Rowley became a leader of the group opposed to then-General Secretary George Hewison's proposals to abandon Marxism-Leninism as an ideology and liquidate the Communist Party of Canada into a broad-left formation.

Rowley was one of the first party activists to be expelled during the dispute, which later included Sam Hammond, now BC leader of the CPC, former Party General Secretary William Kashtan, Kimball Cariou now editor of the People's Voice, and Miguel Figueroa, current leader of the Communist Party. The resulting legal case, of which Rowley was a chief negotiator, resulted in the assets of the party being split in half and the Leninist group keeping the Party name. The Communist Party held a new convention and new elections, at which Rowley was again elected to the Party leadership, and began another legal challenge this time to maintain its identify as a registered political party, the Figueroa case.

Despite red-baiting, Rowley was elected school trustee in the former Toronto borough of East York during the 1990s where she became an outspoken progressive voice. She was active in campaigns against Mike Harris including the Ontario Days of Action. Rowley strongly opposed the free trade agreements that she believes threaten public services, is a promoter of public education and medicare, and has promoted civil rights and labour causes.

After her term as school trustee, Rowley returned as Ontario leader of the CPC. In 2001, she was again re-elected to the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Canada, and replaced Hassan Husseini as leader of the Ontario Communist Party around the same time. She has worked as a columnist for the People's Voice, a Communist Party newspaper, and has also written numerous articles on public resistance in Canada that have been translated into several languages and published around the world. She has most recently been outspoken on issues such as proportional representation, the G20 arrests in Toronto, the Rob Ford administration, migrant and immigrant rights in Toronto, and labour issues.

Electoral record references

• Canadian federal election, 1972, Edmonton—Strathcona, 152 votes (winner: Douglas Roche, Progressive Conservative) (note: Rowley, still a student at the time of this election, ran as an independent candidate)
• Canadian federal election, 1974, Windsor—Walkerville, 165 votes (winner: Mark MacGuigan, Liberal)
• Canadian federal election, 1979, Hamilton Mountain, 102 votes (winner: Duncan Beattie, Progressive Conservative)
• Canadian federal election, 1980, Hamilton Mountain, 65 votes (winner: Ian Deans, New Democratic Party)
• Ontario general election, 1981, Hamilton West, 260 votes (winner: Stuart Smith, Liberal)
• Canadian federal election, 1984, Hamilton East, 87 votes (winner: Sheila Copps, Liberal)
• Canadian federal election, 1988, Hamilton East, 133 votes (winner: Sheila Copps, Liberal)
• Ontario general election, 1990, Oakwood, 197 votes (winner: Tony Rizzo, New Democratic Party)
• Canadian federal election, 1993, Broadview—Greenwood, 151 votes (winner: Dennis Mills, Liberal) (note: Rowley ran as an independent in this election, as the Communist Party of Canada was not recognized as an official party)
• Ontario general election, 1999, Don Valley East, 91 votes (winner: David Caplan, Liberal)
• Canadian federal election, 2000, Etobicoke North, 347 votes (winner: Roy Cullen, Liberal)
• Ontario general election, 2003, Scarborough Centre, 241 votes (winner: Brad Duguid, Liberal)
• Canadian federal election, 2004, Scarborough Southwest, 168 votes (winner: Tom Wappel, Liberal)
• Canadian federal election, 2006, Scarborough Southwest, 120 votes (0.29%) (winner: Tom Wappel, Liberal)
• Ontario general election, 2007, Brampton-Springdale, 150 votes (0.4%) (winner: Linda Jeffrey, Liberal)
• Canadian federal election, 2008, Windsor West, 125 votes (0.3%) (winner: Brian Masse, New Democratic Party)
• Canadian federal election, 2015, Sudbury_(electoral_district)