Trades and Labor Congress of Canada

It adopted policies which denounced government supported immigration, the Salvation Army for its alleged efforts to bring London’s poor to Canada; it opposed any Asian immigration, called for female factory inspectors to protect women workers, a single tax system, government only issued currency (Banks issued money at this time), the end of child labour, and the use of convict labour.

The Toronto Trades and Labour Council began in 1881, and similar citywide coordinating bodies were soon formed in Montreal, Vancouver, Brantford, Ottawa and other cities.

Gompers's policies tended to ignore the particularities of the Canadian labour force, especially the French-Canadian separatism in Quebec, the political impulses in the Prairies, and the left-wing socialism of the coal miners in Nova Scotia.

[2] The Trades and Labor Congress of Canada also agitated against immigrant workers, especially the Chinese, who were seen as unsavory pawns used by capitalists to lower wages and undermine unions.

[4] Under President James Watters (1911–18), the TLC was initially opposed to the First World War but reversed its position as their members rushed to the patriotic call of the federal government and the British Empire.

In the twentieth century the TLC faced rivals on the left in the form of syndicalist or socialist movements such as the Industrial Workers of the World and the One Big Union.

In failing to respond to the demands of the mostly western workers who wanted more radical actions in the years following World War I, the TLC lost their confidence.