Canada's electoral history from 1867 to today
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There's a lot of people in PoliCan!
(And many details, too!)

by Maurice Y. Michaud (he/him)

2019 federal compositeJust as the people who vote are at the heart of every election, the people who run for office are at the heart of PoliCan. In fact, there are 69,355 persons to be found in this section.

I have spent and I continue to spend countless hours revising the data over and over to ensure that the same person has been entered consistently and correctly. Their gender identity is also recorded, including those who identified as non-binary despite the fact that they still represent a minuscule minority of those who stand for election. Then, for every candidate for whom I could find more information (mostly those who have won, but others as well), I have created a profile showing their date of birth and death (if applicable), whether or not they died while in office, their relationship with other profiled candidates and, of course, their electoral and political history that takes into account their age at each pivotal moment of their career. As a result, PoliCan is very likely the only website where you can obtain, in under 10 seconds and one mouse click, the complete list of the members of Parliament since 1867.

These tables summarize how many distinct candidates are recorded in PoliCan, by jurisdiction. The Total row makes an adjustment in order to give the real number of unique names, as the same person could have run at both levels or even in several jurisdictions. Additionally, we can see the number of electoral runs of each person, by gender identity.

Distinct candidates
F: Federal    P: Provincial/Territorial    T: Total
Juri. Total Men (M) Women (F) Non binary (X)
F P T F P T F P T F P T
9 AB 2,182 5,513 7,695 1,765 4,542 6,307 417 970 1,387 0 1 1
8 BC 2,893 5,532 8,425 2,295 4,573 6,868 597 957 1,554 1 2 3
11 MB 1,427 3,728 5,155 1,211 3,210 4,421 216 517 733 0 1 1
3 NB 907 3,261 4,168 781 2,740 3,521 126 520 646 0 1 1
7 NL 403 1,594 1,997 326 1,322 1,648 77 271 348 0 1 1
2 NS 1,074 3,006 4,080 956 2,543 3,499 118 461 579 0 2 2
14 NT 80 611 691 62 492 554 18 119 137 0 0 0
13 NU 27 298 325 18 234 252 9 64 73 0 0 0
15 NW 47 175 222 47 175 222 0 0 0 0 0 0
6 ON 9,198 9,986 19,184 7,686 8,432 16,118 1,511 1,552 3,063 1 2 3
4 PE 297 1,448 1,745 256 1,237 1,493 41 210 251 0 1 1
5 QC 7,871 10,375 18,246 6,556 8,394 14,950 1,314 1,981 3,295 1 0 1
10 SK 1,258 3,413 4,671 1,093 2,954 4,047 165 459 624 0 0 0
12 YT 72 477 549 60 351 411 12 125 137 0 1 1
Total 27,736 49,417 77,153 23,112 41,199 64,311 4,621 8,206 12,827 3 12 15
Diff. = -7,798 69,355 Diff. = -6,672 57,639 Diff. = -1,125 11,702 Diff. = -1 14
The name of 249 candidates (0.36%) is incomplete. Given the nature of archiving and record keeping in the 19th century up to the mid-20th century in some jurisdictions, it is unlikely that those names will ever be found.
  Electoral runs
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10+ Total
M 143 35,494 9,928 4,598 2,821 1,825 1,119 674 394 278 365 57,639
F 13 8,227 1,915 788 391 164 85 48 22 12 37 11,702
X 0 8 5 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 14
T 156
0.22%		 43,729
63.05%		 11,848
17.08%		 5,387
7.77%		 3,212
4.63%		 1,989
2.87%		 1,204
1.74%		 722
1.04%		 416
0.6%		 290
0.42%		 402
0.58%		 69,355
In other words, an important plurality of unique names appear only once in PoliCan.

In most cases, 0 electoral run represents a person who chose not to run after having been elected prior their jurisdiction's entry into Confederation. However, a few represent unelected ministers who sat in the Senate or their jurisdiction's legislative council, senators related to an elected individual, or pre-Confederation persons of interest for whom a full profile has been created.

And as I mentioned, in addition to "Distinct candidates," there are the people for whom there is a full profile on this website, who can be found according to multiple criteria (by gender identity, whether they are alive or not, etc.) or by category. "Elected candidate" is by far the most common category, followed by "Known but unelected candidate" and "Perennial candidate."

