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Archive 1

People's Political Power of Canada

I posted a comment to the discussion section on the page for that party, but I see from the banner that discussion should take place here, so I'll post my comment here - I was wondering if maybe that party shouldn't be considered Christian Democratic? From their platform and description, it looks like their socially-conservative/economically-left-wing views could be viewed as being on the radical side of Christian Democracy, but I would like to know what others might think on that point. 24.32.220.158 03:49, 2 December 2006 (UTC)James

English Party Names

Currently the page says "All names should be in English.". Is this intended to apply to Quebec provincial parties? Looking at Category:Provincial political parties in Quebec, it seems we normally use the French name, even if there's a commonly used official English name, such as the Quebec Liberal Party having the name Parti libéral du Québec. --Rob 06:44, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia's own naming convention policy says articles should have the titles in English. My own opinion is that they should be in English, but if consensus is to drop that line, I'll abide by that. Ardenn 06:46, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) --Ardenn 16:36, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
It makes sense to me that the French party names should be in French, as is most common here in Canada. Does the Bloc even have an English name? If so, I've never heard it. People are going to be looking for the party names as they are referred to in the news and in conversation, not according to "wikipedia naming conventions" Moonbug 03:04, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
To be clear, the convention on Wikipedia is not that a name must be in English — it's that the name must be what a typical speaker of English in the appropriate country would most easily recognize. In Canada, there are unquestionably a lot of cases — Bloc Québécois, Parti Québécois, Action démocratique du Québec, etc. — where a speaker of Canadian English would more naturally recognize the original French name than an English translation, so those should, and do, stay at the French titles. In other cases, such as Quebec Liberal Party and Rhinoceros Party of Canada, a normal English speaker in Canada uses names that are translated into English, so those are at the English titles.
But the defining characteristic in Wikipedia policy is not that the words necessarily have to be in English. The title merely has to be whatever a speaker of the appropriate English dialect would most likely recognize as the usual name of the topic in actual day-to-day usage. I sincerely doubt that there's one single solitary person in this country, regardless of their primary language, who would expect a Wikipedia article about the party of René Lévesque and Jacques Parizeau to be titled "Quebecker Party", frex. And neither would anybody expect the party of Françoise David and Amir Khadir to be titled "Quebec in Solidarity", nor the party of Mario Dumont to be titled "Democratic Action of Quebec". Even a unilingual English speaker would look at those titles and think we'd gone insane. Bearcat 07:36, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Naming conventions

For those joining this section's discussion, it is in regards to the line in the "Naming conventions" section that currently reads: "Political parties: As their common name is. Such as the Alberta Greens, not Green Party of Alberta." The section above (regarding English or French names) is a separate discussion. --Ckatz 05:09, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


The party articles should really be named with their proper names, with redirects from the common names. What's currently proposed is the opposite - any particular reason why? --Ckatz 08:26, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Current policy says to use the common name, and re-direct to the proper name. Ardenn 16:29, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Indeed. See Joe Clark. The article is not "Charles Joseph Clark". However, let's not assume that the common name is the English name. The Parti Quebecois, Bloc Quebecois, Quebec Solidaire and Action Democratique du Quebec do not even have English names, and it would make no sense to translate them. Real Caouette's party is now commonly called the Ralliement creditiste, even though, at the time, some English-language newspapers called it the "Social Credit Rally". I think the only real question is, what is the common name of the Liberal Party of Quebec/Parti Liberal du Quebec? The article currently uses the French name as the common name, and I am not sure that that is the correct conclusion. Ground Zero | t 20:36, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
I can concede that the PQ name should possibly stay french. But the Liberal party should be in English. Ardenn 20:42, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Which "current policy" - Wikipedia, or just this project? If it's the latter, it should be discussed, as this is different from the French-English debate above. --Ckatz 03:40, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
It's the guideline, I posted the link in the above section. Ardenn 03:44, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
I believe there's a slight misinterpretation of the guideline. What you're referring to applies to common names, and using the most common version. This would include English translations, the most common spelling, and so on, and it is more appropriate to the discussion over French vs. English names. That's a different issue from the question of what to label a political party. The project page's example (Green Party of Alberta vs. Alberta Greens) sides with the popular name, which is perhaps not the best approach. Using that same example of the Greens, their own web site is titled "Green Party of Alberta", and there are numerous references to that title throughout the page. I'd think that the natural choice would be to use the official party title, as registered with Elections Canada, along with redirects from all the common names. Something to discuss, before the project adopts it as a policy. --Ckatz 04:56, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
For that article, that's a good point. For the French vs English, we need to keep the guideline in mind. --Ardenn 04:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but let's keep this discussion on track. If there's no objection, I'd like to revise the naming convention to call for official party names, as I described earlier, along with appropriate redirects. --Ckatz 04:18, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
That's fine with me. We can debate the English bit still. Ardenn 04:21, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Given that no-one has objected to the proposal, I've revised the "Political parties" naming convention as follows: "*Political parties: By their official name, as registered with Elections Canada, accompanied by redirects from all appropriate common names. (Example: article is Green Party of Alberta, with a redirect from Alberta Greens.)" --Ckatz 23:24, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
So should Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) be a redirect to Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada instead of the other way around? (Please say yes; I've been dying to do this since I became an editor). Carolynparrishfan 23:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Fringe party articles

While I think it is a noble endeavour to create articles on all of the parties on the List of political parties in Canada, we should remain aware that there are some editors who do not agree that every party should have an article. There have been attempts to delete articles on small parties on the basis that they are "not notable". Indeed, the AfD was successful on Direct Access Democracy Canada, an attempt to create a new party that nominated one candidate in 2004. The article outlined the party's policy, which was fairly well-developed for a fringe group. creating articles for fringe parties could be wasted effort if the articles are subsequently deleted. Any thoughts on how to avoid this? Ground Zero | t 20:36, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

My feeling is, we only create it, if they're registered with Elections Canada, or the provincial elections office. Ardenn 20:41, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm not certain I agree with this. There are some unregistered parties that have been around for years, and that are obviously "notable" in their local scene. I could point to the Humanist Party of Ontario as an example -- they've been fielding candidates since the 1980s, but have never sought official party status. CJCurrie 20:47, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
That could be the flip side of the coin. If they've done one or the other, the article is fine to be created. Ardenn 20:49, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

What is the minimum number of candidates that an unregistered party has to field to qualify for an article, then? There are lots of "parties" that fielded only one or a few candidates in the days when you could represent yourself in an election as being a candidate of a party without going through any formal registration process. Ground Zero | t 17:54, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Good question. I'd say it would most certainly need more than 1. My gut says they'd have to run 5, but then that's just an arbitrary number. Ardenn 18:02, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Only problem is that that creates an inequality in that today, Elections Canada will register a party that runs only one candidate. - Jord 21:14, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
If they're registered, that's the threashold for me. If they're not registered, then I'm not sure. Ardenn 22:11, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but the courts ruled only a few years ago you needed only one candidate to be registered; prior to that you needed 50 for many years. How is a party that registers one candidate in 2006 under the new rules and gets registered more notable than a hypothetical party that ran 49 candidates in 1988, 1993 and 1997? - Jord 20:30, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
At least if they're registered, it's a sort of commitment. It's better than not being registered. Ardenn 20:32, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I usually follow the standard of "is there enough material to write a decent article". If the party in question is just one person's vanity project, the answer will usually be "no". CJCurrie 02:32, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

That's another good rule. We don't want perpetual stubs. Ardenn 02:39, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Political Party Logos

I just wanted to alert this Wikiproject that User:Durin has been removing party logos from all templates because of so-called "fair use policy" (his explanation here). The template for federal political parties is now just a bunch of words, as opposed to what it was before.[1] He seems to be going after all templates that are like this. Is it likely that political parties in Canada will sue Wikipedia for using their logo in a template? Do the template still look any good without logos? -Royalguard11Talk 01:15, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

It's not a question of whether or not an individual organization will sue or not, in a particular jurisdiction. Nor is it a "so-called" fair use policy - it's a Wikipedia policy. (I can certainly understand your concerns, though, and I empathize with the frustration at not being able to use images as we see fit, but it's what we have to work with.) --Ckatz 04:15, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Well you have some partially good advice, lets work to change the policy, since it's all user created, and the users that created seem to love rules and bureaucracy, lets get it amended --Cloveious 05:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Consensus to keep political party logos in templates

I call the members of the community who work on articles related to political parties and politicians that are Canadian related to vote on a consensus to keep political party logos in templates, provided those templates are not used in a defamatory matter, and are used on relevant pages, that further the goal of creating an encyclopedia.

Article #9 which was used to remove the logos from the templates, comes complete with it's own notwithstanding clause. I have pasted the relevant clause.

Exceptions can be made on a case-by-case basis if there is a broad consensus that doing so is necessary to the goal of creating a free encyclopedia (like the templates used as part of the Main Page).

--Cloveious 06:02, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Agree. I believe the use of the party logos in this manner actually falls within the definition of Fair Use (both legal and WP) because it is specifically in the context of presenting information on those parties. (Although I'm sure there are folks who see it differently, I believe they are mistaken.) —GrantNeufeld 20:23, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Agree per above. —Nightstallion (?) 22:34, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose The rule is against having a logo specified (e.g. hardcoded) in the template. You can still have a logo visually appear inside an info box (made by template). It just doesn't automatically appear in every transclusion of the same template. I want a specific example of something we can't do now, which we should be able to do. Specifying fairuse images in a template is bad, because it means the template can only be transcluded in cases where a clear fair use rationale can be made. We're essentially making templates "unfree" and restricted, which seems pointless. For instance, such unfree templates could never be transcluded ouside of article space. --Rob 23:31, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose, not because I don't want to debate this issue, but instead on the basis that this is not the correct forum for such a discussion. I agree with Rob's reasoning above. I'd also add that this straw poll is not exactly in keeping with the clause quoted above, as we cannot claim to have a "broad consensus" when the question is only posed to a very small number of community members. It would be more appropriate to take up this discussion at the talk page for the policy, or somewhere similar, so that any conclusions are reached with the involvement of the wider Wiki community. (That aside, I'd say that - as nice as it would be to have logos - they're certainly not necessary for the template. There was an argument posted a little while back suggesting that many people identify the parties by their logos, and not by their names. If there's proof of that assertion, please present it - otherwise, I would find it highly unlikely that such a thing were true. If it were, then we would certainly see something to reflect it on the ballots and in official Elections Canada publications of results.) --Ckatz 23:59, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Agree. Using the logo of a political party in such a way is fair use. It makes the page more visually appealing, and more likely to resonate with viewers of the page. Moonbug 03:12, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I've made a proposal to split the existing {{Canada-politician-stub}} type, which is qetting quite large. If you have any objections, modifications, or additions (or offers to help with the heavy lifting), please comment there. Alai 19:57, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

That was close

"All names should be in English."

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 18:31, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Strongly Dispute Neutrality of the "Ontario PC Party" Article

Hold on, here !!!!!!!!

Drew and Frost, being called "anti-French, anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant" is a very, very broad and general statement. I can not see any specifics in the article, only vague references to 'strains' of the above thought process. GROSSLY UNFAIR !

The author has these 2 men convicted without citing any evidence of his charge. It may be better to say, that Drew and Frost were 'thought to have anti-so and so tendencies by this academic/advocate'. Or better yet, to say that this is what they did/did not do/did not support that lent credence to the belief that they were anti-this or that.

207.144.205.124 07:39, 1 December 2006 (UTC)Eric207.144.205.124 07:39, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


Provincial Flags in PM articles

Seems someone's added the provincial flag of the birth place and death place of every PM to their info box? Is this really wise considering most provinces just used the Union Jack until well into the 20th C? Kevlar67 15:53, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Template: Infobox CanadianMP

Hi Folks:

It looks like you put a lot of effort into making the Canadian MP infobox. I would suggest though, that it follows more of the standard of the Infobox Politician (IBP). Currently, there isn't a provision to make a multiple office citation, like IBP. As well, the portfolio section is not set-up to have term dates (yes there is term2 start/finish, but that should be reserved to offices). A better descriptor for portfolio term would be pterm. That way, we could just import the IBF categories and have the same flexibility that that box offers. This came up, when I tried putting David Lewis (politician)'s leadership info, and it looked like whoever added his second term as an MP, added it in the Portfolio term section. I think the proposal i'm suggesting should fix this. I think we should also have four or five portfolio's, because many of these politicians held several like C.D. Howe, Marc Lalonde, Allen MacEachen to name a few. What do you think? Abebenjoe 23:34, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Merge proposal

WikiProject Government of Canada and Wikipedia:WikiProject Political parties and politicians in Canada are very similar and sometimes overlap. I propose that they are both merged to Wikipedia:WikiProject Canadian Politics (as a full WikiProject) or Wikipedia:WikiProject Canada/Politics (as a task force of WikiProject Canada). Any thoughts? Greeves (talk contribs reviews) 23:25, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that makes sense. There will still be a few policies that will be different between the politician articles and the structure articles, but those would be easy to differentiate between under one Wikiproject. I don't think it makes a big difference whether we put it at WikiProject:Politics or WikiProject:Canada/Politics. Either way we will be treated as a sub-project by the v1.0 assessment team. --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 20:53, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

But do you think it should be as a task force (Wikipedia:WikiProject Canada/Politics) or a child project (Wikipedia:WikiProject Canadian politics)? I'm leaning towards the task force myself. Also, could we throw WikiProject Electoral districts in Canada into the mix too? Greeves (talk contribs reviews) 02:32, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Against of merging it to Wikipedia:Wikiproject Government of Canada, because of the provincial parties and provincial politics. I would prefer Wikipedia:Wikiproject Canadian politics as Greeves suggested above.--JForget 02:00, 19 May 2007 (UTC)--

I agree that "Wikiproject Canadian politics" is our best name. Existing projects like "WikiProject Electoral districts" could become task forces of the new project. I say we let this proposal sit for a bit longer and if no one objects, we go through with it. --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 00:34, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I oppose any merge. The two projects have very distinct purposes. GreenJoe 01:07, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

They have "distinct purposes," but they could easily be one project. WP:POLITICS is not two projects. Greeves (talk contribs) 21:42, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Seeing as there has been no discussion in over a year, and no further movement towards a project merge, should this merge proposal be withdrawn? Dl2000 (talk) 00:35, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Quebec provincial ridings

I haven't spotted a Wikiproject:Quebec politics or any similarities, so I've posted it here. I've recently started created articles on former Quebec provincial electoral districts (i.e Dorchester, Beauce, Megantic, etc.) after all the current districts have been done. I've merged some of them to the current districts or at times merged two or more into one. See Category:Former Quebec provincial electoral districts and Category:Quebec provincial electoral districts.JForget 02:08, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

There is a listing for John A. Dawson, in Pictou riding, Nova Scotia which someone may want to disambig. It is the wrong guy. --Stormbay 01:21, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


All names should be in English?

