Co-operative Commonwealth Federation

The CCF aimed to alleviate the suffering that workers and farmers, the ill and the old endured under capitalism, seen most starkly during the Great Depression, through the creation of a co-operative commonwealth, which would entail economic co-operation, public ownership of the economy, and political reform.

The object of the political party as reported at its founding meeting in Calgary in 1932 was "the federation [joining] of organizations whose purpose is the establishment in Canada of a co-operative commonwealth, in which the basic principle of regulating production, distribution and exchange will be the supplying of human needs instead of the making of profit".

The goal of the CCF was defined as a "community freed from the domination of irresponsible financial and economic power in which all social means of production and distribution, including land, are socially owned and controlled either by voluntarily organized groups of producers and consumers or – in the case of major public services and utilities and such productive and distributive enterprises as can be conducted most efficiently when owned in common – by public corporations responsible to the people's elected representatives". Many of the party's first members of Parliament (MPs) were members of the Ginger Group, composed of United Farmers of Alberta, left-wing Progressive, and Labour MPs. These MPs included United Farmers of Alberta MPs William Irvine and Ted Garland, Agnes Macphail (United Farmers of Ontario), Humphrey Mitchell, Abraham Albert Heaps, Angus MacInnis, and Labour Party MP J. S. Woodsworth. Founding groups included the Independent Labour Party (of Manitoba), the Canadian Labour Party (mostly in Edmonton), the Dominion Labour Party of southern Alberta, the UFA, and the United Farmers of Ontario (which withdrew from the CCF in 1934).

Also involved in founding the new party were members of the League for Social Reconstruction (LSR), such as F. R. Scott and Frank Underhill. It can be said that the CCF was founded on May 26, 1932, when the Ginger Group MPs and LSR members met in William Irvine's office, the unofficial caucus meeting room for the Ginger Group, and went about forming the basis of the new party. J. S. Woodsworth was unanimously appointed the temporary leader until they could hold a founding convention. The temporary name for the new party was the Commonwealth Party. The Social Gospel was a significant influence on the CCF.

At its founding convention in 1932 in Calgary, the party settled on the name Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (Farmer-Labour-Socialist) and selected J. S. Woodsworth as party leader. Woodsworth had been an Independent Labour Party MP since 1921 and a member of the Ginger Group of MPs. The party's 1933 convention, held in Regina, Saskatchewan, adopted the Regina Manifesto as the party's program. The manifesto outlined a number of goals, including public ownership of key industries, universal public pensions, universal health care, children's allowances, unemployment insurance, and workers' compensation.

Its conclusion read, "No CCF Government will rest content until it has eradicated capitalism and put into operation the full programme of socialized planning which will lead to the establishment in Canada of the Co-operative Commonwealth." The party affiliated itself with the Socialist International.