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

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 69,190 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 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 5,512 7,694 1,765 4,542 6,307 417 969 1,386 0 1 1
8 BC 2,893 5,485 8,378 2,295 4,545 6,840 597 938 1,535 1 2 3
11 MB 1,422 3,728 5,150 1,208 3,210 4,418 214 517 731 0 1 1
3 NB 907 3,226 4,133 781 2,716 3,497 126 509 635 0 1 1
7 NL 402 1,591 1,993 325 1,320 1,645 77 270 347 0 1 1
2 NS 1,074 3,006 4,080 956 2,543 3,499 118 461 579 0 2 2
14 NT 80 592 672 62 473 535 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 9,981 19,179 7,685 8,430 16,115 1,512 1,549 3,061 1 2 3
4 PE 297 1,448 1,745 256 1,237 1,493 41 210 251 0 1 1
5 QC 7,795 10,376 18,171 6,494 8,395 14,889 1,300 1,981 3,281 1 0 1
10 SK 1,257 3,377 4,634 1,092 2,926 4,018 165 451 616 0 0 0
12 YT 72 477 549 60 351 411 12 125 137 0 1 1
Total 27,653 49,272 76,925 23,044 41,097 64,141 4,606 8,163 12,769 3 12 15
Diff. = -7,735 69,190 Diff. = -6,620 57,521 Diff. = -1,114 11,655 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 141 35,416 9,913 4,586 2,816 1,826 1,113 674 394 276 366 57,521
F 12 8,193 1,909 787 389 162 83 50 21 12 37 11,655
X 0 8 5 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 14
T 153
0.22%		 43,617
63.04%		 11,827
17.09%		 5,374
7.77%		 3,205
4.63%		 1,988
2.87%		 1,196
1.73%		 724
1.05%		 415
0.6%		 288
0.42%		 403
0.58%		 69,190
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 37,687 links recorded so far to 34,573 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 (22.74%)*
⊕ Alive    ⊖ Dead    T Total
Category
↓		 Total Men (M) Women (F) Non binary (X)
⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T
Elected 4,531
4,241		 9,876
5,640		 14,407
9,881		 3,387
3,117		 9,659
5,429		 13,046
8,546		 1,139
1,119		 217
211		 1,356
1,330		 5
5		 0
0		 5
5
Unelected 331
297		 855
543		 1,186
840		 224
195		 789
493		 1,013
688		 104
99		 66
50		 170
149		 3
3		 0
0		 3
3
Perennial 68
59		 70
43		 138
102		 54
46		 66
40		 120
86		 14
13		 4
3		 18
16		 0
0		 0
0		 0
0
Total 4,930
4,597		 10,801
6,226		 15,731
10,823
68.8%
 3,665
3,358		 10,514
5,962		 14,179
9,320
65.7%
 1,257
1,231		 287
264		 1,544
1,495
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 5 2,224 5,792 4,879 965 243 62 7 2 0 0 14,179
F 4 263 490 706 66 6 7 0 1 1 0 1,544
X 0 4 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8
T 9 2,491 6,282 5,589 1,031 249 69 7 3 1 0 15,731
Links 2,491 12,564 16,767 4,124 1,245 414 49 24 9 0 37,687
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 (16.05%)**
⊕ Alive    ⊖ Dead    T Total
Category
↓		 Total Men (M) Women (F) Non binary (X)
⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T ⊕ ⊖ T
Elected 438 1,792 2,230 308 1,751 2,059 130 41 171 0 0 0
Unelected 66 208 274 37 192 229 29 16 45 0 0 0
Perennial 7 14 21 5 13 18 2 1 3 0 0 0
Total 511 2,014 2,525 350 1,956 2,306 161 58 219 0 0 0
** Percentage of full profiles with at least one family relation

So far, 3,666 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.:  3 Jun 2024 19:06 (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.