Does this mean we should rename Jean Chretien to John Chretien? NorthernThunder 02:32, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Party colours in tables

The debate about how to organize the colours of historical Tory parties in tables has started up again at Template talk:Canadian politics/party colours in case anyone here is interested. --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 05:51, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Succession Box Organization

Hello, I am from Wikipedia:WikiProject Succession Box Standardization (WP:SBS), a project group that works on cleaning up succession boxes across Wikipedia, and standardizing them to meet a specific set of rules. I realized a number of days ago that your group has a LOT of templates currently in use, most of which do not fall under the guidelines we are attempting to standardize across the mainspace. It seems that there would be little objection to changing the actual succession boxes to the standard format, but the objections arise from the colored headings that this project currently uses. I have become quite adept at creating and working with headers and would like to offer my help in making a more standard header that would allow you to use just one template instead of 16+, as you currently do. In the meantime, I'd like to get some feedback from you and see what kind of ideas you all have. The header Template:s-par currently acts as a switch header which allows nearly all of your headers as an option. The main problem comes with the different governments. You seem to be the only project that differentiates titles between different governments. There also seems to be an issue of colors standardized for different governments, or something of that nature. Would someone please fill me in on the information and what would be required so I could create something that could help standardize these more and avoid the creation of so many templates? Thank you!
Whaleyland ( TalkContributions ) 22:09, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Our project uses specialized templates to designate members of each ministry, "colour-coded" in accordance with party affiliation. I realize that this approach has resulted in the creation of a disproportionately large number of templates, though I would argue that the end result serves the project well: providing a significant amount of information for our readers in a concise format. (I could note that our project also uses separate succession boxes for legislative and executive positions.)
My objections to the proposed changes are not particularly strong, but I don't see the need for a "one size fits all" model when the existing system seems to be working fairly well for us. CJCurrie 22:20, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
It's less works well with "us" as works well with everyone else. We are attempting to standardize succession boxes so they can be standard across wikipedia. Currently, the succession boxes you use are unique solely to your project and those, I find in desperate need of standardizing to those used with all the other pages. The headers are less of an issue and I was simply offering to make something that may work a little better and create less mass template creation. I am not quite sure why you use separate succession boxes for legislative and executive positions. That seems a little redundant since they are nearly identical but it may just be me.
Whaleyland ( TalkContributions ) 23:10, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not opposed to standardization in principle, but I cannot see the logic of accepting a system that provides less information to readers, standardized or not. (I wouldn't object to the harmonization of legislative and executive succession boxes, btw; I was just noting that we've done it differently in the past). CJCurrie 23:35, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
There is a limit to the amount of information that can be given through a succession box, and all of the information can be found in the article anyway. The important thing to note is that most of the important personalities that have been in a Canadian cabinet also have other titles which are categorised under different headers (with standardised colouring—see Template:S-start/doc for an overview), and the multiple colours of the cabinet headers may confuse the reader. The purpose of the colouring of the headers in SBS is to help the reader find titles more easily within large succession boxes, as all titles are supposed to be categorised under headers.
And add to all this that party leaders and deputy leaders will have a succession line for that office anyway (and under a dedicated "Party political offices" header) and thus it will be possible for the readers to see what party the subjects were in in the succession box anyway.
Furthermore, our standards are still being formed; it might actually be a good idea to add a "Cabinet" parameter to succession lines for cabinet positions, complete with a link to the appropriate cabinet page. Waltham, The Duke of 07:49, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

A fortnight has passed... Surely this silence means that there is some kind of consent? Waltham, The Duke of 08:51, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Not always. GreenJoe 12:08, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

BC Parties Expert?

I recently created Template:British Columbia provincial political parties. In the "Parties recognized by Elections BC, not active in the previous general election" section, I added articles for any of these parties that did not yet have a page, and the remaining red links did not have a web page. Are there any experts that can fill in the blanks? Morgan695 04:34, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I just wanted to let everyone know that there is a discussion occurring about "standardizing" the template. GreenJoe 20:55, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Removing {{PPAP}} reference

I would like to remove all reference to the {{PPAP}} banner on this page and instead encourage people to use {{WikiProject Canada | ppap=yes}}. My reason for this is that anything which is relivant to this project will also be relivant to WikiProject:Canada, and the later project has a Version 1.0 assessment table. Are there any objections? --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 02:44, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

In fact, I am going to replace the PPAP template with the WPCANADA template with the PPAP parameter turned on. Hopefully the template will be slowly replaced with the WPCANADA one as people rank articles. --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 22:06, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Pierre Trudeau's new succession box

Hello again. I have given Pierre Trudeau a succession box conforming to the templates, guidelines, and standards of WikiProject Succession Box Standardization, to serve as a sample for examination. Please have a look at it and let me know what you think. I am rather confident that very little information from the previous box structure has been lost, while there are several new benefits. Waltham, The Duke of 08:26, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Assessment table

I set up a v1.0 assessment table for the project. It only has a few articles listed in it now, but it will add more as the bots and job queue catch up. --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 00:28, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

The party is being Afd'd due to notability reasons. You opinions will help with the outcome.--Lenticel (talk) 07:04, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Standardization notes

Just a few notes on various projects that I've undertaken recently:

  1. As of right now, articles exist for all but one of the 191 women who have ever been elected to the House of Commons — Margaret Mary Macdonald is the last remaining straggler for whom I haven't created at least a stub. (Men, of course, are a much larger story.)
  2. "Current MLAs" templates now exist for every province and territory except British Columbia and Nova Scotia. These are as follows: {{Alberta MLAs}}, {{Saskatchewan MLAs}}, {{Manitoba MLAs}}, {{Ontario MPPs}}, {{Quebec MNAs}}, {{New Brunswick MLAs}}, {{Prince Edward Island MLAs}}, {{Newfoundland and Labrador MHAs}}, {{Yukon MLAs}}, {{Northwest Territories MLAs}} and {{Nunavut MLAs}}. I've created basic stubs for many, but not all, of the politicians who were still redlinked — though many obviously still need expansion, and redlinks should be filled in when possible. BC and NS templates will follow soon.
  3. Conversely, the "federal caucus by province" templates, which were being used for a few provinces' MP and senator contingents but not for others, have been taken off all remaining articles for the time being. We need to either use them consistently or not at all — we can't have Manitoba's and Nova Scotia's MPs using them if Quebec's and Saskatchewan's MPs aren't. I've also consequently experimented with redesigning some of them into a cleaner and less obtrusive navbox format; the alternate templates can be viewed at Template talk:Canada Provincial Parliamentary Delegation.
  4. I've created a starter infobox template, currently located at WP:CWNB/Parliament Infobox, for discussion and input with the ultimate goal being that all 39 going on 40 Canadian parliaments should have a standardized summary at the top of the article. Please review this infobox and suggest or implement any changes you think appropriate.
  5. Similarly, all 39 going on 40 Canadian elections should eventually have a similar infobox. I've tried playing around with {{Infobox Election}}, which does have a "parliamentary" set of parameters, but I find it uncomfortably British and not quite what we need.
  6. On a bit of a piecemeal "as-I-come-across-them" basis, I've been adding {{Infobox Canadian provincial riding}} to provincial electoral districts. In most cases I don't, however, have access to most of the information that's called for in the template — I've often been able to add only the province and the name of the incumbent MLA/MPP/MHA/MNA. Whenever possible, I've also arranged incumbent lists into a table much like the one seen, for example, on Nickel Belt (provincial electoral district), though many of the provincial electoral district articles don't even have incumbent lists to work from.

Ultimately, I'd like to initiate some discussion around standardizing our presentation of Canadian political topics — because as it stands right now, everybody goes for their own preferred format on their own subset of articles that they bother with, and as a result we don't even necessarily have a consistent format between electoral districts in downtown Toronto vs. those in North York, let alone Ontario vs. British Columbia. Bearcat 08:11, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

We should probably also rank the class and importance of the 242 unassessed articles in this WikiProject; I've set up a draft importance rankings for that purpose. As for the parliaments and elections pages, I've previously put in a bit of work trying to standardize them, and I think infoboxes would be a big help. I'll look into making a few changes to the one you made and then we can start adding them to pages. --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 16:22, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to standarize coverage of PMs

Further information: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Government of Canada#Proposal to standarize coverage of PMs

assessment drive

At some point we should work on assessing the last 241 articles in this project. --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 17:11, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Infobox information on Prime Ministers' pages

A debate over the inclusion of the monarch in the infoboxes of Canadian prime ministers, similar to what is done at a number of other PM articles throughout Wikipedia, has re-emerged at Talk:Stephen Harper#Re-open discussion: Infobox -- include GG and monarch?. Opinions on the matter are welcome, if not necessary! --G2bambino (talk) 03:18, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Ordinal ranking of Canadian Prime Ministers

I notice that User:Lol57yeung is changing ordinal rankings inside the infobox for Prime ministers where they served more than one term (John A. Macdonald) et cetera. Was there some previous discussion or consensus the user can be referred to? Flibirigit (talk) 16:51, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there is any official policy, whether here or in law, but every academic and news source that I have seen counts Canadian prime ministers once even if they served two or three times, unlike the American numbering which gives a split-term president two ordinal numbers. Stephen Harper is always called the 22nd Prime Minister, never the 27th. --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 17:20, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
I figured there was a consensus, and tried to follow the precedent at List of Prime Ministers of Canada, which does not count anyone twice. Flibirigit (talk) 18:11, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Is it possible to find some more sources of information on this topic FemINist INitiative of Canada? It is tagged with a notability tag, and there are currently 31 articles in the scope of wikiproject Canada which are tagged with notability concerns, so I am contacting all those who may be able to see if the quantity of notable articles can be reduced, and quality increased. For more help see this note. SriMesh | talk 18:20, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Prime Minister infobox

There is a discussion on Talk:Stephen Harper about whether we should include the name of the person who appointed the PM in their info boxes. As with any talk like this, if you participate, I'd like to remind people to give their opinion about what is best for the encyclopedia rather then just telling us whether you are a monarchist or a republican. --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 23:32, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I tried to be nice....I think; Mark Marissen

I just finished commenting on the recent series of WP:SPA edits of Mark Marissen, which I've had on my watchlist since the Erik Bornmann Affair a while back. Mostly innocuous, although suspiciously insider-style in the way of updates; I think I already cited WP:COI and WP:AUTO in a casual way, not like more formal notices on some BC political party pages, but continued activity by a discontinuous series of SPAs made me decide to write this just now. I tried not to be heavy-handed, and I think my points there about playing along and also about some originally-single-agenda contributors learning to be good Wikipedians is valid enough; my note here is just to ask others to keep an eye on this page, and on those of all major p.r. consultants and political party operatives; it's like we should have "PPPOV Watch" - Professional Politician Point-of-View Watch (Professional meaning private sector as well as elected politicians....; likiewise environmentalist bios and FN bios)- just in case one spins out of control, as was going on with the Bornmann and Ledge raids articles; Railgate, as it should be titled (that's a redirect) needs an update; I've been following it on the BC Mary blog (linked there) but there's too much volume of material, and needs someone with an eye for pure citation because of the legalities involved, even though the court ban is now effectively complelteyl lifted (it's just there's too much evidenced for anyone to geeet a chance to, or have thte dough to get acces s to; oh, it's complicated....and I'd be a bit POV. Marissen has nothing to do with it, so far as anyone knows anyway; the only reason these were connected is some of the same SPAs worked on the respective bios, don't think there was a Marissen SPA who also worked on Railgate; the only further connection is a one-degree-of-separation in that Bornmann and Marissen knew each other from the party, and maybe Bornmann had once had a contract with him. I haven't really looked at David Bercuson or David Frum or Michael Campbell or other similar pollitical commentattor bios to compare; I imagine to some degree you'd expect it in consultant bios just as much as I've come to on MP bios...anyway hope I wasn't too heavy-handed....Skookum1 (talk) 03:53, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

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Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 21:16, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Link to "Historica Heritage Minute" deleted from "External Links" section of "Louis-Joseph Papineau" article

I posted a link to the "Historica Heritage Minutes" feature on "Hart & Papineau" in the "External Links" section for this article. This link, and similar "Historica Heritage Minutes" links in other articles, were deleted the next day. These Historica "Heritage Minutes" are very informative mini-documentaries about interesting people and events in Canadian history. Can someone at Wikipedia please tell me why the links to the "Hitorica Heritage Minutes" sites were deleted from the Wikipedia pages on Papineau and from similar Wiki articles? This is the URL of one the links that was deleted: Hart & Papineau http://www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?id=10131 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Elmridge (talkcontribs) 15:20, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

The link seems to be back; there should have been no problem with this as it provides useful supporting material for the Louis-Joseph Papineau article. Dl2000 (talk) 23:11, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Political parties and politicians in Canada

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:29, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Political party election history sections

IMO the election results tables should list the percentage of seats won. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 00:03, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Could someone here have a look at Thomas William Taylor? There is a link to a Robert Muir. But it can't be the later Robert Muir (politician), who was born in 1919. Does anyone know who the 1900 Robert Muir is? Was he only ever a failed candidate, or what? If so, should probably be delinked. Carcharoth (talk) 23:29, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Thought I'd better post these recent SPA edits here for comment/investigation; they sound pretty POV to me; even moreso if they're from the National Post article that was added by the same contributor.Skookum1 (talk) 23:33, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

The information is true and relevant, though it could be reworded to be a bit less hostile. --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 05:20, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
First posts moved from User Talk pages, initialy discussing List of premiers of Nunavut

That box is for the election in the riding, not as election as premier. He was elected in Iqaluit West three times, February 15, 1999, February 16, 2004 and October 27, 2008. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 04:41, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I know what that box is for, I set up the layout of the first ministers tables 2.5 years ago. The article is a list of premiers, not a list of ridings won by people who once served as premiers. Paul lost the election to be first minister in the third election; we don't mention any of the other non-premiers, so why should we mention him? Look at all of the other lists of first ministers in Template:Canadian_First_Ministers. When Harper replaced Martin for federal Prime Minister, we didn't start listing both Martin's and Harper's elections, we stuck to Harper's because he was the new Prime Minister and the list is about Prime Ministers. --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 05:14, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Then why have the box say Elections (Riding)? That's unclear. Anyway I fixed it now so that it's clear what it means. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 05:20, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
I agree that it should be clearer, but I think that the links to the election articles were useful, so we shouldn't take those out. Do you think it would be clearer if we listed the links to the general elections in a separate column from the ridings like they do in List of premiers of Quebec? --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 05:23, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Agh, I had a reply with links typed up and hit some key and it all vanished. Which is why this reply took way longer than it should have.
After looking through the various articles I see that there are only three that use "Elections (riding)", List of premiers of Ontario, List of premiers of Saskatchewan and List of premiers of British Columbia. I think that they would be better if they were somewhat like Quebec, although "General elections" might be a better title. Others such as List of premiers of Newfoundland and Labrador are still a little confusing. Look down the list to "Premiers of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador" and #2 Frank D. Moores or #5 Clyde Wells. Did they resign before the election? Did they run in their riding but weren't elected so the party picked another leader?
Look at List of premiers of the Northwest Territories and List of premiers of Nunavut, because there is no party politics in either territory there is no way to tell from the box that Joe Handley had not run again nor that Paul won his riding, but lost the seperate election for the premiership. It's explained earlier in the Nunavut article but there is nothing in the NWT one. Now it's easy enough to add the wording "Did not run" or something like that for Handley and any others in the same list that have no explanation. But there also needs to be an explanation in the box for ones like Paul. Looking at the NWT ones I see that Dennis Patterson was premier from 1987-1991, was re-elected in his riding in 1991 but Nellie Cournoyea became premier but it's not shown that Patterson ran again, nor if he ran for the premiership.
At the same time I am making the assumption that, in the south, if a person is no longer leader of their party they are not running in the following election. That's why it would be necessary to have something in the Clyde Wells section in Newfoundland and Labrador. Of course then there's this province that is different to all the rest.
I just noticed, for a non-Canadian it's not always clear that the leaders are elected as part of the party and not in a seperate election. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 06:14, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
I've also lost many posts from hitting the wrong key.
Ridings are missing in most lists because most provinces' archives don't have that information online for the historical elections. Ideally, all ridings will be included one day. Then again, it might be better to split the ridings into a seperate article like List of Prime Ministers of Canada by constituency.
For the elections column, "general elections" would, indeed be a better heading, as that is where the links go and is what we are trying to convey; that column was never meant to talk about the premiers individual riding elections.
Alberta is different just because it is an older list. It will be updated to match the other provinces eventually.
Those examples on the Newfoundland list do need to be cleared up, I doubt that the transfer of power happened right after the election in the same way that it does after a new party is elected. In NWT and Nunavut, I'm not sure whether it's relevant whether the Premier ran again. The way that I had it set up implies that Paul lost the primiership as a direct result of the election.
We could make all of the provinces' and the territories' lists clearer by adding a line at the end of each premier's box saying "defeated" or "transfered power" and giving the date of the election, but that seems a bit redundant with the election link in the next premier's box. I guess we should alway err on the side of clarity for non-specialists, so that might be a good idea. --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 06:38, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Actually, maybe "General Elections" wouldn't be a good header since that column contains other events like "died in office" and "designated". We could call the column "events", although that doesn't make it clear that we are talking about general elections. I wonder if something like "General elections and appointment dates" would work. --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 06:45, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
It might be best to remove the ridings altogether, as they may use the same name but change over time. General elections and appointment dates might work. Am I correct in thinking that it's only the NWT and Nunavut where the premiership race is seperate from the general election? If so, then is it also correct that only in the NWT and Nunavut is it a requirement that the person must hold a seat before they become premier? As opposed to being the leader of a party that is in power and thus being premier but not gaining a seat until a by-election. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 07:12, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Okay, ridings are out. In NWT and Nunavut premiers are appointed in the exact same way as everywhere else, they are chosen by the MPs/MLAs. The only difference is that in NWT and Nunavut they do not have political parties, so you have to ask your local candidate who they will be supporting as premier. In provinces or territories, the MPs/MLAs can choose someone not in the legislature (i.e. the party leader), but that person has to get a seat via a by-election asap. --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 07:45, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
OK now I'm more confused. I thought that, in the south and the Yukon using either a Leadership convention or One member, one vote, a party would choose the leader, and assuming the party won the election, that person would become premier. And that going into the election, you as a voter would know which people had the potential to become the next premier. However, it appears to me that you are saying that only the MPs/MLAs choose the leader or am I mis-reading that? In the NWT and Nunavut there is no way to tell before the election who will become premier and for the most part who is interested. In the last Nunavut election I don't recall seeing anything that indicated who would be interested in running for premier. While this is probably not the most authoritive of sources it is from the legislative assembly and says that the premier must be picked from the members and would not be picked from a non sitting memeber. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 14:48, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
On paper they work the same way, and MPs/MLAs in the provinces could support someone other than their party leader, though they never would for the sake of their own carriers, so it's a safe bet that if you vote for a Liberal MP/MLA, they'll support the Liberal leader for premier. In the provinces, you can have independent candidates who might support anyone for premier, although they can say something like "I'll support the Liberals on everything except for issue X". In NWT/Nunavut all candidates are independents, so you can't be sure who they'll support, although you could have an MLA who says while campaigning "I really like Paul as premier and will vote as he votes". --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 14:58, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Minor overhaul

