Canada's electoral history from 1867 to today
Base → People → Introduction and statistics

There's a lot of people in this database!
(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 this database. In fact, there are 68,547 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. All candidates have at least a unique numerical identifier to make it easier and faster for you and me to pull their electoral data. 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 unique names are recorded in this database, 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.

Unique names
F: Federal    P: Provincial/Territorial    T: Total
Juri. Men (M) Women (F) Non binary (X) Total
F P T F P T F P T F P T
9 AB 1,763 4,466 6,229 415 930 1,345 0 1 1 2,178 5,397 7,575
8 BC 2,294 4,461 6,755 597 885 1,482 1 2 3 2,892 5,348 8,240
11 MB 1,173 3,149 4,322 207 484 691 0 1 1 1,380 3,634 5,014
3 NB 781 2,680 3,461 126 482 608 0 0 0 907 3,162 4,069
7 NL 325 1,315 1,640 77 268 345 0 1 1 402 1,584 1,986
2 NS 956 2,538 3,494 118 456 574 0 2 2 1,074 2,996 4,070
14 NT 62 454 516 18 106 124 0 0 0 80 560 640
13 NU 18 234 252 9 64 73 0 0 0 27 298 325
15 NW 47 175 222 0 0 0 0 0 0 47 175 222
6 ON 7,644 8,417 16,061 1,499 1,536 3,035 1 2 3 9,144 9,955 19,099
4 PE 255 1,235 1,490 41 209 250 0 1 1 296 1,445 1,741
5 QC 6,492 8,391 14,883 1,299 1,978 3,277 1 1 2 7,792 10,370 18,162
10 SK 1,091 2,881 3,972 165 423 588 0 0 0 1,256 3,304 4,560
12 YT 60 351 411 12 126 138 0 0 0 72 477 549
Total 22,961 40,747 63,708 4,583 7,947 12,530 3 11 14 27,547 48,705 76,252
Diff. = -6,601 57,107 Diff. = -1,103 11,427 Diff. = -1 13 Diff. = -7,705 68,547
The name of 255 candidates (0.37%) 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 85 35,272 9,893 4,543 2,734 1,802 1,096 666 388 269 359 57,107
F 5 8,103 1,903 733 348 142 80 49 17 11 36 11,427
X 0 10 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 13
T 90
0.13%		 43,385
63.29%		 11,798
17.21%		 5,277
7.7%		 3,082
4.5%		 1,944
2.84%		 1,176
1.72%		 715
1.04%		 405
0.59%		 280
0.41%		 395
0.58%		 68,547
In other words, an important plurality of unique names appear only once in this database.
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 "Unique names," there are the people from 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 brings this database to a higher level compared to others 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 33,939 links recorded so far to 30,861 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 (22.42%)*
⊕ Alive    ⊖ Dead
Category
↓		 Men (M) Women (F) Non binary (X) Total
⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T
Elected 3,452 9,527 12,979 1,118 198 1,316 5 0 5 4,575 9,725 14,300
Unelected 186 628 814 74 52 126 3 0 3 263 680 943
Perennial 49 59 108 12 4 16 0 0 0 61 63 124
Total 3,687 10,214 13,901 1,204 254 1,458 8 0 8 4,899 10,468 15,367
* Percentage of unique names with a full profile

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 this database. 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.
  Number of profiles with X external links
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10+ Total
M 87 3,051 6,012 3,861 632 198 49 9 2 0 0 13,901
F 4 292 497 604 46 6 6 1 1 0 1 1,458
X 0 4 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8
T 91 3,347 6,509 4,469 678 204 55 10 3 0 1 15,367
Links 3,347 13,018 13,407 2,712 1,020 330 70 24 0 11 33,939
The most common number of external links per profile is 2, 3, and 1 respectively. Of concern at this time are the 91 profiles (0.59%) for which there is not yet an external link, as all but one represent elected persons about whom nothing is known.

Profiles with family relations (14.21%)**
⊕ Alive    ⊖ Dead
Category
↓		 Men (M) Women (F) Non binary (X) Total
⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T
Elected 277 1,560 1,837 109 36 145 0 0 0 386 1,596 1,982
Unelected 30 122 152 20 10 30 0 0 0 50 132 182
Perennial 6 11 17 2 1 3 0 0 0 8 12 20
Total 313 1,693 2,006 131 47 178 0 0 0 444 1,740 2,184
** Percentage of full profiles with at least one family relation

So far, 3,066 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 this database — 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, if should take you only a few seconds to find the details now that you have arrived on this website!


© 2022, 2023 Maurice Y. Michaud :: PoliCan.ca
Pub.:  5 Jun 2022 18:20
Rev.: 14 Mar 2023 19:47 (but data revised dynamically)

© 2006-2023 Maurice Y. Michaud :: PoliCan.ca
Given that electoral results are by their very nature public information, the data found herein 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 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.