What sets PoliCan apart from other websites of its kind is the fact that each profile usually has at least one link to an external website which leads to more details on the profiled individual. It is by following some of the 38,141 links recorded so far to 35,026 online documents that you are likely to get engrossed as I did into reading about some of these individuals. So the second table shows the number of profiles by the number of links they have (links to bilingual websites are counted only once), while the last table shows how many of these individuals have or had at least one familial link with another profiled individual.

Profiles in PoliCan (22.77%)*
⊕ Alive    ⊖ Dead    T Total
Category
↓		 Total Men (M) Women (F) Non binary (X)
⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T
Elected 4,521
4,244		 9,890
5,973		 14,411
10,217		 3,377
3,120		 9,672
5,761		 13,049
8,881		 1,139
1,119		 218
212		 1,357
1,331		 5
5		 0
0		 5
5
Unelected 340
303		 895
572		 1,235
875		 231
199		 827
520		 1,058
719		 106
101		 68
52		 174
153		 3
3		 0
0		 3
3
Perennial 72
64		 71
44		 143
108		 57
50		 67
41		 124
91		 15
14		 4
3		 19
17		 0
0		 0
0		 0
0
Total 4,933
4,611		 10,856
6,589		 15,789
11,200
70.9%
 3,665
3,369		 10,566
6,322		 14,231
9,691
68.1%
 1,260
1,234		 290
267		 1,550
1,501
96.8%
 8
8		 0
0		 8
8
100.0%
* Percentage of unique names with a full profile

The top number in each cell is the count of actual profiles while the bottom number is the count of those with an image.

The profile of someone elected prior to Confederation but NOT afterwards has been filed in the "Elected" category, while the profile of someone elected only at the municipal or county level has been filed in "Known but unelected candidate" as those lower levels of government are outside the scope of PoliCan. Senators who served in cabinet have also been filed in "Known but unelected candidate" if they have never been elected federally or provincially.

While the relatively small number of profiles for women is glaring, it is interesting to note that most of the women who have a profile are still alive. Even though women have had the right to vote for a bit more than a century in most jurisdictions, they only started to be elected in more significant numbers to legislative assemblies in the 1980s, and parity with men is still very far from being achieved. Their small number and late entry into the political scene in good part explains why an image could be found for most of them.
Number of profiles with X external links
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10+ Total
M 8 2,105 5,751 5,070 982 244 62 7 2 0 0 14,231
F 4 266 493 706 66 6 7 0 1 1 0 1,550
X 0 4 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8
T 12 2,375 6,244 5,780 1,048 250 69 7 3 1 0 15,789
Links 2,375 12,488 17,340 4,192 1,250 414 49 24 9 0 38,141
The most common number of external links per profile is 2, 3, and 1 respectively. A profile without a link is likely very new and will eventually have at least one soon.
Profiles with family relations (16.14%)**
⊕ Alive    ⊖ Dead    T Total
Category
↓		 Total Men (M) Women (F) Non binary (X)
⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T
Elected 439 1,804 2,243 309 1,763 2,072 130 41 171 0 0 0
Unelected 68 216 284 39 198 237 29 18 47 0 0 0
Perennial 7 14 21 5 13 18 2 1 3 0 0 0
Total 514 2,034 2,548 353 1,974 2,327 161 60 221 0 0 0
** Percentage of full profiles with at least one family relation

So far, 3,718 connections have been found and noted (parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, spouses, domestic partners, etc.). A connection between two persons results in a pair of connection records in PoliCan — for example: (1) would indicate that Robert was the father of Maurice and (2) would indicate that Maurice was the son of Robert.

So if your Uncle Charlie, or your great-grandfather, or even you ran in a federal or provincial election, it should take you only a few seconds to find the details now that you have arrived on this website.


© 2019, 2024 :: PoliCan.ca (Maurice Y. Michaud)
Pub.:  5 Jun 2022 18:20
Rev.: 15 Aug 2024 08:03 (but data presented dynamically)

© 2019-2024 :: PoliCan.ca
Given that electoral results are by their very nature public information, such data that can be found in PoliCan are considered to be in the public domain. However, unless indicated otherwise, all other elements — the concept of consolidating these data into a single format, the detailed research on each election, legislature and candidate, the organization and searchability of the data, the programming allowing the entry and maintenance of the data, as well as the analyses and explanatory articles found in this website — are the intellectual property of Maurice Y. Michaud.