What do people think of this layout? I made the "assembly" column length change to encompase all the PMs and events within it, so one can visualy scan what is going on and when.

As in another discussion elsewhere, the use of "assemblies" here is just not how sittings are described; the term is capital-P "Parliaments". I don't know where you're getting "Assemblies" from but it just looks odd....Skookum1 (talk) 18:45, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm sure that there are a bunch of semantic errors to be found in the first ministers lists, but that's not what I'm looking for here. This proposal is regarding the change to layout, specifically giving each Parliament its own row rather than the current practice of listing them all together in the same box. --Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 21:10, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Premier
(party)
Period Parlia-
ments
General Elections & Key Events
- William Lyon Mackenzie King
(Liberal)
(3rd time of 3)
October 23, 1935
November 14, 1948
18th Elected October 14, 1935
19th Re-Elected March 26, 1940
20th Re-Elected June 11, 1945[1]
By-Election August 6, 1945
Resigned (Retired) 1948
12th Louis St. Laurent
(Liberal)
November 15, 1948
June 20, 1957
Designated August 7, 1948
21st Re-elected June 27, 1949
22nd Re-Elected August 10, 1953
File:DiefYoung.jpg
13th John Diefenbaker
(Progressive Conservative)
June 21, 1957
April 21, 1963
23rd Elected June 10, 1957 to a minority government
24th Re-Elected March 31, 1958
25th Re-Elected June 18, 1962 to a minority government
14th Lester B. Pearson
(Liberal)
April 22, 1963
April 19, 1968
26th Elected April 8, 1963 to a minority government
27th Re-Elected November 8, 1965 to a minority government
Resignation (Retired) April 20, 1968
15th Pierre Trudeau
(Liberal)
(1st time of 2)
April 20, 1968
June 3, 1979
Designated April 6, 1968
28th Re-elected June 25, 1968
29th Re-Elected October 30, 1972 to a minority government
30th Re-Elected July 8, 1974

Lately I've been noticing the Premier's name showing up on a lot of pages where it just doesn't belong, as in this bit which I changed as in this edit on the Coquihalla Highway page plugging "his" lifting of tolls on that highway. On the Premiers of BC page there was a very nice smiling portrait, just the kind that looks good on election posters, and I've noticed as I said superfluous mentions of him in various articles. It seems to me that his press-kit designers are peppering Wikipedia's BC articles with mentions of the Premier, who's in a public relations morasse right now and facing an election date of his own making next year (and at this point doesn't seem likely to win). So keep your eyes open for this kind of "fluff"; it's not just Campbell, although insertions of his name are all pretty pointedly artificial; there's other instances of "plugs" for politicians when "the provincial/federal government" is the more neutral phrase. Be wary of quasi-spam politician content.....Skookum1 (talk) 16:04, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Hello, I would like to take the page to FLC in the not to distant future. Any opinions on the list are more than welcome. Also, if someone could browse over the lead and make sure everything is accurate, it would be appreciated. Thanks, Scorpion0422 19:47, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Religion in Politicians Infobox

Why should religion be included in the politician's infobox? I suggest it's not a key point in their public career. You hardly ever hear of Canadian politicians' religious views in the news, and it's typically not even a key point in the articles.--Ducio1234 (talk) 16:23, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree. It was occasionally a minor point of discussion in Canada's early days but, even if it was a important issue, it is better represented by discussion of that issue in the article rather than a line without any context in the infobox. At the same time, it is not only a political biography but also a personal biography and we do not need to lose that information. It should probably be mentioned, with a reference, within a personal life section and, with luck, some context on what importance it had on the subject's life. In the case of someone like John Sparrow David Thompson, it is easy because it is firstly documented that he was born and raised a Methodist but sought and tried out other denominations like Anglican before finally converting to his wife's Catholic religion and secondly, he was the first Catholic prime minister. Others may be more difficult (I don't know) to connect their religion with any context but, in that case, may be is not a well-enough publicly known influence and should be kept out of our biography. DoubleBlue (talk) 17:50, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
I completely agree. I'm in favour of removing religion from the infobox because it is not necessarily a significant issue in the politician's personal biography or public career. Plus, I don't believe having one word to represent the religious views of someone helps the article, as it may give false impressions of his or her complex outlook and backgroud. Religion is better considered in the article rather than one word lacking contextual background.--Ducio1234 (talk) 15:20, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
It seems very sensible to me; so much so that I'd like to see a wide consensus on the idea to justify removing it generally and will invite requests for comment from WP:CANBOARD. Please indicate your rationale for supporting or opposing a general guideline to omit the religion from the infoboxes of biographies of Canadian politicians. DoubleBlue (talk) 19:33, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
I have a slight preference against removing the field. While it should certainly be used with restraint (i.e. only where there are reliable sources and no particular disagreement), I think it's at least as relevant as the spouse, children, alma mater, etc. fields. For some politicians, like William Aberhart, Mackenzie Bowell, or Ujjal Dosanjh, it's probably substantially more relevant. I can live with any decision, but my preference would be for the field's continued inclusion. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 19:52, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
I would support omitting religion from the infoboxes, based on the opinions above, esp. Ducio1234's comments. Mentioning religion in the article allows it to be referenced in proper context where it is relevant to do so. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 20:58, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
I completely support omitting religion from the infobox. It's occasionally relevant to some individual politicians, but can be more effectively handled by actually discussing it in a properly referenced and sourced context in the article itself — but for most politicians it's not really relevant, and especially these days for a good many of them the religious denomination that they ascribe to isn't even on the public record at all. Oftentimes it can only be added by making assumptions, e.g. "they have a French surname, so they must be Catholic." (Whither Huguenots?) For what it's worth, though, I suspect the field is present in the infobox because there are still some other countries in the world — it is a standard international template, after all — where religion is a more prominent factor in day-to-day political life. Bearcat (talk) 19:40, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

So it looks like we have consensus to remove religion from the infobox?--Ducio1234 (talk) 17:01, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I advise removing it without fear from all Canadian politician infoboxes. An edit summary linking to this discussion or an suggestion that if it is relevant, it should be included with context in the article might help get the message to concerned article-watchers. DoubleBlue (talk) 21:59, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
I support the suggestion to remove religion from infoboxes. GiuseppeMassimo (talk) 18:34, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

-It was a very unfortunate idea to remove a politician's religious affiliation from the infobox. Paul Martin is a practicing Roman Catholic and he spoke publicly about his faith during the debate on same-sex marriage. Having the information in the infobox serves as a quick reference, and does not require the reader to try to find it buried somewhere in the article. I couldn't find any reference at all in the Martin entry to his faith. If we remove the religious affiliation of Canadian politicians why leave the names of their children? It seems to me that it is more important to know that Harper is a member of the Christian Missionary Alliance than the fact that his children are called Benjamin and Rachel. Please restore the religious affiliation for Canadian politicians, and context can be provided in the article. Removing the religious affiliation of each politician does not improve the infobox in any way--it simply makes unavailable a piece of information that you often cannot find elsewhere. If you are looking to find Layton's faith, Wikipedia was one of the few places to visit in order to discover that he is a member of the United Church of Canada. [Chris] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.51.21.252 (talk) 04:18, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

I found the information about a politician's religious affiliation in the infobox quite handy. If it is to be removed from the infobox however, it should be at least added in the personal section of the biography. Just removing it reduces the informational value of the article. Gugganij (talk) 20:18, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

If religion is important in the politician's biography, it should be included, discussed and referenced in the article. Automatically including it in the infobox is misguided in my opinion, because it's often not significant in the article and acts simply as a label posted on to the politician to describe his or her complex outlook on life--which I believe does not improve the article or advance knowledge.--Ducio1234 (talk) 20:37, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
Hi, I think religious affiliation is an important bit of personal information (as long, stating the obvious, it is backed up by sources). It does by no means reduce the person's complex world views, it just provides the simple information that a person (at least nominally) belongs to a certain religious institution. Gugganij (talk) 21:49, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
Hello, in the article on Paul Martin, for example, there's no mention of his Catholic beliefs. I don't see why the infobox should include his religion as Roman Catholic if it's not notable enough to be included main text. If someone wants to explain in the article why his religious beliefs are important to his career or biography, that's great. But there's no reason to summarize his beliefs in the infobox if it's not mentioned in the article. For some politicians religion isn't important and it does not necessarily relate to his or her biography and career. In cases like these, it doesn't make sense to include religion in the infobox because its not significant.--Ducio1234 (talk) 23:07, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
I think since its standard practice for other countries' politicians to have their religion in their infoboxes, that there is no reason why we should be any different. And really, do we have any jurisdiction to be different? -- Earl Andrew - talk 21:51, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
We should not simply follow the established pattern if it does not reflect the consenus of editors interested in Canadian political parties and politicians. Despite the recent concerns, I believe the consensus remains to remove religion from the infobox for the reasons discussed. As for jurisdiction, someone else will have to clear that up.--Ducio1234 (talk) 01:00, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

*sigh* This is exactly what happened to music genres in infoboxes. After people realized how stupid the idea of removing them was, they came back. Same thing will happen here. There is no reason why religion shouldn't be in the infobox (properly sourced). What we have here is a couple users who think it's pointless. That is absolutely no justification for removal. --Pwnage8 (talk) 17:27, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I would appreciate if you wrote why there's no reason to remove religion and doing so is stupid. This started because I asked a question and no one provided a convincing explanation why religion should be included in the infobox.--Ducio1234 (talk) 19:16, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
I found it interesting to read mini biographies of politicians who were historically active in the early 1900s and the inclusion of their religion. It would also be relevant to those who are still living who are very involved in both politics and religion, for example Robert Ogle and Lorne Calvert. Otherwise it probably has no direct pertinence and of no real notability for current contemporary politicians in an article directly related to politics. If it is in the infobox, I am in agreement it should be in the article proper and sourced. My two cents worth. SriMesh | talk 00:23, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Strongly oppose removing them. Should Canadian politicians be treated differently than politicians in other countries in the world??? CrazyC83 (talk) 06:41, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
No, irrelevant and insignificant information should be removed from all biographies. Infoboxes should summarize the article, if religion isn't even in the article it shouldn't be in the infobox.--Ducio1234 (talk) 19:16, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Any Canadian political scientist (or political scientist period) worth his salt would agree that religion has an effect on politics and politicians, and Canada's is no different. If Pierre Trudeau's Catholic beliefs were such a strong part of his ideals, and Mackenzie King's own mysticism a part of his, and the Reform Party/Canadian Alliance/Conservative Party having closer traditional values involving Christianity, then why remove it in the first place? Stop trying to be so damn politically correct. It's biographical information, and is not useless. --TheAxeGrinder (talk) 17:43, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

No one is saying that religious affiliation should not be included in the article; just not added to the infobox without any context. The proper place is within the article with explanation. DoubleBlue (talk) 17:52, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I strongly oppose removing this information. I use it regularly to quickly identify a politicians religious affiliation without having to search for it in an article. This policy exists across Wikipedia, why should it be any different for Canadian politicians? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.243.141.75 (talk) 23:04, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

The "Honourable Doctors" Ignatieff and Dion

Please see Talk:Michael_Ignatieff#Honorifics_in_Infobox about standardization/protocol issues and if this is normal, why do only Ph.D's get "Doctor" and not LL.D's as well?Skookum1 (talk) 15:56, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Harper fluffery on Canadian identity

Please see Talk:Stephen_Harper#More_Harper_wiki-fluffing.Skookum1 (talk) 16:16, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

For an extremely insignificant discussion that may still be of interest...

...see here. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 14:15, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Lists of smalltown mayors?

On the town/village pages anyway, I don't mean standalone lists. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Canadian_communities#Lists_of_smalltown_mayors.Skookum1 (talk) 02:35, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 06:19, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

unreadable template

Hi, the template used on James Stock for "Leaders of the Ontario Libertarian Party" has blue text on dark green background and is virtually illegible. This project seemed the right place to point this out - I hope someone can fix it! Thanks. PamD (talk) 12:21, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

BC's election gag law and POV politician bios

Hi....an interesting issue raised itself because of an IP interloper's objection to an inlince cmoment of mine calling for $$ figures to balance the half-information on the "Tax Reductions" section of the Gordon Campbell 1st Term article-section; best to sum up by having you read this but while writing it i realized that POV-washing during the election campaign, and any article that reads like advertising, pro or con, is theoretically subject to BC's new gag law, which limits (severely, and expensively if fines are levied) third-party advertising and editorial content. Even Rafe Mair has his tongue tied by the law (see his latest article on The Tyee http://thetyee.ca where he mentions it in passing). The Campbell article in particular is going to need a "Protect" during hte election campaign, and it needs a lot of work to get it to POV and not read like a p.r. brochure; I added some mention of other non-p.r.-friendly materials, but a read through the earlier talkpage posts demonstrates that this article has had a troubled history of censorship, I haven't looked at the history but I suspect it's a lot of activity from IP and SPA users....fine, it's a political football. The thing is that if it's a political brochure, it falls under gag law restrictions. Such that people in Canada can't edit it without being subject to rulings by the BC Elections commissioner; those in other countries are theoretically exempt unless a "political firewall" is put up around the province, a la the People's Republic of China...this is obviously not a good thing. Anyway the IP user who provoked me to write this seems intent on tryingt to provoke me enough to silence me altogether; curiously enough their IP address is in Minnesota, I've even identified the company it comes from....so why are they so interested? Alleging nothing here, just questioning, and also seeking a policy/action on making sure Wikipedia and wikipedians don't fall afoul of the current BC elections laws; which not incuriously weree put in place by Campbell's government.....Lots of BC political bios, and BC political-issue articles, need more attention; I know simply out of political nausea most of us stay away from them ,national politics is almost more palatable....but given teh history of the article, its current state, and the dangers implicit in the new elections law, I think this article needs some more attention, and perhaps, once the election campaign starts, some form of protection.....Skookum1 (talk) 22:34, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

FLRC

User:Cool3 has nominated List of premiers of Saskatchewan for featured list removal here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured list criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks, where editors may declare to "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Dabomb87 (talk) 04:05, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Article issues/"essay" switch = template for "resume"?

