It was created primarily as a result of the efforts of Indo-Canadian Marxist student activist Hardial Bains, who was the founder and national leader of the CPC (M-L) until his death in 1997.

Operating underground for part of the 1950s, the CPI won back its legality in time for the general elections of 1957, where it emerged as the largest opposition party in the country and held state government in Kerala.

By this time, however, a young Bains had apparently quit the CPI in protest of its acceptance of Nikita Khrushchev's criticisms of Joseph Stalin.

In the ensuing 15 years, the CPC had lost all of its limited gains in parliament under the pressure of the Cold War, and communist MP Fred Rose was jailed for sedition.

Bains arrived at UBC in this vacuum of visible, public revolutionary politics on campus and just as a new generation of student activism was radicalizing.

[4] Bains was, afterall, drawing different conclusions than the CPC and taking inspiration from Mao Zedong and Chinese communism, not the Soviet Union.

Bains played a key role in founding the predecessor to the CPC (M-L) on March 13, 1963, as the "Internationalists", a student group at the UBC championing what they described as anti-revisionism.

"If you like to talk, join the Internationalists", opined the UBC student newspaper under the headline "Hot air types form own group.

"[7] But while co-organizer Mayling Weaver spoke of welcoming "students of any race, religion, or political beliefs", and both asserted that "the university is a coffee-shop", Bains was setting for itself much more adventurous goals than just "an extension to the extra-curricular programme" with "free-wheeling, year-round academic symposiums".

[8] Bains desired in The Internationalists to form a future communist movement, founded on what he considered orthodox Marxist revolutionary theory, including opposition to de-Stalinization.

[11] Summarizing the text, Irish author Connor McCabe notes that: These ideas became a foundation as the group developed into a party or, as Bains himself would later say, "the analysis that lays down ideological remoulding as the key to the uninterrupted advance and victory of revolution.

For a few years until this pro-Maoist wave of youthful political action fell apart in the early 1980s, the combined membership of pro-China communist parties also outnumbered the CPC.

[21] While the CPC (M-L) was unsuccessful uniting these tendencies together, Bains was very active forming similar anti-revisionist ML groupings around the world which were influenced by his writings and theory.

[2] By 1976, CPC (M-L) began to support the criticisms of Chinese foreign policy and the "Theory of Three Worlds" made by the Party of Labour of Albania (PLA).

[15] In 1978, the CPC (M-L) held a large international rally – a tactic popular with pro-Albania parties at the time – in Montreal that included a delegation from the PLA.

Also in attendance were parties from Italy, France, Iran, India, Great Britain, Portugal, the United States, Chile, and Venezuela.

[25] These conferences firmly cemented the CPC (M-L)'s position as the official pro-Albania party in Canada and its bookshops all carried regular literature from the Albanian government.

This approach, and contrarian attitude to the position of most anti-war forces at the time, left the CPC (M-L) disconnected from the peace and labour movements[15] as the party set up various rival committees.

[27] Over time, the CPC (M-L) was ousted from all of these student newspapers, as flamboyant leftist politics began to disappear from the Canadian campus landscape in the 1980s.

[2] As one of the many front organizations of the CPC (M-L), the Canadian Cultural Workers' Committee released an album, titled The Party is the Most Precious Thing.

The albums had 10 songs, including "Here is the Rose," about the history of the CPC (M-L); "Oh Albania, Red Star that Burns Bright" about Albania and her government's anti-revisionist stance; and "Levesque Doesn't Wear His Specs," criticizing Quebec separatist René Lévesque following him accidentally running over a homeless man in the middle of the night because he was not wearing his glasses.

Almost immediately following Enver Hoxha's death in 1985, reform movements sprung up in Albania which was the last Eastern Bloc country to overturn socialism in 1992.

)[34] In response, during the late 1980s, the CPC (M-L) adopted the slogan "We are our own models", and began to seek a new ideological approach, eventually talking less about socialism and taking a positive view of both Cuba and North Korea.

The language of the CPC (M-L) has increasingly centred on its concept of "democratic renewal" oriented on electoral reform and "empowerment of the people", dropping its earlier sharp polemics against labour, social movements, and the Communist Party of Canada.

The party eulogy said: According to the CPC (M-L) website, the 8 by 5⁠1/2⁠ foot memorial is made of granite quarried in Jhansi, India.

[40] The CPC (M-L) currently sees as its immediate goal the "vesting of sovereignty in the people so that they can exercise control over their lives"[41] and "organizing Canadians to empower themselves".

They appear to continue to have significant differences in their evaluation of international, Canadian and Quebec politics; approach, style of work; historic interpretations of the role of the parties in the past; and conclusions about immediate action and the road to socialism in Canada.

Nevertheless, the two parties work together on a variety of issues including Cuba and Latin American solidarity and, for example, supported the CPC (M-L) leadership in Local 1005 of the Hamilton Steelworkers.

Its twelve-plank party platform called for rewriting the Canadian constitution, increasing social spending, repealing anti-terrorism legislation such as Bill C-51, withdrawal from free trade deals and military involvement abroad, establishing "nation-to-nation" relations with Aboriginal peoples, and government action on climate change.

The party announced its 2015 election platform on its website, which addressed four themes: Economy & Trade, Constitutional Reform, Foreign Policy, and Climate Change.