Base → Legislatures → Current assemblies: Represented parties

Recognized or official party status... or not

by Maurice Y. Michaud (he/him)

Winning a seat in a partisan assembly is often not sufficient to get full parliamentary privileges. The type of recognition and threshold needed to obtain it varies from one jurisdiction to another, with the most coveted privileges being funding for party research offices and the right to ask questions (and how many) during Question Period.

However, given that this determination is governed by internal legislative rules, the members of an assembly can pass a motion to dispense with the rules and grant the status to parties that would otherwise fail to qualify — something that has already occurred on several occasions. It goes without saying that the independents do not form a party in themselves, and that non partisan assemblies are excluded from this list.

Legend }				N: Current assembly	✓ Officially recognized party (R)  PAR  Party T Total						† Not in office (n) Current age
Jurisdiction				Rule / Threshold	Parties						Leadership role
					R	PAR	T	♂	♀	⚥
1	CA		44	Total (seats): 338 Threshold: 12 seats	✓ ✓ ✓ ✓	LIB CPC BQ NDP GRN IND VAC	153 119 33 25 2 4 2	96 98 21 13 1 4 —	57 21 12 12 1 0 —	0 0 0 0 0 0 —	Justin P.J. Trudeau  M  ( 52 ) Pierre M. Poilievre  M  ( 45 ) Yves-François Blanchet  M  ( 59 ) Jagmeet Singh  M  ( 45 ) Elizabeth E. May  F  ( 70 ) n/a n/a
9	AB		31	Total (seats): 87 Threshold: 4 seats, although status has been granted to parties with only 2 seats a number of times.	✓ ✓	UCP NDP VAC	49 37 1	38 16 —	11 21 —	0 0 —	M. Danielle Smith  F  ( 53 ) Naheed K. Nenshi†  M  ( 52 ) n/a
8	BC		42	Total (seats): 87 Threshold: 2 seats	✓ ✓ ✓ ✓	NDP BCU CONS GRN IND VAC	0 0 0 0 0 87	— — — — — —	— — — — — —	— — — — — —	David R.P. Eby†  M  ( 48 ) Kevin Falcon†  M  ( ±61 ) John Rustad†  M  ( 61 ) Sonia Furstenau†  F  ( ±54 ) n/a n/a
11	MB		43	Total (seats): 57 Threshold: 4 seats	✓ ✓	NDP PC LIB IND	34 21 1 1	20 17 0 1	13 4 1 0	1 0 0 0	Wab Kinew  M  ( 42 ) Wayne Ewasko  M  Cindy Lamoureux  F  ( 32 ) n/a
3	NB		60	Total (seats): 49 Threshold: 5 seats or 20% of the popular vote.	✓ ✓	PC LIB GRN IND VAC	0 0 0 0 49	— — — — —	— — — — —	— — — — —	Blaine M. Higgs†  M  ( 70 ) Susan C. Holt†  F  ( 47 ) David C. Coon†  M  ( 67 ) n/a n/a
7	NL		50	Total (seats): 40 Threshold: 2 seats (adjust standings -1 PC +1 Vac 29 Dec 2023)	✓ ✓ ✓	LIB PC NDP IND	22 13 3 2	14 12 2 2	7 1 1 0	0 0 0 0	Andrew J. Furey  M  ( 49 ) Tony Wakeham  M  James G. Dinn  M  ( ±64 ) n/a
2	NS		64	Total (seats): 55 Threshold: 2 seats and, with the exception of the official opposition, in the last election the party must have run candidates in three-quarters of the ridings and received at least 10% of the vote.	✓ ✓ ✓	PC LIB NDP IND	33 15 6 1	24 11 1 0	9 4 4 1	0 0 1 0	Timothy J. Houston  M  ( 54 ) Zachariah J. Churchill  M  ( 40 ) Claudia Chender  F  ( 48 ) n/a
6	ON		43	Total (seats): 124 Threshold: Currently set to 12 seats, as the rule calls for 10% of the total number of seats in the assembly.	✓ ✓	PC NDP LIB GRN IND	80 28 9 2 5	58 11 4 1 3	22 16 5 1 2	0 1 0 0 0	Douglas R. Ford  M  ( 59 ) Marit Stiles  F  ( 55 ) Bonnie Crombie†  F  ( 64 ) Mike Schreiner  M  ( 55 ) n/a
4	PE		67	Total (seats): 27 Threshold: There is no official rule but precedent shows that only one seat is required.	✓ ✓ ✓	PC LIB GRN	21 3 3	15 3 2	6 0 1	0 0 0	Dennis King  M  ( 52 ) John (Hal) Perry  M  ( 58 ) Karla Bernard  F
5	QC		43	Total (seats): 125 Threshold: 12 seats or 20% of the popular vote, but exceptions were made in 2018 and 2022 to grant the status to the PQ and QS despite not reaching that threshold.	✓ ✓ ✓ ✓	CAQ QLP QS PQ IND VAC	86 19 12 4 3 1	46 8 8 4 2 —	40 11 4 0 1 —	0 0 0 0 0 —	François Legault  M  ( 67 ) Marc Tanguay  M  ( 51 ) Christine Labrie  F  ( 37 ) Paul St-Pierre Plamondon  M  ( 47 ) n/a n/a
10	SK		29	Total (seats): 61 Threshold: 2 seats, but an exception was made in December 2022 when the Saskatchewan United Party was recognized by Elections Sasktachewan.	✓ ✓ ✓	SKP NDP SUP IND VAC	0 0 0 0 61	— — — — —	— — — — —	— — — — —	Scott Moe†  M  ( 51 ) Carla Beck†  F  Jon Hromek†  M  n/a n/a
12	YT		35	Total (seats): 19 Threshold: 1 seat and the party must be registered with Elections Yukon, which requires it to have run candidates in at least two ridings in the previous election.	✓ ✓ ✓	LIB YP NDP	8 8 3	6 5 0	2 3 2	0 0 1	Ranj Pillai  M  ( ±50 ) Currie Dixon  M  ( 39 ) Kate White  F  ( 47 )