I've just started looking through the candidates linked in British Columbia general election, 2009 to see who doesn't have the WPCAn/PPAP/BC template; many have the WP/BLP template and lots need anti-resume/POV cleanup as well as references for a lot of the usually-needless personal detail that are chocked into them. Is there a switch for "article issues" that addresses "Wikipedia is not a resume" properly? "Essay" and "POV" and auto/coi just don't seem to fit the bill; two examples are Terry Lake (Liberal, Kamloops) and Robin Austin (NDP, Skeena); older political bios like Nelson Riis are also full of similar bumpf, it's non-partisan as a wiki-vice. I've spent quite a bit of time trying to bring balance and less of a personal "Gordon worked hard to pay for his education" bumpf in the Premier's article, but it's clear that between the NDP party machine on the one hand and the $23 million Public Affairs Bureau (British Columbia) with its 223 well-paid staffers working out of hte legislature basement that there's a LOT of p.r. information that's been fed into Wikipedia to serve as election-pamphlet material. A "resume" or "no political brochures" template seems more than necessary, and not just in the current instance; no doubt this is a widespread problem in other provinces/countries as well....Skookum1 (talk) 15:49, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Please see this on the main WP Canada talkpage.Skookum1 (talk) 21:31, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

As you can see this is a redlink, indicating it's missing from the roster of defunct ridings; Clark held this seat from 1996 to 2001, when it was adjusted into Port Moody-Westwood, her seat until her retirement from politics. Needs an article...Skookum1 (talk) 03:00, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Geoff Plant - retirement date??

I've been adding things left rather blatantly out of British Columbia general election, 2005#Pre-election period, including the BC Legislature Raids and Christy Clark's resignation; Plant resigned around the same time but his article does not give a date. I've also placed an advert tag on the article on his successor John Yap, which reads like a campaign brochure/political resume (as is probably the case with lots of politician articles).Skookum1 (talk) 03:00, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Because I had been looking up the Powder Mountain ski area proposal re the controversies section of 2010 Winter Olympics, where it should be added and needs its own article (on my list of to-do's), the name of Jim Chabot - James Chabot came up. He was one of WAC Bennett's most powerful and better-known cabinet ministers and is the namesake of James Chabot Provincial Park in Invermere; I've added one category - just the Social Credit MLAs category - and don't know what else might apply; is there no cabinet ministers category for BC or is there "members of the Privy Council of British Columbia" or some such? User:Brianga had previously deleted this article as non-notable, but clearly User:Briaaga wasn't well-informed. The article is a stub and I've only one cite on it for now.... Skookum1 (talk) 18:58, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I can't find a cabinet minister category for B.C.; I know for sure that Alberta doesn't have one. And in Brianga's defense, the article he deleted was about a Harry Potter fan club president born in 1994. Steve Smith (talk) 19:06, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
oh, well, certainly a different Jim Chabot, then......I've just corrected the riding(s) - Columbia-Revelstoke only existed for the 1933 election, Chabot's riding was originally Columbia (electoral district) from 1963; in 1966 it was Columbia River (electoral district). Not sure if he's still alive but have placed "living-yes" in WP:Bio template just to make sure.Skookum1 (talk) 19:12, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I've just commented at Talk:James_Atebe#first_African-Canadian_mayor , if someone would care to expand this article, the cites are out there...,Skookum1 (talk) 20:56, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

"List of mayors of X"

"List of mayors of X" of various places is probably a pretty good idea; town articles tend to have only the current mayor, they should have internal or linked lists - there's probably List of mayors of Vancouver .....I know Jhonder Basran was the first Indo-Canadian mayor (of Lillooet, British Columbia......back to Mission, it had one of the longest-serving reeves (not just longest-serving female mayor), Ethel Ogle.....the List of mayors of Mission, British Columbia page, if made, could have separate sections for Reeves of the District of Mission and Mayors of the Town of Mission City.Skookum1 (talk) 20:23, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I've just added this project's tag to Hawes' article - another former mayor of Mission, there's also Abe Neufeld, Sophie Weremchuk, Neville Cox (mayor who led amalgamtion), and John Agnew as well as many earlier reeves and mayors. Pondering that "Category:Politicians from Mission, British Columbia might also serve well, likewise for other places, so that mayors, MLAs, MPs et al.. The wording might have to be adjusted I guess, because an MP for a town might be from that town, because of the way ridings are; Richard McBride, for instance, was MLA for Westminster and Westminster-Dewdney, then Dewdney ridings (all including Mission) so if we did a by-riding category there'd be too many, I think, such categories; easier to have them by town...Category:MLAs serving Mission, British Columbia, would include all historical MLAs, for example..there's also the matter of defunct municipalities like Dewdney - I haven't been able to figure out what its dates of incorporation were or its dissolution or why, all I have is a reference in BCGNIS that a Mr. McKamey was its first mayor - search "McKamey Creek} or use radius search at the BCGNIS link on the Dswdney page. There's others I've heard of, no idea of its boundaries...which might have been large...; why it wasn't amalgamated with the District of Mission at the time is part of the question; there were various economic collapses in the 1905-1913 period that might have taken it down but that's just a guess; it wasn't around by the '30s, I'm pretty sure....Re Hawes' article and others like it see next.Skookum1 (talk) 20:56, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

campaign soap articles

I think we need a special tag/template for politician bios and party articles that are clearly campaign-driven and need balance; partly to warn the reader that they're one-sided and/or purely promotional. There's so many of them we don't have time to go all over them (politicians breed like rabbits, figuratively speaking), that even a task force wouldn't be enough to deal with the flood of bios; same with new-company articles, many of which are written purely as stock promotion/p.r. and there's not enough informed editors, or those willing or able to know where to look for more to add to such articles, that some kind of special set of "political POV" or a {{campaign brochure}} tag be evolved; yes, there's POV tags and unreferenced tags and essay tags and COI/AUTO, but political bios are so many and so much of a type of their own I think it'd be a good idea; knowing nothing about wiki policy or further measures out there; doubtless developed with input from WP:Politics and WP:Bio of course, but .....Skookum1 (talk) 20:56, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Please see Template talk:Canadian Rockies about sectioning the mountain range section by major grouping; I'm a klutz with messing with template design - please have a looksee.Skookum1 (talk) 20:56, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

ooops sorry put that on the wrong subproject page; I'll move it later LOL....Skookum1 (talk) 20:13, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Suggesting Category:Former British Columbia MLAs and/or Category:Current British Columbia MLAs....or Category:British Columbia MLAs (historical) vs. Category:British Columbia MLAs (current). Also would seem to apply to other provinces' members and to MPs huh?Skookum1 (talk) 20:13, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Senatorial divisions?

On the page for L-G Forget, last LG of the NWT and first LG of Saskatchewan, I saw this phrase:

In 1911, he was appointed to the Senate of Canada representing the senatorial division of Banff, Alberta. He died while in office in 1923.

And have seen similar references in other articles....never really heard of senatorial divisions and wondering if we should have lists of them for each province, with office-holders past and present. I've always assumed senators were just by-province but if there's a subdivision/districting system we should probably have something on it....Skookum1 (talk) 18:27, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Only Quebec has official Senate divisions, which I beleive is mentioned in Senate articles. All other provinces the Senator can designate themselves as a Senator at-large or as representing a specific area. There is no set division for them to represent it is completely up to them. Sethpt (talk) 20:17, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Party Leadership & Infoboxes

I had to fix up some of the infoboxes of Party leaders. The Infobox is (IMHO) for House of Commons offices & Provincial legislature offices. Party leader 'is not' such an office. GoodDay (talk) 19:30, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

For example: In the Stephane Dion article. It's alright to have Leader of the Opposition in this infobox, but we shouldn't have Leader of the Liberal Party. GoodDay (talk) 19:32, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

So, one of the tasks mentioned on the project page is adding pictures of all current sitting MPs from the Parliament Website. Are these pictures public domain? Do we have the correct permission to use these photos in articles?

Bkissin (talk) 20:21, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

They are not in the public domain and, while it seems likely that we could use them under the doctrine of fair dealing, Wikipedia's own policies require that such images be used only where compliant with the WP:NFCC, which isn't here. In short, we can't use them. Steve Smith (talk) 00:47, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for clearing that up, Steve. I'll go and reword that goal on the project page. Bkissin (talk) 01:12, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Canadian MP infoboxes

The template Infobox CanadianMP only redirects to the page Template:Infobox officeholder. Do we have a consensus of which of the infoboxes on that page to use for Canadian MPs? NorthernThunder (talk) 04:14, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Category:Canadian liberals

FYI, Category:Canadian liberals has been nominated for deletion at WP:CFD, see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 February 26.

70.29.210.242 (talk) 06:24, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Category:Canadian conservatives

FYI, Category:Canadian conservatives has been nominated for deletion at WP:CFD, see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 February 26.

70.29.210.242 (talk) 06:28, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Please see Category_talk:Independent_MLAs_in_British_Columbia.Skookum1 (talk) 16:59, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

adding to Wikiproject / ppap

Hey, i added 111 articles to this wikiproject just now, for all of you. I am running AWB, went through the items listed at first alphabetical list of Canadian house of commons members (List of Members of the Canadian House of Commons (A)). It seemed to me that 111 needed Wikiproject Canada tag, while 170 did not. Seems like about 40 percent of all pages lack Wikiproject Canada, if i am doing this right. Could someone check these, before i do more? I applied {{WikiProject Canada|ppap=yes}} to talk pages. Most are politicians, but also some electoral districts and the Labour Party of Canada. I applied ppap to all, hope that is okay/good for the electoral districts too. Thanks! --doncram (talk) 04:38, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

In my contributions history, i am refering to this edit and the 110 preceding. I do see i could have added "importance=low" to all/most of these entries. I did not add province-specific subtags, but could not do so easily in AWB, which i had set up to bring me to the Talk pages (and i could not see the corresponding article to identify the relevant province). So i am leaving it to project members to add the "the province=yes switch (bc=yes, ab=yes etc) as applicable", which Skookum1 already suggested to me. Skookum1 also suggested "If they're retired sports people, also add sports=yes....(as so many, in fact, are...)", also not easily doable by me. --doncram (talk) 19:31, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
You did some edits to some of the articles that I am either watching or editing, and they seemed fine to me.--Abebenjoe (talk) 01:08, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Did through H's within List of Members of the Canadian House of Commons (B), adding {{WPCANADA|ppap=yes|class=stub|importance=low}} when the Talk page omits any mention of "Canada" so cannot be in WikiProject Canada, by my reasoning for fine-tuning AWB. Done for now. --doncram (talk) 01:10, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Creating a portal for this topic

Hello I am Moxy and i make portals. Recently there has been a change to the Template talk:WikiProject Canada, this has made me aware that you guys do not have a portal. Was thinking of making a portal for you guys if you think its something appropriate to have. And if you would like one ...what would be the main articles you would like to see appear in it.. For an example of what i do see --> Portal:Ottawa...pls let me know if you would like one!!!..Moxy (talk) 23:47, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Support Please do, though I obviously do not speak for anyone other than my self. My suggestion for a name would be Portal "Canadian Politics". P.S., I know I must have broken some kind of Wiki rule or convention by changing the title of this thread, but I thought it would make more sense and get others to respond --Abebenjoe (talk) 01:05, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done..pls add stuff at will --Portal:Canadian politics....Moxy (talk) 21:34, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Pls also note that User:MSGJ was kind enough to add the portal to this -->Template:WikiProject Canada..as seen at the top of this page Your portal appears automatically in the Canada WikiProject template ...all the best hope the portal gets you some new editor's......Moxy (talk) 20:32, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Merging provincial parties into Natural Law Party of Canada

The Natural Law Party of Canada was a fringe party that was active from about 1992 to about 2000. Hundreds of federal and provincial candidates ran on its slates, though none were elected. (Magician Doug Henning was their most prominent candidate. In addition to an umbrella article for the international party, Natural Law Party, and an article on the main Canadian party, Natural Law Party of Canada, we also have articles on two provincial parties: Natural Law Party of Ontario and Parti de la loi naturelle du Québec. All three Canadian articles are quite short. I'm considering proposing a merger of the provincial articles into the federal articles. Before I start adding merge tags, can anyone think of an overriding reason for keeping them separate?   Will Beback  talk  03:23, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

CC-BY photos on Flickr by Michael Ignatieff

Hi, The Flickr stream of Michael Ignatieff seems to include a bunch of CC-BY photos which could be relevant to your Wikiproject. Unfortunately, I know too little about Canadian politics to be of any use, but many one of the project's participants would like to transfer some of these photos to Commons so that they can be used to illustrate articles. Hope this is useful, Pruneautalk 10:06, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Neal Ford - can you help?

