Base → People → Persons elected to date → Once is enough

“Maybe politics isn’t my cup of tea after all...”

by Maurice Y. Michaud (he/him)

Jackson Alexander Hardy (1924–2006)
© Photo Legislative Assembly, Manitoba via the Manitoba Historical Society — Fair use

Have you ever done something that you thought you always wanted to do, only to realize, once you were finally doing it, that you don’t like it after all? That would be a good question to ask some Canadians, who ran for federal, provincial or territorial office once, won, then didn’t run in the next election, and for whom there is no evidence that they held any other political post outside the scope of PoliCan.

The more typical trend in Canada has been that people remain in elected office for more than one term, or run at least once more than their single successful run. However, just under six percent of the people recorded in PoliCan as having been elected seem to have come and gone in a single cycle. Each of these cases would have to be researched individually; it could be impossible to know today why their political career panned out the way it did. However, some reasons might be:

• Deliberately choosing to serve only one mandate.
• Not being healthy enough to continue.
• Failing to win their party’s nomination for the next election.
• Needing or wanting to return to doing what they were doing before being elected.
• Being asked to resign to allow someone else to take their seat.
• Being unseated, then choosing not to run again or being forbidden to do so.
• Or... realizing, once elected, that for whatever reason, they didn’t like the job!

This interactive table allows you to find the names of the people who fall under this unusual category.