Fred Rose (politician)

Fred Rose
Member of the Canadian Parliament for Cartier
In office August 9, 1943 – January 30, 1947
Preceded by	Peter Bercovitch
Succeeded by	Maurice Hartt
Personal details
Born	December 7, 1907 Lublin, Russian Empire
Died	March 16, 1983 (aged 75) Warsaw, Poland
Political party	Labor-Progressive
Residence	Montreal, Quebec

Fred Rose (born Fishel Rosenberg) (December 7, 1907 – March 16, 1983) was a Communist politician and trade union organizer in Canada. He is best known as the only member of the Canadian Parliament ever convicted of spying for a foreign country.

Early life

Rose was born to a Jewish family in Lublin in what is now Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. 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 Dr. Norman Bethune, who served first in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and later in China.

Election poster

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 July 1945, Igor Gouzenko, a young cipher clerk in the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, was recalled to his homeland. Rather than return home, Gouzenko defected with documents claiming to show evidence of a massive Soviet spy ring operating in Canada. Rose was alleged to lead the ring, which was composed of up to 20 Soviet spies.

Few took Gouzenko's accusations and evidence seriously at first. Later, as the Cold War began to heat up, a Royal Commission on Espionage was established, headed by two Supreme Court justices, Roy Kellock and Robert Taschereau. Scores of people were rounded up under the Defence of Canada Regulations of the War Measures Act, held incommunicado for weeks on end, without legal counsel and barred from all contact with the outside world. Meanwhile, the Royal Commission issued a stream of press releases about the "Red menace". Prisoners were forcefully told to incriminate themselves and others under the penalty of contempt of court.

In September 1945, Soviet embassy clerk Igor Gouzenko defected with documents that revealed an elaborate espionage operation to acquire American atomic research files. Fred Rose was a major player in the scheme. His co-conspirator, Dr. Raymond Boyer, testified that Rose was involved in the operation, which was perhaps only thwarted by Gouzenko's defection. Rose was found guilty of conspiring to turn over information about the explosive RDX to the Soviets, and was sentenced to a six-year prison term.

In a highly charged political atmosphere, Rose refused to testify at his trial, which was designed, he said, to "smear honest and patriotic Canadians". Nevertheless, in later years, Rose indirectly admitted his guilt, saying, "I made one mistake in my life and I paid for it". He 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 the Speaker of the House, Gaspard Fauteux, 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 at St. Vincent de Paul Penitentiary, without his fellow MPs having read this appeal. On January 30, 1947, he was expelled from Parliament

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.

Electoral record

Federal

Canadian federal election, 1935: Cartier
Party		Candidate	Votes	%
	Liberal	Samuel William Jacobs	13,574	65.27
	Communist	Fred Rosenberg (Rose)	3,385	16.28
	Independent Liberal	Paul-Emile Goyette	1,531	7.36
	Reconstruction	Salluste Lavery	1,362	6.55
	Conservative	Herman Julien	945	4.54

Canadian federal by-election, August 9, 1943: Cartier Death of Peter Bercovitch
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	∆%
	Labor–Progressive	Fred Rose	5,789	30.42
	Bloc populaire	Paul Masse	5,639	29.63
	Liberal	Lazarus Phillips	4,180	21.97	–66.57
	Co-operative Commonwealth	David Lewis	3,313	17.41
	Independent	Moses Miller	109	0.57
Total valid votes			19,030	100.0
	Labor–Progressive gain from Liberal		Swing		+0.40

Canadian federal election, 1945: Cartier
Party		Candidate	Votes	%
	Labor–Progressive	Fred Rose	10,413	40.84
	Liberal	Samuel Edgar Schwisberg	8,935	35.04
	Bloc populaire	Paul Masse	6,148	24.11

Provincial

Quebec general election, 1936: Montréal–Saint-Louis
Party		Candidate	Votes	%
	Liberal	Peter Bercovitch	2,024	58.83
	Union Nationale	Louis-Gédéon Gravel	773	22.47
	Communist	Fred Rosenberg (Rose)	578	16.80
	Independent Union Nationale	Éphrem-J. Cuerrier	65	1.88

See also

• Communist Party of Canada
• Igor Gouzenko
• Maurice Duplessis
• Padlock Law

References

• Fred Rose – Parliament of Canada biography
• Fred Rose obituary CBC Television report reviewing Rose's life. Aired March 19, 1983.
• Communist Party of Canada