The article on Canadian Libertarian Neal Ford has been tagged as an unreferenced BLP since May 2008 (which is the current focus month for the Unreferenced BLP Rescue Project. I have tried, and failed, to find any reliable third party references to support the text. I'm wondering, if he really was never elected, whether he actually meets the notability criteria for politicians. The article certainly needs tidying up as well. I'm posting here in the hope that someone with greater knowledge of the field might like to take an interest.--Plad2 (talk) 21:02, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Political parties and politicians in Canada articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Political parties and politicians in Canada articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

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For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:29, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

POV watch: BC Liberal Party leadership race

The horses aren't at the gate yet, though the jockeys are being recruited....it'll be a while before the leadership convention (or not), but all current BC Liberal Party articles need attention in the next while; as it is many like Gary Collins (Canadian politician) are already essay/press release type bios, and there's some that haven't yet been written no doubt, but those that exist are likely to be WP:Owned and fiddled with by their p.r. staffers and/or their enemies...Rich Coleman I think exists, as do Colin Hansen, Blair Lekstrom or Kevin Falcon. Not all prospective candidates are MLAs (Diane Watts, though some were (Carole Taylor), and because of the Olympics I think John Furlong does though I think I saw news item this morning he's said he's not in the running (that link goes to someone else and needs to be dabbed, not sure to what - "civil servant" isn't quite right).. Others to watch are Christy Clark, Pat Bell....so this is just a heads-up; I've not watchlisted most of them, I guess I might as well......NB "reliable sources" in Briitsh Columbia often excludes the newspapers/TV stations, though I realize in Wikipedia "rules" they're allegedly "more reliable" than blogs; but in BC the political blogs are where teh real news is.....even this morning's Sun made the HST movement's numbers only 550,000, whereas it's a well known and highly citable fact that it's well over 700,000 people.....the problem with citing the Sun is the Sun doesn't give its sources, and distorts what their own soruces say as a matter of habit....all the more especially in regard to the BC Liberal Party. NB for other Canadians, please bear in mind with all BC Liberal articles they're not the same as the federal Liberals, so avoid linking the two in any logic/descriptions.....the BC Liberal Party has lots of Tories adn ex-Reform and ex-Socred in it, and relations with the federal party are at arsm-legnth, despite sharing common backroom players and fund raisers (e.g. Mark Marissen and Patrick Kinsella.Skookum1 (talk) 21:13, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Judi Tyabji needs refs to prevent deletion

I noticed this when a DB tag showed up on Judi Tyabji Wilson, which was the original title and I'm not sure it was moved properly; the current item is a bare stub and is sporting a seven-day delete tag. She should be easy to cite, given access to Vancouver Sun/Province archives (their digital archives prior to 1993 were SFAIK deleted by CanWest)....still, there's lots of news copy on her yet; can someone familiar with party bios please help out with this? She's too notable a figure to tolerate such easy deletion and I'm surprised there's not been more work on her article.Skookum1 (talk) 18:30, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Tom Flanagan

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Tom Flanagan (political scientist)#Assassination talk. Elizium23 (talk) 05:06, 7 December 2010 (UTC) (Using {{Please see}})

BC Liberal colours not right

I noticed on British Columbia Liberal Party leadership election, 2011 that the "colour" field in the infobox was "Liberal", which just ain't right due to the BC Liberals being a very notable blend of ex-Socreds, REformers, Tories, with only a smattering of "real Liberals". We've gone over this before and I thought some solution had been arrived at; properly that party's colours are red and blue, not just red, but it's important in hte current context because the Clark campaign is notable for its federal connections - to the point where she had to fire a campaign manager becaues he's a federal Tory - so another colour has to be found....purple maybe? I checked on the party colour listings and {{Canadian_politics/party_colours/BC Liberal/row}} has the same shade of reddish pink that the main "Liberal" colour does; not acceptable and MUST be changed.Skookum1 (talk) 03:17, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

OK so User:177 Avenue has put in the right template, "BC Liberal", but it's just the same colour. "This cannot be". Where's the place for an appropriate-colour debate? Is there maybe a way to barber-stripe the blue and red (as could also be used for the 1941-1953 Coalition); maybe template columns within cells?Skookum1 (talk) 07:44, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Provincial & Territorieal political party infoboxes

Why do we have it mentioned in those infoboxes, the numbers of seats each party has in the House of Commons & Senate? All these parties have no represenation in the Canadian Parliament. GoodDay (talk) 16:22, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

This article is at FAC. Please review it and comment or vote here: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/C. D. Howe/archive1. Cheers! -- Ssilvers (talk) 19:59, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Infobox for Politicians

In a politicians infobox is there a correct way to title in the office section which electoral distrcit they represent? For example some politicians articles are "MHA for Virginia Waters" while others have the MHA spelled out. One contributer I've noticed though is only putting "Member of the Newfoundland and Labrador House of Assembly" as the office and then under the predecessor and successor section it lists the constituency. Is there a proper format for this because I haven't noticed this third way really used before? Newfoundlander&Labradorian (talk) 10:53, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Kathy Dunderdale

I'm not really sure if this is the best place to put this but I'm looking for other Wikipedians suggestions. I was planning on expanding Kathy Dunderdale's article but I was unsure what new sections and information to add. I brought this up in the article's talk page recently but never got any feedback, I'm figuring by putting it here more people will see it and give me some suggestions. Newfoundlander&Labradorian (talk) 01:13, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Date of Polling

There does not seem to be a lot of action here, but just in case: Is there no way to standardize the dates in Ontario_general_election,_2011#Opinion_polls/ Manitoba_general_election,_2011#Opinion_polls/etc. so that the list can be sorted? The lists are just about useless the way they stands now. Any wikipedian can insert their favorite Poll at the top of the list regardless of date (some of the Polls were conducted in previous years). Ottawahitech (talk) 14:41, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Infoboxes, etc.

Feedback is wanted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kristina Calhoun over weather a territorial political party leader is notable, and at Talk:Yukon general election, 2011 and Talk:Ontario general election, 2011 on weather or not the Green Party should be included in the infoboxes. Me-123567-Me (talk) 20:56, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, we still have yet to find consensus on the issue, and we began a discussion above.Bkissin (talk) 21:24, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Merging the CanElec templates

FYI: Merging the CanElec templatesArctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 01:40, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Development of a policy for minor party inclusion in infoboxes

There has been an ongoing edit conflict regarding the inclusion of third parties, (i.e. the Green Party) in the leader's infobox of future elections. This has been a hot topic on the talk page of the next federal election, but the situation has spread to future provincial elections in Quebec, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, Manitoba and New Brunswick. Rather than edit war all of these situations, I suggest that we create a policy to deal with this in the future. To get the ball rolling here, my original idea for this was to only include parties that have representation in the legislature where they are located. If a new party enters the legislature, as the Wildrose Alliance did in Alberta, then they should get added to the leader's infobox as well. As for other minor parties, they can/should be added to the results table, provided the party is registered with the Chief Election Officer. Your thoughts? Bkissin (talk) 00:03, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with that suggestion.Eiad77 (talk) 01:20, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I think the leader should also be added to the infobox if the party gains a seat in that election, but it could be added after. Me-123567-Me (talk) 21:27, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
Yes, of course, Me-123567-Me. If, say, the Green Party wins a seat in an election in Nova Scotia or whatever, then the leader can be added once the seat has been won. Bkissin (talk) 21:37, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
Whereas the federal Green Party would be included in the next election infobox because it has one seat. Me-123567-Me (talk) 21:51, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
Exactly. Bkissin (talk) 23:30, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
I would also include them if they were in the televised leaders debate. I also think the Wildrose would be relevant to the article even if they hadn't won a few byelections, so we should make a WP:IAR exception when many sources predict that a party will win a substantial portion of the seats (ie, more than just a few seats. —Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 22:03, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
Seats or popular vote? The Green Party was included in the infobox for the 41st federal election before the election, because it was in the polls, not because a win was predicted. 117Avenue (talk) 22:18, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
But the policy regarding the Green Party federally was a stop-gap compromise measure aimed at appeasing those who supported the party. Had they not won a seat in the election, they would have been deleted from the infobox. Bkissin (talk) 23:30, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure about whether we were only appeasing supporters. If a party is getting a substantial portion of the news coverage during an election, I think that makes them an encyclopedicly notable part of the election campaign (not just the election results) even if they don't win any seats. The difficult part is finding a way to measure "substantial portion". —Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 17:31, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
Which is what we followed when the CAQ was polling high in Quebec and could have formed the government (even before they had seats in the National Assembly). Now that they do, they have a reason to be added. Yes, when there is a chance for a party to win seats, it should be added. However, if it doesn't, then it shouldn't be added to the infobox. It can always be added to the article's text and the results infobox. Bkissin (talk) 23:30, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
Are you suggesting different standards for past and future elections? I don't think that's fair. Popular vote should count as opinion polls for past elections. 117Avenue (talk) 02:13, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
We're not here to discuss the fairness of the First-past-the-post system, ours is to give readers the information and draw their own conclusions. While it may not be "fair" that these minor parties get a decent percentage of the vote but no representation, but that is the way our system works. We can show that these minor parties played a role in the text of the article, but if a leader's infobox is supposed to summarize the article, then it should show the important wins/losses in the election. Bkissin (talk) 02:37, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia's content should be guided by secondary sources. If Party x is being included in national/provincial polling then they should be included in the infobox summary. Remember, the infobox is intended to be a summary of the election, not the past/future parliament. maclean (talk) 01:50, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Ive dealt with this issue in US and Israeli elections. In a case like 41st Federal, Green I think was mentioned as possibly getting a seat, so during the campaign, it can go either way. Since they did actually win a seat and there is no 6th, 7th, 8th, etc. parties with similar small results, its fine to have them. In the case of Alberta 2012, I brought it up because altho the Alberta party had a seat before dissolution, they didnt win that seat, it was a floor crossing. In addition, they didnt win any seats in 2012. Thus, its just clutter. As for the US elections, we unfortunately rarely have the privilege of third parties, but in one case I was involved in, we decided to omit a candidate because she didnt clear a 5% threshold. Around the same time, I tried to forge a Wikipedia consensus on this issue. None ever really came together I think because I abandoned it, but there was support for a 5% threshold. For Israeli elections, the question was whether to have the top 6 or all the parties that won seats (usually about 10!). Personally I preferred 6, but there never was really any debate on it and I didnt care.

In the current dispute, Alberta didnt win a seat in 2008, any by election, or 2012, didnt clear 5%, wasnt even in the debates. Theres absolutely no sense in having them clutter the infobox. Plus, having it 2x2 makes a clearer contrast between the major and minor parties. Broadly for Canada, I think winning a seat should be how it goes, since third parties do actually have a chance. If theres ever a concern with two or more parties getting a seat or two each, you could include up to the 6th party.--Metallurgist (talk) 01:29, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Actually it was an edit to New Brunswick general election, 2010 that sparked this again. 117Avenue (talk) 05:16, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
I wish we didn't have to be this formal, but this debate will keep coming up every election, so how about this? For past elections, up to six parties are included if they meet one of these criteria: (1) won a seat in the election, (2) won 5% of the vote in the election, (3) were in the televised debate, or (4) were always (or nearly always) included in opinion polls and published summaries of the election. For future elections, they are included if they either met criteria 1 or 2 for the last election and still exist, or meet criteria 3 or 4 for this election.Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 02:16, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
I agree with criteria 1-3, but I think pollsters like to include parties in their published results that they don't need to. I think criteria 2 and 4 should be replaced with won at least 5.0% of the popular vote, if the election is past and consistently garnering at least 5.0% in opinion polls, if the election has yet to take place. 117Avenue (talk) 05:16, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
I'm fine with dropping the opinion poll option for past elections. However, I realized that a party that completely collapses can still notable for that election, for example, the Bloc in the 2011 federal election just barely met the vote criterion. Maybe we should say a party is notable if it met the seat or vote criteria in this or the previous election. With that, we would probably never need the debate criterion. —Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 06:53, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
No, the previous election shouldn't be used. If a party wins a seat in that election, it's a given they are included. I don't think anyone is arguing that, unless Canadian politics changes, and we exceed the nine party maximum the box can handle. 117Avenue (talk) 07:08, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
I'm not in favour of using an arbitrary number, like 5%. Maybe we should be getting back to Wikipedia:Core content policies. We shouldn't be deciding which party is relevant to the election when there are published secondary sources (pollsters who are interpreting polling data for us). If no polls or published summaries are available, then going strictly by who gained/lost seats should be fine as a basic summary. maclean (talk) 03:07, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
I agree with 117 that it should be based on if they win a seat. This isnt like US elections where candidates might win 8%, but not win a seat. If we ever get to exceed the 6 parties, we can just do the top 6 obviously, or the major parties. As for NB2010, I see no reason to include the NDP (and I am a federal NDP supporter, altho I would probably support the Tories in NB). They didnt win any seats.--Metallurgist (talk) 12:04, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
I'm in agreement with 117 and Metallurgist that it should be if parties win a seat in a previous or current election. In terms of the Alberta Party, I think we followed the same conventions as the Canadian federal election, 2008 with the Green Party. Percentages and polling data are not what I would follow. I mean, the Reform Party won a large percentage in 1988, but they aren't mentioned in the infobox. The People's Alliance of New Brunswick, the NB Green Party and the NB NDP were all mentioned in the polls, but did not play a deciding role in the New Brunswick general election, 2010. In our FPTP system, seat totals should be the basis of the infobox. Minor parties can be mentioned in the text of the article and the results infobox. IF we want to set a percentage level for the infobox, it should be higher than five percent, and closer to 10-15%, but setting an arbitrary number is problematic. Bkissin (talk) 15:37, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
In the 1988 federal election the Reform Party only got 2% of the vote, so they aren't very notable. The five percent rule is more for cases like the Green Party in the 2008 federal election. They didn't win a seat, but they got 6% of the vote. More importantly, there were many sources talking about the Green Party and they were listed in the polls; they were an encyclopedicly relevant part of the campaign despite not winning a seat. Our formula needs some way to include parties that have a strong presence during the election campaign but won't win seats because of the way their supporters are distributed across ridings. —Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 17:39, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
I still think 5% is a good "arbitrary" number, because parties have won seats with less (Canadian federal election, 2011). 117Avenue (talk) 02:38, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
As I think about my example, I think maybe the Green Party did win a seat in 2011, because there are so many seats. Perhaps our formula should be tied into the number of seats available. For example, if a party gets a popular vote greater than the percentage of ten seats in the Assembly. 117Avenue (talk) 02:51, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
For Canadian legislative election articles, I think it should be by who wins a seat. The 5% rule works for single seat races where there are 3+ candidates, such as the New Jersey gubernatorial election, 2009. But for this, seats make more sense.--Metallurgist (talk) 03:42, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
I completely agree. Bkissin (talk) 20:02, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Consensus

I don't know if we've reached consensus on this issue. Part of me feels like we have agreed that infobox inclusion should be based on seats won in the previous/current election, with minor parties mentioned Before the election if they are polling at a level higher than 5%.

However, I don't know if this is actually shared by everyone. I'm just going from the last part of the conversation above. Is that a policy we can live with? Bkissin (talk) 09:35, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

New issue

A new issue has popped up. Are party presidents notable? I found one previous precedent when searching through WP pages or the term Party president. Comment over at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bill Hewitt (teacher). Me-123567-Me (talk) 03:25, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Some are. There is a nice size article written on former Liberal President Alfred Apps, but he has had a bit of a prominent career and was a candidate in the 80's. Just being president isn't enough to justify an article, especially if you can only write a stub. Newfoundlander&Labradorian (talk) 11:52, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

‎* Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Larry Ashmore

These seven articles on registered political party leaders are up on AfD. Me-123567-Me (talk) 15:28, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Municipal political parties

Does anyone know which cities have officially-registered political parties, and whether those parties are unique to cities or whether they are registered to run in every municipal election in a province at once? I've also asked on the CWNB. —Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 03:43, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Merging Template:MPLinksCA with Template:CanParlbio

The bot CrimsonBot seems to be replacing template CanParlbio by MPLinksCA, which is counter-productive, I think. This broke article John Thomas Haig, so I reverted that update and left a note on the bot's talk page.

On a related topic, I think that the text from CanParlBio, e.g. "John Thomas Haig - Parliament of Canada biography", seems to be better than the text from MPLinksCA, e.g. "Parliamentarian profile at ParlInfo". I think "Parliamentarian profile at Parliament of Canada" would be slightly better; "Parliamentarian John Thomas Haig profile at Parliament of Canada" would be better IMHO. --Big_iron (talk) 15:39, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

One difference in behaviour between the two templates is that MPLinksCA generates a list entry element and CanParlbio doesn't, so the current form of MPLinksCA is less suitable for use in a reference. --Big_iron (talk) 15:50, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

John A. Macdonald portrait.jpg

image:John A. Macdonald portrait.jpg has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 06:36, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Including unnominated candidates in future election articles

There had been (or so I thought) a consensus to include verified individuals who are seeking the nomination in an electoral district in italics in election candidate tables. There is a dispute as to whether or not this should be the case at the New Brunswick general election, 2014 article. If this is a topic of interest to you, please join the discussion. - Nbpolitico (talk) 12:16, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

"Leader's seat" after a redistribution

After a riding redistribution, leader's ridings often change. So the question is for an infobox at an election, what should he the best practice? I know presently the precedent is that the leader's current seat is noted first with running in X after it. However, I think that that precedent was established in the context of leader's who had won seats in by-elections moving to the ridings where they lived. In the case of a redistribution where many or even all leaders are running in a newly named riding, it might make sense to approach this differently. After all, if we are talking about an election, ought the "leader's seat" not refer to the seat the leader is seeking in that election, rather than one in a previous election? At the New Brunswick general election, 2014 article, due to redistribution, all party leaders are running in a different seat and the infobox looks sloppy as a result. That got me to thinking about the whole concept of what is or at least should be meant by "leader's seat" in this context. Thoughts? - Nbpolitico (talk) 23:45, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

The way I see this, and this is why I changed the infobox in the New Brunswick article, is that after a redistribution there is no guarantee whatsoever that the leader will win in the redistributed riding. For a recent example, look at Nova Scotia - Darrell Dexter's riding of Cole Harbour was redistributed into Cole Harbour-Portland Valley, and he lost. My view is that "leader's seat" should refer to the seat they currently have. Tholden28 (talk) 01:42, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
I think "leader's seat" means the one they have, not the one they are running for. 117Avenue (talk) 05:22, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
I understand that currently we define "leader's seat" as the current seat. My question is, is that the right way to do it? The seat in which the leader is the incumbent has no bearing on the upcoming election which is the subject of the article. When the legislature is dissolved, technically MPs/MLAs cease to hold office. On election day, the leader's do not hold any seat, but are seeking election in one. Therefore would it not be more logical for this to be the seat to which we refer? To clarify perhaps we should note in parentheses running/won/lost (we already use the latter two in instances where a leader has lost the seat they sought). When one looks at Ontario general election, 2007 John Tory's "leader's seat" is particularly messy. What relevance does it have to the 2007 general election that he held Dufferin—Peel—Wellington—Grey? What is relevant that he ran and lost in Don Valley West, no? - Nbpolitico (talk) 11:07, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Wasn't Austin Taylor a senator?

Just did some edits on his article after finding it via a mention on Kitsault, British Columbia, where he had been an investor. I'm pretty sure I've heard mention of him as a Senator, but there's nothing in the bio about that; it was a WP:BIO and WP:Horse racing article, didn't have WP:CAnada or this subproject on it until I added them just now.Skookum1 (talk) 22:27, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

You're thinking of the wrong Austin Taylor, the Senator was Austin Claude Taylor of New Brunswick. Here is a list of senators named Taylor. - Nbpolitico (talk) 13:52, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

the rule that All names should be in English.

Doesn't this mean the article on Jean Chretien should be called [[John Christian]]? NorthernThunder (talk) 17:08, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

John A. MacDonald = John A. Donaldson.Skookum1 (talk) 00:20, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
That's not the rule, see MOS:CAFR and WP:UE, the rule is use what English language speakers use. 117Avenue (talk) 23:23, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Liberal senators' designation

After Liberal senators spent one day on the Parliament website being listed as "Independent", it looks like the Parliament website has reverted the edit and kept them all as "Liberals". We have to follow our primary source, so as I see it, this leaves us with two options in tables of senators and party standings. (1) We mark them as Liberal and explain the situation in the article prose or a footnote. (2) We create a new item at Template:Canadian party colour called "Liberal (unaffiliated with caucus)" or "Senate Liberal caucus" or something similar. I prefer option 2 because even though these Senators do have the official label "Liberal", the fact that they aren't in the caucus is very notable and it should be clear to people reading tables that they aren't normal Liberal senators like in the rest of Canadian history. —Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 18:35, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't think we need a single rule. Creating a new party colour certainly makes sense, and using it in all places a senator's party affiliation is noted by such does too. But I don't think we need to explain it in every article where it might be used. Nor do we need to explain the distinction in all places where a senator's party is noted in a table. In some cases, space is limited and the name is used once, so a footnote would would be sufficient (infoboxes for Parliament of Canada and Senate of Canada are examples). In other cases, the party colour and label are used repeatedly in a table. In some tables, space is extremely tight, and the value of noting the situation at all is limited as the inclusion or exclusion of senators from caucus at any given time is a distraction from the historical information presented (the lists of senators by name and by province probably fit this). Then there are other tables, such as List of current Canadian senators where repeating the "non-caucus" qualifier in the list would be tiresome, but including it in the prose and the legend would be helpful. -Rrius (talk) 20:18, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
I think creating a new colour takes it one step too far. They are listed as being affiliated with the "Liberal Party of Canada" and the LPC's official colour is red, so I think it would be confusing if we used any other colour. If they change their affiliation to "Independent Liberal" (like Lillian Dyck did with the NDP) then this might be a good idea, but as long as they list their affiliation as the LPC I think we should stick with the same colour. It's not like there are affiliated Liberals and unaffiliated Liberals in the Senate that we need to distinguish between. But I do agree that there should be some sort of qualifier or footnote as appropriate. TDL (talk) 20:57, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
I assumed the new item would use the same colour as federal Liberals, only the text would be different. Having a separate item in the template would let us change the text or colour on all tables at once if we ever changed our mind or circumstances changed. —Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 21:05, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Ah yes, that makes much more sense! In that case I endorse option 2. TDL (talk) 21:33, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Party affiliation of CA|Senate Liberal has been created to be used wherever reasonable. —Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 00:52, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

All that has happened is that Liberal senators no longer meet with Liberal MPs. They remain members of the Liberal Party of Canada and form a Liberal caucus in the Senate. Senator Lillian Dyck was not a member of the NDP, and any New Democrat appointed to the Senate would be expelled from the party. I think we should include them unless they give up their status in the Senate as an official party caucus. There are additional salaries paid for the leader, deputy leader, whip, deputy whip and caucus chair of the official opposition party, and there are other allowances and privileges in the house that do not apply to independents. TFD (talk) 03:22, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

I agree that this is somewhat different than Lillian Dyck's situation; that's why I support the satus quo of her using the independent-grey colour and being called "Independent NDP" while the Liberals use red and are labelled as "Liberal". However, the separation from the Liberal caucus is still significant. Even though they are still called Liberals and still have Liberal party membership, it would be misleading to put them in the same row as House Liberals in tables because that would imply that they have the same kind of connection between caucuses that they did in the 40th Parliament or that the Conservatives do today. I think that calling them Liberals, using the colour red, but giving them their own row in tables is a reasonable and NPOV solution. --—Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 03:43, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
How are they different from American Republican representatives and Senators who also belong to separate caucuses? Should we distinguish for each country whether caucuses combine both houses? TFD (talk) 04:22, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
I suggest using the Senate website as a source. Currently they list senators, including Lillian Dyck, as members of the "Liberal Party of Canada."[2] Until the Senate says otherwise, I suggest we continue saying that. They may reform as say the "Canadian Liberal Party" or under some other name, in which case we would be correct in treating them as a separate party. Or they may decide to sit as independents, so that there is no leader of the opposition. TFD (talk) 05:05, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Just to be clear, I wasn't suggesting the Senate Liberals were analogous to Dyck. My point was the exact opposite: that aren't the same. After thinking about this further, and reading TFD's well made points, I've been forced to reconsider. They were kicked out of the caucus, not the party, and caucuses and parties are not synonymous, In addition to TFD's example above, independent US Senators often caucus with the US Democrats (ie Bernie Sanders [3]) but that doesn't make them Democrat Senators. I think we should reserve separate rows in tables for separate parties, rather than conflating parties with caucuses. Though I still think that in some cases a footnote is appropriate. For example, a footnote would be a better approach than a separate row here and here IMHO. TDL (talk) 07:27, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

I think the Parliament of Canada should be used as the primary source. It specifies who is affiliated without caucus, like McCoy and MP Mastro, and specifies the date of changes. But it may take a few days for it to settle on something. 117Avenue (talk) 07:11, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

The question isn't who is without caucus. They are all still members of the Liberal Senate caucus. The question is how to deal with separate House and Senate Liberal caucuses. TDL (talk) 07:27, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
I agree with that, TDL, but I still think a separate caucus should have its own row. My big concern is that on tables like the top of 41st Canadian Parliament, if we list Liberal Senators beside Liberal MPs the same way as we do for Conservatives, it implies that Liberal MPs and Senators have the same relationship with each other as Conservative MPs and Senators. I support using the word "Liberal" and the colour red, in agreement with the Parliament website, but I think being in a separate caucus is analogous to being in a separate party, at least within the walls of Parliament, so I like the "Liberal (Senate caucus)" solution. —Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 08:27, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Then what of the 5 senators who formed a PC caucus despite the party not existing? 117Avenue (talk) 23:36, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Given that there was no House PC caucus at the time, it's not as big a deal, but I could support labelling them as "PC Senate caucus". --—Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 17:17, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Request for assistance - Alison Redford

Is there a standard for writing the lede of articles on Canadian political figures? Alison Redford's term is the second-shortest in Alberta history, and among elected premiers, the shortest. I would think this is a significant fact, and given her record, perhaps one of the most notable things about her (history will be the ultimate judge). There is some minor edit warring going on over this point. Would anyone from the project be willing to peek in and give an opinion or two? 68.144.172.8 (talk) 02:18, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

RFC on official names versus common names

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


Should WP:PPAP continue to require the usage of official names rather than common names as the titles for Canadian political parties? TDL (talk) 00:59, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Background

Back in 2006, a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Political_parties_and_politicians_in_Canada/Archive_1#Naming_conventions came to the decision to change the wording of this project's naming conventions for Canadian political parties from "As their common name is" to "By their official name, as registered with Elections Canada". This wording effectively purports to exempt all Canadian political parties from the WP:COMMONNAME policy, in favour of their WP:OFFICIALNAMES. However, I don't see any compelling arguments in the linked discussion as to why Canadian political parties should be exempt from this policy. Notably, parties in other parts of the world do go by their common name rather than official name (ie Conservative Party (UK) and not "The Conservative and Unionist Party" and Democratic Party (United States) not the Democratic Party of the United States of America). Given that this change was implemented with only a WP:CONLIMITED, I'd like to put the wording to the wider community to see if this exemption has a broader consensus.

The issue was came to my attention at the RM at Talk:New_Democratic_Party_(Canada)#Requested_move, where several editors have voted in favour of keeping the current title based on the premise that it is the official name. TDL (talk) 00:59, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

  • Common names... The WP:Article titles policy says to favor the most commonly used name over an "Official" name that is rarely used - as the name most often used will also be the most recognizable and natural. That said, in many cases the official name may actually be the most commonly used name. Source usage is the key to this determination. Blueboar (talk) 10:46, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
  • Comment You have not stated the facts correctly. The common name of the Democatic Party of the United States is the Democratic Party. The common name of the "Liberal Party of Canada" is not the "Liberal Party." Because, unlike the U.S. there are separate provincial parties with similar names, not to mention the UK parties they were named after and self-identified with. Compare for example Google news searches for ""Liberal Party" Canada" and "Democratic Party" "United States" The Canadian sources use the official title unless it is clear they are referring to the federal party. No news sources use the official name of the Democratic Party. (Sorry, the link does not work - please click "news" on the search results page.) TFD (talk) 19:32, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
No, each US state also has a separate state party with a similar name as the federal party, just like in Canada. For example, the Texas Democratic Party and California Republican Party. And I never suggested that the common name of the LPC is LPC rather than LP, so I'm not quite sure which facts you're claiming that I didn't state correctly.
Anyways, you have missed the point. If sources all use the official name, as you argue, then the common name is the official name and thus there is no disagreement on how to title the article. Only in cases where they differ does it matter. And if they do differ, WP:COMMONNAME says we must use the name commonly used by sources, not the official name. So if the "New Democratic Party" party officially changed it's name to "The Glorious New Democratic Party of the Great People of the Dominion of Canada" tomorrow, then we shouldn't blindly move the article unless sources actually frequently use this new name and it becomes the common name. TDL (talk) 20:03, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
It is the same as Canada. The national party has "state and local Democratic Party organizations." (Charter, Section 3)[4] Similar to the NDP, members join state parties, not the national party. Unlike the NDP, the state organizations nominate federal legislators. So if one is a Democrat in Texas, one is a Democrat period, same as with the NDP, but unlike Canada's Liberal and Conservative Parties. I take your point about common name, but TDL is trying to use this forum to support his views on a discussion about renaming the NDP article. TFD (talk) 21:28, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
Yes, it's analogous to the NDP and that was precisely my point. The crux of your original argument was that Canadian parties are ambiguous because "unlike the U.S. there are separate provincial parties with similar names". But you now accept "it is the same as Canada". The nature of the relationship between the federal and state parties is irrelevant. The point is that there are registered state parties and registered federal parties, each of which go by the same name and each of which have their own wiki-article. Due to the resulting ambiguity, we must find a unique way to title them. It's completely analogous.
And again, you seem to be not understanding the points being made. I'm certainly not using this form to attempt to impact the NDP RM. This change would have ZERO impact on the merits of that RM. As I have said at the RM, "New Democratic Party of Canada" is a rare name, and most certainly NOT the common name. "New Democratic Party" is used far more frequently. That RM is a question of how to disambiguate when the common name and official name is unavailable due to ambiguity. So again, to be clear, this change would have NO impact on that RM. If you think otherwise, then you've missed the entire point of the RFC or RM. Rather than WP:ABF about my motives, perhaps you could please take the time to read and understand the RFC (and RM), and attempt to refute the point being made? You said above that "I take your point about common name", so could you please explain what it is that you don't accept? Because that's the only point to this RFC. TDL (talk) 23:12, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
No, I said like in the United States, the New Democratic Party is a party with provincial sections. The Liberal Party of Canada has four provincial sections, all in the Maritimes, the Conservative Party of Canada has none. One could therefore be both a member of the Ontario Liberal Party and the Conservative Party of Canada. But when one joins the New Democratic Party in Ontario one becomes a member of the New Democratic Party with representation at both provincial and federal levels. And since "New Democratic Party" is the most common name of the NDP as well as its legal name and the name it has registered with Elections Canada, it seems the best title for the article. "New Democratic Party (Canada)" is neither a common nor a legal name. TFD (talk) 00:05, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
Yes I am aware of all this, but you have entirely missed my point once again. However, since none of this is relevant to this RFC, I'm not going to continue to argue with you about it. Why do you keep trying to relitigate the NDP RM here? If you think that these are good names for that article, then go argue that there. Please read the RFC and stay on that subject here.
The only relevant question is, if the common name and official name differ, which should we use? If the official name is "The Glorious New Democratic Party of the Great People of the Dominion of Canada" and the common name is "New Democratic Party", which should we use? Policy says the latter. TDL (talk) 01:29, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
Because you have introduced a misleading RfC in order to support your preferred naming of parties. This is not similar to the UK's "Conservative and Unionist Party", which is commonly called the "Conservative Party." Instead it is the "Ontario Liberal Party" whose article you think should be re-named the "Liberal Party (Ontario)." Why substitute a well-recognized name for the article title for a stilted one that no reader is likely to type in? And your NDP example is confusing. It's official name and common name is the "New Democratic Party". You want to change a common name "New Democratic Party of Canada" to "New Democratic Party (Canada)." TFD (talk) 02:13, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
Sigh.....
No, it is not misleading at all. You have just completely and thoroughly failed to comprehend both this RFC and the NDP RM. I'm not sure if this is due to a WP:COMPETENCE#Language difficulty, or just a chronic case of WP:IDHT. Have you even read the RFC yet? Please slow down and actually read what has been written before making further accusations about my behaviour, based on your poor comprehension of the issue, and putting words into my mouth which are quite clearly false. You have very clearly gotten even the most basic facts wrong numerous times.
"You want to change a common name "New Democratic Party of Canada" to "New Democratic Party (Canada)."" - No I most certainly do not. You will recall that just a few days ago I PROPOSED THE EXACT OPPOSITE MOVE! How on earth you got the idea that I suddenly changed my mind and want to move it to "NDP (Canada)" is really beyond me as I have never suggested anything of the sort.
""Ontario Liberal Party" whose article you think should be re-named the "Liberal Party (Ontario)."" - No this is very false. If any such move was proposed I would oppose it, for the very same reason I proposed moving New Democratic Party (Canada) -> New Democratic Party of Canada and for the reasons you explained.
"It's official name and common name is the "New Democratic Party"" - YES THAT IS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THIS RFC!!!!!!! Read the RFC question: "Should WP:PPAP continue to require the usage of official names rather than common names as the titles for Canadian political parties?" If the common name and official name one and the same, then it doesn't matter which we choose!!! It's only when they differ that we must choose between two separate names. Repeatedly bringing up examples in which you argue that the official and common name are the same is entirely irrelevant to this question.
If the "Conservative and Unionist Party" was a Canadian party, the guidelines as currently written on this page would require that we move the article Conservative and Unionist Party even though no one calls it that. Does that really make sense to you? TDL (talk) 03:44, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
It is important to remember that the COMMONNAME can sometimes be the full "official" name. Let's say there was a party called the "Conservative People's Party of Upper Canada and Lower Manatoba". If a significant majority of sources use that full name when talking about the party then, according to WP:COMMONNAME, Wikipedia should use that full name as our article title... if, on the other hand, the sources routinely referred to it as just "Conservative People's Party" (dropping the words "of Upper Canada and Lower Manatoba") then, according to COMMONNAME Wikipedia should use that shorter "non-official" name.
However... sometimes we can't use the COMMONNAME... for example, when there is a need for disambiguation. If, for example, there were some other political party that is routinely called the "Conservative People's Party" (say one in El Salvador)... we would need some way to disambiguate between the one in Canada and the one in El Salvador. Exactly how we disambiguate depends on the specific situation... One good way (but not the only good way) is to use the COMMONNAME versions and amend our title them by adding a parenthetical disambiguation. Another might be to use slightly less common alternative names. The WP:AT Policy intentionally does not say which form of disambiguation we must use... We are free to discuss the options and reach a local consensus as to which makes the most sense. Blueboar (talk) 14:06, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

So this RFC has now expired, and it seems that everyone who responded (except for TFD who never did take a clear position on the RFC question) have endorsed my argument the PPAP should not require official names to be used. Is there any objection to me removing the line? If anyone is opposed I can ask for a formal closure to assess the consensus, but it seems pretty clear to me. TDL (talk) 06:11, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Request for assistance - Patrick Brown

There have been a number of sloppy edits posted on the page for Patrick Brown regarding his sexual misconduct allegations and resignation. I've done my best to clean it up, but even with other users helping we have had the sloppy edits continue. Can anyone help fix this section?

In particular, I'm not sure of what the past precedents are for covering this type of issue, especially considering it is a biography of a living person.

Some discussion has been posted on the relevant Talk Page

Thanks

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Independent

Please provide some clarity & consensus in the discussion at Template talk:Canadian party colour#ISG Colour. Thanks, Cabayi (talk) 07:28, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Chrystia Freeland

I would be grateful if someone more familiar than I am with Canadian politicians could review my comments at Talk:Chrystia Freeland#Early_life,_esp._Chomiak, and perhaps weigh in on what would be best for that article. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:52, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

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Seemingly abandoned very dormant pet project, presumably never to be finished. WP:NOTDIRECTORY, etc.

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Just by way of an update, I've completely revamped the page from the state it was in when the PROD notice was posted. CJCurrie (talk) 06:59, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

RfC: An alternative version of the lead sentence to the lead in SNC-Lavalin affair

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How do we count office-holders?

Some of you might find this discussion interesting: Talk:List_of_premiers_of_British_Columbia#Numbering. —Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 23:13, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Messy talk archives that need to be moved

Bkissin helpfully pointed out a June 2010 discussion recently: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Political_parties_and_politicians_in_Canada/Archive_1#Development_of_a_policy_for_minor_party_inclusion_in_infoboxes

I noticed in this that Bkissin linked "next federal election" to Talk:41st_Canadian_federal_election#Green_Party_Should_not_be_in_the_Info_box

Visiting that, we can see it redirects to Talk:2011_Canadian_federal_election which does not have a section of that name.

"Archive 1" is a dead link, which seemed odd, so I checked the history for data removal. It showed:

I believe these should be moved to:

It looks like the archives were created during an intermediate period between deciding on how to format the articles, where at the time the year was listed at the end (post comma) instead of up front, which makes the template which automatically link to archives not recognize them.

I'm going to tag them with a move template in hopes that a mod comes to fix this, but now it has me wondering, are there any other talk archives like this which have become similarly disconnected? 174.92.134.245 (talk) 18:55, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

double standard between including Greens in 2011 election and excluding PPCs in 2023 election

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.



Comparisons can be made between what happened to these two parties at these times. A summary of the similarities:

  1. each party initially had 1 member of parliament representing it
    • ex-LPC Blair Wilson joined the Green Party on 30 August 2008
    • ex-CPC Maxime Bernier founded the People's Party on 14 September 2018
  2. each party is then recognized in a subsequent election, where both lose their sole seat:

This is where the similarity ends, however, and we see them being treated differently:

The rationale listed on the 44th article for commenting out the PPC is:

because they do not have a seat in Parliament.
In the event there is:
a floor crossing,
by-election,
or
they win a seat in the 44th election
then we can add them

Now, I'm sure some may argue that because the Greens won a seat in the 2011 election (Elizabeth May in Saanich—Gulf Islands) that this was grounds to include her?

The problem with that, is Wikipedia did not merely add her after the election was over and she won that seat: it had added her long before. We can see for example, more than 25 months prior to 2 May 2011 when May won her seat, that she was added 17 March 2009 and as far as I'm aware wasn't removed/absent from the election article.

So it seems like the standard for inclusion should not be "currently holds a seat in parliament", because the Greens were not held to that standard when they benefited from Wikipedia's exposure in 2009-2011 (leading up to May's election).

Instead, the standard seems to be "or held a seat in parliament leading up to the previous federal election". In which case, just like the Greens got to be included in the 2011 (for merit of holding a seat leading up to 2008) the PPC should be included in the 2023 election (for merit of holding a seat leading up to 2019). Olivia comet (talk) 02:40, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this here for discussion and hopefully a consensus. I think we have to consider some possible scenarios to adequately think this through. For instance I think if the PPC enters the 44th election with no seats, but runs a full slate of candidates (or close to a full slate) that is a different matter than if they only run one candidate or even if the party folds and they run none. I think the inclusion criteria needs to be a bit more complex than "held one seat prior to the previous election". - Ahunt (talk) 03:36, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
For me, there are two differences. Despite losing the seat they had, I think the GPC got a significant amount of the vote in 2008 with 6.8 per cent—their best result of all time—whereas the PPC only got 1.6%, which should warrant the inclusion of the former and not the latter. However, let's ignore that. The biggest reason May is in the infobox for the 2011 election is due to the fact that she won her seat that year. Of course, we only know that due to the results. So, I guess we could have 3 criteria for inclusion. A party would have to satisfy 2 of the 3 to get in the infobox, maybe even 1 of the 3, it depends on consensus here. So how about a % threshold (3% in previous election?) for the first criteria,the second criteria being having a seat prior the election and the third being gaining one during the election. What do you think? - MikkelJSmith2 (talk) 01:17, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
When we're this far away from the election, your proposal seems fair. I'd just like to add that when we actually get to the election, there should be a 4th criterion based on how they are treated in cited sources (e.g., are they included in opinion polling, are they invited to the debate). For the 43rd election, I'd argue for including the PPC in the table even if it didn't enter the election with a seat. —Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 16:46, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
Arctic.gnome, I think being invited to the debates is a better criteria than being included in the polls, but we're far away from the election like you said. What do you think about the criteria that's been written here User:Ahunt? - MikkelJSmith2 (talk) 14:45, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
It sounds reasonable at first glance, but perhaps other editors can poke holes in it? I think perhaps we need to add that the party intends to run a near full slate of candidates in the election and if they only run one or two they can be deleted at that point. - Ahunt (talk) 15:26, 17 November 2019 (UTC)
Ahunt, that goes with the debate criteria, since to be included in the debates (as of the 2019 election) a party leader must satisfy 2 of 3 criteria : be represented in the House of Commons by an MP who was elected as a member of that party; plan to run candidates in at least 90 per cent of ridings; and have a "legitimate chance" of electing more than one MP.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/maxime-bernier-debates-commission-election-1.5285162 MikkelJSmith2 (talk) 15:25, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I think one big difference is the PPC entered its first election with us having a federal debate commission that had a clear outline of who could be included. Perhaps that's a good template going forward? But I do agree with a comment above - Greens had over 5% of the vote in 2008 vs the PPC 1.6% back in October. Me-123567-Me (talk) 22:18, 17 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Ahunt: did Wikipedia verify that the Green Party was running "close to a full slate" of candidates before it added the Greens in 2009?
  • Mikkel/Me-123, it seems arbitrary at this point to declare that 1.6% wasn't enough but 6.8% was. We can't ignore that and just focus on seats-after, because the Greens were included on that page BEFORE she won the seat. It contributed to an unknown degree towards creating that outcome by helping the party seem more significant. Your suggestion of a 3% threshold seems designed to keep the PPC out, a 1% threshold would be a fairer standard to set. That's still quite significant. Libertarian_Party_of_Canada#Election_results for example, has never surpassed that, but if they did, we could then include them too. Olivia comet (talk) 10:23, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
    Olivia comet, A 1% threshold would be too easy to cross. It's not really arbitrary either. I went with 3% for historical purposes due to the Reform party, if we went with one per cent we would have to add them in an election where they didn't have any impact (1988). I also went with 3% to be close to the debate threshold (either obtaining 4% in the previous election or have a "legitimate chance" of electing more than one MP per https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/election-2019-debates-commission_ca_5cd9fa9de4b031ad510ea744). Furthermore, like I mentioned before 6.8% remains to this day the best GPC result of all time, so it is significant, to say it isn't would not be truthful. MikkelJSmith (talk) 15:17, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the infobox issue is nothing new when it comes to minor political parties on Wikipedia. While I'm sure you could pull up my opinions from elections in Ontario and NB where I may have said otherwise over the years, I tend to err on the most extreme side of caution, suggesting that it is WP:UNDUE for inclusion of parties without representation in the HoC in the lead infobox. Remember that Wikipedia's role is not to report the news, nor is it to influence elections (despite what party volunteers would like to think). We are a record of what happened. Minor parties can be added in the prose of the article, and if (like the Reform, BQ, etc. between 1988-1993 parties become more relevant and have representation in the House then we can add them at that particular time. Otherwise we will be fielding requests from every minor party for addition in the infobox, regardless of their chances of forming a government or electing an MP. Bkissin (talk) 14:00, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Bkissin, yeah I was going to give the Reform party as an example. A 1% threshold like the other user above mentioned would also be too easy to cross. It's not really arbitrary either. I went with 3% for historical purposes due to the Reform party, if we went with one per cent we would have to add them in an election where they didn't have any impact (1988). I also went with 3% to be close to the debate threshold (either 4% in the previous election or have a "legitimate chance" of electing more than one MP per https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/election-2019-debates-commission_ca_5cd9fa9de4b031ad510ea744). MikkelJSmith (talk) 15:15, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

The Greens are in the 2011 infobox because they won a seat. Whether they should have been in the infobox before the election is debatable, but it's also completely irrelevant: we can't change the 2009 edit, and just because a questionable decision was made ten years ago (!) doesn't mean that we need to adopt it as a guideline. The fact of the matter is that, right now, the PPC lacks representation in the HoC, had a poor PV result in the previous election, and does not have a notably strong performance in the polls— and thus it fails to meet any reasonable criteria for inclusion in the infobox. — Kawnhr (talk) 17:54, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

When you guys bring up the Reform Party, it seems you are referring to how we first list them in the 1993 Canadian federal election where they went up to ~18% from ~2% in the 1988 Canadian federal election?
The significant difference in that example and the Greens/PPC, is that the Reform Party had never held a seat leading up to the 1988 election: their first was Deborah Grey in a 1989 by-election, which was their only seat leading up to 1993 as far as I know.
A 3% standard of inclusion sounds fine for a party which had NEVER held a seat in Parliament like the Reforms in '88, but that standard should be lowered for a party which HAD, such as the Greens/PPC.
If you still object to 1%, then why not halve this proposed 3% to 1.5% in respect to parties who HAVE held a seat?
This compromise addresses your objection to 1% being too low (though I think it's the perfect number, a percentile of the populace) while still not conveniently setting a spontaneous barrier which excludes the PPC.
I think it is significant to mention that 1968 Canadian federal election that we list the Social Credit party despite them getting only 0.85%, which the PPC nearly doubled, and only lost 1 seat rather than 3. Despite that, Social Credit went on to win 7.55% of the vote and 15 seats in the 1972 election.
If Wikipedia had been around then, failing to list Social Credit until their 1972 wins would have been a pretty significant oversight of the potential of parties with low turnouts in a preceding election to more than octuple their results in the following one.
It seems like we take a stance like "it's incoming seats that matter, unless you are the Green Party" where to retroactively justify their exception we come up with minimum %s that just so happen to be high enough justify their inclusion in spite of lacking an incoming seat, but low enough to exclude the PPC.
1% is not an easy threshold to cross. The Libertarians haven't managed it since 1973.
The thing is Mikkel, that 1.6% is ALSO the best PPC result of all time, so that too is significant, if what you're going on is "the best result a party has ever had". So if getting a "best result" justifies including someone on the upcoming election's article, the PPC meet that criteria too.
Bkissin, although our role is to report the news and not to influence it, we must rationally accept that Wikipedia DOES influence the news, as list of Wikipedia controversies shows. Who we do and do not include as noteworthy candidates unavoidably will influence voters, so we should do that on a fair basis. Policy should not be written on the fly so as to include the Greens and exclude the PPC.
This was not merely "a questionable decision" of a single editor. This was community consensus to keep the Greens up for two straight years. I can't see their ever having been taken down. That they had held a seat going into the preceding election (even though they lost it, like Bernier) and held more than 1% seems to have been enough to warrant including them.
The bar doesn't need to be set at 3% due to Reform because we're talking about standards for parties who have held a seat, which didn't apply to Reform. For that same reason, my proposed 1% minimum for held-a-seat-before parties would be inapplicable to the ~1.01% of the popular vote the Rhinoceros Party got in the 1980 election. Although if it did... the proposed 1.5% compromise would exclude them. Olivia comet (talk) 18:36, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
Olivia comet, I'm assuming good-faith, but at this point I feel like you're kind of ignoring the points that were made. An important one was the following : we can't change the 2009 edit, and just because a questionable decision was made ten years ago (!) doesn't mean that we need to adopt it as a guideline.- Kawnhr.I wouldn't go around mentioning conspiracy theories, especially since I was not there at the time. Arctic.gnome,Ahunt & Undermedia were though, the latter two worked on the opinion polling pages too. Also, another important point was made by Arctic.gnome when they said we are far away from the election.
Second, regarding the % threshold, it's not even a guideline, we're debating whether or not we should have one, the others have said my proposal seems fair, but there are disagreements, Bkissin for example is proposing something else. And I've also always done my best to always be neutral in my edits on Wikipedia, so no it's not designed to not include the PPC by default. One thing that you kind of ignored when saying that about the 3% threshold is that my % threshold is more generous than the overall one used by the debate commission :I also went with 3% to be close to the debate threshold (either 4% in the previous election or have a "legitimate chance" of electing more than one MP per https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/election-2019-debates-commission_ca_5cd9fa9de4b031ad510ea744).. The PPC got into the debates not due to the 4% threshold btw, but because at some point during the campaign a poll by EKOS showed them to be able to win more than one seat. That ended up being false since they did poorly everywhere except in Bernier's seat. Furthermore, while I didn't mention it earlier, another point of reference is what they use in proportional voting systems since they actually care about the voting % (i.e. a percent treshold between 3-5% if I remember correctly, since that's when they feel a party actually matters and is not fring), whereas we focus more on the seats one due to FPTP.
As for the Social Credit, the comparison to make is not with the 44th Election page but with the 2019 Canadian election page, where they held a seat prior to the election but lost it after. It's not in the infobox for the 1972 election either btw (much like the PPC is now). The Social Credit party in 1972 is a splinter party from the original (the one with the French name in 1968) and not the one that had 0 seats in the previous election. That splinter party gained 1 seat, they had 14 in 1968.
Regarding the best result of all time point, I'm going to assume good faith here again but if you're honestly saying there's no difference between almost 7% and 1.6% I honestly don't know what to say. We also can't really argue about this being this being the GOAT result for the PPC since it is their only result. The point I was trying to make with the whole GOAT argument is that the GPC's result is a significant result nothing more nothing less.
Finally, regarding wikipedia influencing the news, it does do so yes, but much like Ahunt said in the other discussion (on the 44th Canadian election talk page) it's an improbably fanciful claim that listing Elisabeth May's name in a Wikipedia article got her an election victory by 11% MikkelJSmith (talk) 19:23, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
Again, this whole WP:SOAPBOX in order to WP:RGW around the inclusion or exclusion of the Green Party and PPC is ridiculous. Inclusion in the infobox should largely be reserved for parties with representation in the House of Commons. To discuss the minutiae of percentage of vote for inclusion in the top-level infobox is getting too deep in the weeds. Either they have the mandate or they don't. If we want to include information about smaller parties, we can do so in the Results infobox as well as in the prose of the article. Bkissin (talk) 19:35, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Mikkel: the point is moreso that Wikipedian consensus (since Greens were never removed) was not to have a "you need a seat going in" policy from 2009-2011. Could you tell me when that policy was changed? I'm not sure where to read about it.

I don't see why we should go by the 4% for the debate commission. That clearly is not predictive of the impact a party can have, as we see for 0 seats 0.85% in '68 changing to 15 seats 7.55% in '72 for Social Credit.

I'm not sure what you mean about a splinter party holding 16 seats in 68, I don't see that listed. The same link is used for SC in both the 68/72 elections.

I wouldn't call 6.78 "almost 7%", you're rounding up for that but not for 1.6 despite the difference only being 0.18 between the decimal portions. There is clearly a difference between the numbers, but in both cases they are the "best ever", which is what you had said. The only difference is that the PPC result is also the "first ever" whereas the Green % was an improvement from the 4.48% they got in 2006: ~51% better.

The only result IS technically the GOAT. Plus even if you have ran in previous years, a result being the GOAT isn't exactly by itself anything special. The Libertarian GOAT was 0.25% attained in 1988, but we don't list them in 1988 Canadian federal election to acknwledge that.

Whether Wikipedia accounted for May doing 1% better or 11% better is irrelevant here: our standards for inclusion in 2009 would have influenced the campaign to some degree, so it's unacceptable for us to play fast-and-loose to get the Greens in, and then once they're an established party, restrict the standards to omit newer parties.

Bkissin: we did not restrict inclusion to those holding a seat in the HoC when it came to the 2009 addition of the Greens as a listed party in the 2011 election. That's the point here: in fairness, that shouldn't be a requirement for subsequent elections either.

Besides, showing 5 parties is either going to mean a 3x2 or 2x3 grid so there is a natural vacancy for a 6th party which obviously the PPC is the 6th-ranked party in terms of success. I don't think the 7th-ranked in results even came close... which I think is the 0.1% attained by Christian Heritage? Olivia comet (talk) 20:49, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Found the original debate from 7 years ago. In it I also helpfully link to the other times we have had this debate on a federal/provincial level. No consensus was found then either. Despite calls for so-called "fairness", adding parties that did not win seats would contribute to the same problem of undue weight of coverage that you decry for the Greens. I'm not going to respond to the issue of what happened ten years ago because my personal opinion (and the opinion of many people in this thread) has not changed since then. Bkissin (talk) 21:44, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
So, you've pretty much ignored what's been said by the other users and myself. MikkelJSmith (talk) 22:50, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

December followup

Mikkel I think there is a difference between disagreeing and ignoring. Thank you Bkissin for linking to the 2010 discussion, I managed to find the 2009 discussion it links to in Talk:Canadian_federal_election,_2011/Archive_1#Green_Party_Should_not_be_in_the_Info_box. There was some difficulty as I've expressed in a new section below (forgot to log in) that we should be moving these archives to match the current naming formats.

Now that I know where to look, I can see that I was wrong to think that after 17 March 2009 that the Greens were never removed from the template. I did not see any edit summaries indicating that, but I hadn't checked each individual edit differentiation.

The problem here, is that a lack of consensus to keep out the Greens was effectively consensus to allow them to stay. Some valid points made here which would apply to the People's Party:

  • User:Ground Zero said "in the last election they were treated as a "major party" by the media, a their leader was included in leaders' debates"
  • User:Gordon Ecker said "in the 2008 election, their vote total was far closer to the totals of the seat winning parties than those of the other parties which did not win seats"

Here is what you stated on 26 March 2011, Bkissin:

Let's leave them in until the election finishes. When they don't win any seats, we'll get rid of them. Good Compromise?

You stated this over a month before 2 May 2011 when Elizabeth May won her seat. Based on that, I do not agree with your summary "my personal opinion has not changed since then" because you are now arguing with the reverse approach against the People's Party when they are in the same situation:

  • held a seat going in
  • participated in leader's debate
  • lost the seat

Given there are 338 seats, and only 170 needed for a majority, getting even 1% of the vote can actually be more representative of a party's importance to an election (in terms of popular vote) than a single seat would be. That's a more natural minimum. Olivia comet (talk) 19:35, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Well except for the fact that our electoral system is based upon seats won and completely ignores popular vote as irrelevant. - Ahunt (talk) 21:08, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
If it was irrelevant, then why the previous arguments for using >3% being high enough to justify Greens' listing in 2009 for 41st, but being <2% being low enough to justify Peoples' exclusion in 2019 for 44th? It seems like that depends upon arguing it is relevant. I think it's worthwhile to point out that 1/338 of 100% is less than 0.3% when we think of what a seat represents. If we were to require 3% of the common vote for a party to matter then why not also 3% of the seats? You would need 11/338 seats to surpass 3% of them, which would exclude the Greens going into the 44th too. Olivia comet (talk) 07:00, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
It is irrelevant because our electoral system doesn't work on popular vote. You can note I haven't argued for any particular number for popular vote for inclusion, I have argued for seats, because our system is based on seats. Others have proposed popular vote numbers.
Just a thought, but your relentless pursuit of trying to get the PPC included in the next election is probably to the point where you need to declare a WP:COI. - Ahunt (talk) 12:43, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Taleeb Noormohamed, nominated for deletion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.



This article is in poor shape. It needs to be improved significantly (if appropriate). It contains buzzwords, reads like a resume, has WP:POV issues and relies predominantly on dead links. I tend to think there is an open question of whether the topic is notable enough to even have an article. It was proposed for deletion in 2011 and seems to have received a borderline Keep. I have tried to discuss this on the talk page and tried to propose it for deletion to start a second discussion. Would appreciate help improving the article if possible/appropriate and deleting it not. My concerns are namely:

This article was previously proposed for deletion about eight years ago. Editors elected for a borderline keep. It does not seem the article has improved since. It relies predominantly on dead links, primarily to promotional and other WP:ROUTINE coverage. Usually, candidates for office and prior unsuccessful candidates are not notable per WP:POLITICIAN. Notwithstanding that, a politician may be sufficiently notable if they meet WP:GNG. Of course, usually routine coverage does not count against towards that. I note that this article includes buzzwords, and has been marked as reading like a resume since February 2017. If the community agrees it does not meet our general notability guidelines a redirect to the relevant list of 2019 candidates may be appropriate.

Some help in whatever direction is appropriate would be appreciated. Thanks--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 00:30, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

I have relisted the article for deletion. The discussion can be found here.--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 23:04, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Would I be of any help? If yes, I will help, but if no, that is fine because i am new to wikipedia and i might mess some things up. Thanks for reading. Joshua thor (talk) 21:48, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I have proposed this article be moved to its redirect Robocall scandal. The discussion is taking place here.--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 22:07, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Should the New Democratic Party have progressivism listed in its infobox?

I'm here to ask people to please come here - Talk:New Democratic Party#Should we include progressivism? - and give their views on this discussion. Relevant citations to support this claim are given in on that talk page. Helper201 (talk) 19:18, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Merge with the electoral district project

Given how inactive that project is, I think the 2 projects should be merged to form a Canadian politics project, possibly supported by WP:POLITICS. As well, the US and UK projects don't have projects specifically for their districts, giving precedent for my proposal. Username6892 04:03, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

RfC on succession boxes on US presidential biographies (and the future of succession boxes)

An RfC is occurring at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § Succession boxes for US Presidents that concerns the inclusion of succession boxes in articles about US presidents. The RfC's outcome may have implications for the future of succession boxes more generally. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the village pump. Thank you. 207.161.86.162 (talk) 03:44, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Spouse of prime ministers of Canada

An editor (2607:FEA8:7E0:1E49:EDE1:4652:935B:E8CB (talk)) has gone through all of the articles for spouses of prime ministers of Canada and changed their infoboxes from {{infobox prime ministerial spouse}} to {{infobox person}} and removed any reference to the role/position as well as the succession box. All of the edits have the summary of "not an office" or "not a title" or similar. These are the only edits by that editor. It seemed an odd change with no reference to a discussion that may have reach a decision to make that wide-spread change. It only came to my attention because I monitor Category:Infobox person using religion and one of the spouses suddenly showed up there using the |religion=parameter which is no longer supported by {{infobox person}} but is by {{infobox prime ministerial spouse}}. Are these legitimate edits? – 108.56.139.120 (talk) 00:21, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

They're definitely not. The editor minimally explained their reasoning at Talk:Margaret Trudeau, the only place I can locate where they actually discussed rather than revert-warring (mainly because as an IP they couldn't directly edit through Margaret's partial protection, and thus had to comment on the talk page instead of directly editwarring over it). I've replied to explain why their edits weren't appropriate. I've also now reverted all of their edits accordingly — but we would obviously appreciate people keeping an eye on this, and notifying us if you see them editwarring over it again before we do. For the record, I have seen this attempted once before (August 2020) with similar reasoning, by an editor with the username "Ben MacLeod" — but Ben McLeod tried it across only the three most recent spouses (Sophie, Laureen, Aline) rather than all of them, and all three were reverted quickly at the time. Obviously, this puts me in mind of potential sockpuppetry, but I've never actually had any success going to WP:SPI with an IP number — so all we can really do is keep an eye on this just in case it recurs in the future under a logged-in username. Bearcat (talk) 17:19, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Canadian Nationalist Party short name

The short-form name of the Canadian Nationalist Party should be changed to "Nationalist", as it is the party's short-form name registered with Elections Canada. On Wikipedia, the short-form name "Nationalist" is connected to the Nationalist Party of Canada, which never registered with Elections Canada, nor officially fielded any candidates in elections. I think the short-form name should be transferred. CentreLeftRight 00:12, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Alberta cabinet shuffles

I will for sure need some help with this. I didn't know how to fix Ric McIver's cause I didn't realize he was now Municipal Affairs but he was already dealing with that. I'm lost. --MattBinYYC (talk) 08:50, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

2021 Dissolution

The 43rd Parliament of Canada dissolved on 15th August in preparation for the federal election on 20th September. There are hundreds of former MPs' pages which need to be modified to indicate that they are not incumbent. An idea I invented for the 2021 Senedd election and 2021 Scottish Parliament election was to slap a notice at the top of each page indicating that some information would be out of date. This was less effort than meticulously changing everything in the page and then changing it all back again after polling day.

{{2021 Canadian Parliament}} — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robin S. Taylor (talkcontribs) 12:31, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't think this is necessary or even ideal. I suppose that, yes, technically, legally, an MP is no longer an MP after the dissolution of parliament, but conventionally they are still treated as incumbents through the election period. Even the Library of Parliament does this: for instance Maxime Bernier's time as an MP is a) a continuous period from 2006 to 2019, and not broken into several chunks to represent the dissolution of each parliament he was elected to; and b) counted until October 20, 2019, the day before his successor was elected, and not the day the writ was dropped and parliament was dissolved. — Kawnhr (talk) 16:32, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't know which is the correct approach on this, concerning all countries that have a parliamentary form of government (monarchies & republics). If an incumbent cease being an MP at dissolution & the later gets re-elected to his/her seat, do we consider their tenure (dates wise) unbroken, or separate tenures. Example: Person is MP of riding since 2015, or 2015–19, 2019–2021. GoodDay (talk) 16:44, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
MPs are still MPs between dissolution and the end of the general election: https://www.ourcommons.ca/About/ProcedureAndPractice3rdEdition/ch_08_6-e.html#8-6-2-1 so the template is entirely unnecessary. In other words, the wording is misleading as the subject is still a member of the house of commons. The only change is that members do not go to parliament and most committees have been dissolved: https://www.ourcommons.ca/About/OurProcedure/ParliamentaryCycle/c_g_parliamentarycycle-e.htm#5 .
We can address articles of MPs that are being edited to suggest that they are no longer MPs. Walter Görlitz (talk) 19:28, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
They're still MPs until a new person is elected into their position, or they resign their position. I don't think we need to do anything, just leave their pages as being MPs until such time as may arise that they are not. They are still fulfilling some necessary roles of their positions until the election, just like Trudeau is still Prime Minister and fulfils that role, until the election. Just no actual parliament sitting, so no new laws etc can get through. Canterbury Tail talk 01:04, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Under the British system - on which Canada's is of course heavily based - dissolution means that there is no parliament for a few weeks, and ex-members are sternly cautioned not to use the post-nominals "MP" or to have anything on their stationery/social media accounts/campaign materials which implies continued incumbency. Robin S. Taylor (talk) 09:36, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate the desire to be bold, but I find the widespread plastering of this template to be unnecessary and intrusive. It should have been discussed first. What could be out of date or be be rapidly changing for the bulk of the backbencher MP articles? Connormah (talk) 18:50, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Results of federal elections by riding

Does anyone know why the Bloc Québécois as the first column in the Quebec templates in all elections before 2015? The rest of the country is arranged by total seats won nationally. It seems logical to list the BQ by the same criterion. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 01:01, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

I believe when the BQ wins the most seats in Quebec in the previous election, they're supposed to have the first column (and second if they finished second, and so on). 17:54, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
One could argue that other provinces should follow the same principle, which would greatly reduce readability. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 18:22, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
Well, the argument being that the BQ only runs in Quebec, so they're treated differently. -- Earl Andrew - talk 20:14, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
That seems a little too differently, given that they'll never form government. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 00:19, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
Maybe. It makes intuitive sense to me, but I'm not married to it. If you want to put it the effort to put it in a different order, I won't stop you. -- Earl Andrew - talk 14:58, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
I was hoping to convince someone else to do it. All my efforts to use visual editing on Wikipedia have failed and my only alternative is herding Word macros for each row. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 15:57, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
The BQ is a federal party (registered with Elections Canada) & shouldn't be treated differently, just because it chooses to not to run candidates outside Quebec. GoodDay (talk) 02:18, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:PPAP-Join

Template:PPAP-Join has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Nigej (talk) 08:54, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

I have nominated Accurate News and Information Act for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Z1720 (talk) 14:55, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Project-independent quality assessments

Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class= parameter to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:49, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

  1. ^ Defeated in his electoral district.