Talk:List of prime ministers of Canada by time in office

Calculating time in office
If no one protests, shortly, I shall edit this list to be by days served. "Months" is too subjective; for some PM's (the ones who served one consecutive term) months are months, but for others (like king) months are 30 days. I am willing to add up the actual days in office. Pellaken 22:24, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Go for it, though we might want to keep years, months, and days in brackets so it's easy to read. -arctic gnome 23:28, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

so I spent all day at work adding this up for nothing? oh well, my job's boring enough, gave me something to do. lol. Pellaken 01:43, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

It wasn't for nothing! This kind of thing very much should be double-checked. If our numbers don't mach, lets look at what went wrong. I put the number of leap days hidden in the edit to make it easier to compare. As for your question on my talk page about overlapping days, they don't starting doing that until Laurier/Borden, but I'll take a day off for each one after that (I'll count the overlapping day as counting to the second person). -arctic gnome 02:20, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, we’d better be consistent, I’ll take off the day that everyone left office like you said. -arctic gnome 02:49, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Now that I look into it, I wasn't counting their first days afterall. I'll revert.  -arctic gnome 17:12, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

It is not easy to count days, but there are... somewhere... pages on the internet that help you do it. IIRC you input two dates and it tells you the number of days between them. if I can find one I'll use it to check the dates on the page. Pellaken 19:31, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Wow. That would have been much, much easier. -arctic gnome 21:42, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

When you click on incumbency in descending order shouldn't Pierre Elliott Trudeau show up in third place instead of fourth? cyr.martin2@sympatico.ca

I changed everything to match the numbers from the government's website. They don't have any overlapping days, so I included the first and last day of each term. Arctic Gnome 23:26, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Harper's Time in office
I still think the days are wrong. There are 365 days in one year. Once you hit 365 days in a year, it is now a new year, but the last day of the first year. February 6 is Harper's first year, but according to this, his first year anniversary was on February 5, which is wrong. SFrank85 15:06, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
 * According to this, up to and including Feb. 5th he had been in power for a full 365 full days, 1 year. As of and including Feb. 6 he had been in power for 366 days, 1 year and 1 day.  I have no problem if we change it to not include the last day, but I do have a problem with you including the last day in one column and not in the other.  Writing that 367 days equates to 1 year and 1 days is mathematically incorrect.  To list it your way, with the days and calendar columns not adding up, we would have to specify that the 367th day equates to 1 year and 1 day.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 15:58, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Note that the calculator used to calculate these numbers does not have the year/month/day listing beyind the total days listing. Wether you tell it to include  or exclude  the last day, it gives you 365 day as being equal to 1 year, not 366 days as equaling 1 year.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:20, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I would advise you to check your calculations, as another editor who has done some bad-faith editing (in particular nominating the Stephen Harper article for AFD) changed one of the lines to read "as of March 19, 2007". Since it is not March 19 yet, I'm changing it back to March 1, which was the original text. 23skidoo 18:10, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Big revert
User:Schoeppe took out the automatic calculator and reverted several other changes without any explanation, so I undid them. If anyone has a reason to change things back, please explain yourself and we'll discuss it. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:31, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * It appears that there is no rationale to isolate the current Conservative Party of Canada from previous iterations. It could be poiitically motivated by those who argue that the current Conservative Party of Canada is somehow separate and distinct from the party historically. If somebody wants to draw a distinction based on party name then the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada should be isolated with a distinct colour. Not the current Conservative Party of Canada. (That is the edit I have made to this page.) A second option would be to use one colour for all of the parties in Canada that have not governed as the Liberal Party of Canada. Isolating the current Prime Minister as distinct from all previous Prime Minister's does not accurately reflect history. It also gives the appearance of playing into the hands of those partisans who argue that the current party is not linked to the traditions and history of previous iterations of the party and as merely the Reform Party or Canadian Alliance under a new name. On one of your reversions you add this note "There has been a long talk on the use of party colours and it has been decided that all old Tory parties should use the same colour and the new one should use a different." Perhaps my questions were answered there, but I still don't see how the current system accurately reflects the history of Canadian politics. Schoeppe 00:49, 8 July 2007 (UTC)


 * There were a few separate debates, but I think the main one was at Template talk:Canadian politics/party colours. The argument was that by using either the same or different colours for the old and new Conservative Parties, we would appear to be taking one side or the other on the issue of whether the new party is linked to the traditions of the old.  I believe that the main reason for using different colours was that between the old Conservatives and the Progressive Conservatives there was only a name change; but since the new Conservatives were created by a merger it is a legally new entity.  You can make an argument that a different colour scheme would make us more NPOV, but until policy changes I will have to change the colours on this list to match all of the other tables.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 02:41, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I have made my case on the Canadians politics/party colours page and will summarize it here. The switch from the old Conservative Party of Canada to the Progressive Party of Canada had to be a legal name change as well or the difference in names couldn't be recognized in the House of Commons. So any argument about a new legal entity doesn't make sense if the goal is NPOV. The colours should be changed on all the other tables. The change I have made on this page, and will continue to make, is to separate the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada from all other iterations of the Conservative Party of Canada. Using the same colour for the parties that legally used the name Conservative Party of Canada appears to maintain an NPOV. I have taken the time to explain yaelf per your request on April 10th. I have reverted the colours per the legal names that were registered in the House of Commons. Now every Progressive Conservative Party of Canada PM has the same colour. Every other non-Liberal Party of Canada PM has the same colour. A distinct colour from the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. Schoeppe 05:00, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The big problem with that colouring scheme is that it implies that the old Conservative Party and the new Conservative Party have more in common with each other than with the Progressive Conservative Party, despite the fact that one is a product of 19th century politics and the other a product of 21st. Nobody has said that changing from the old Conservatives to the PCs didn't require a legal name change, but that the creation of the new Conservatives was a merger and thus legally a whole new party --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 06:07, 8 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Do you honestly not see the vast difference between a single political party changing its legal name, and two political parties merging to create a new entity? One party continuing under a new name is not the same thing as two parties merging to create a third. Bearcat 11:35, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Grand Total
Has there been a Prime Minister in office on any given day since Confederation on July 1, 1867, or are there days when no one is prime minister? . Does anyone know what the rules are as to who is prime minister under the following circumstances? . 1. The period after a prime minister dies to when the new one is selected. 2. The period after a prime minister resigns to when the new one is selected. 3. The period after a sitting prime minister loses an election to when the elected one takes office. . There may be other circumstances that need to be clarified. I think these rules should be posted on the page. . Finally.........where there are gaps with no prime ministers or not......this equation should hold true: Total days served by all prime miniters + days with no prime ministers (maybe NIL) = total days Canada has existed since July 1 1867. This should be posted on the page to test the accuracy of the list.Juve2000 (talk) 03:42, 4 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Here is my understanding of the process (warning: WP:OR). There is no automatic rules of succession for Prime Ministers like there is for presidents and monarchs. Until Parliament chooses a new Prime Minister, the office is vacant. However, the Prime Minister has no constitutional powers anyway, he or she is just exercising the powers of the Privy Council, so when a PM dies or retires unexpectedly, the Privy Council (or in practice, the cabinet) can take on his or her responsibilities until the next meeting of Parliament.


 * When PMs retire and it isn't a surprise, they ask the GG to make the new person PM, and that happens automatically, so there is no gap. After losing an election, the old PM will ask the GG to make the new person PM in the same way, usually a couple weeks after election day. If I recall correctly, for the last thirty years there has been a rule in the Interpretation Act which says that transfer of power to a new PM happens retroactively at midnight of the beginning of that day (I think that's why List of Prime Ministers of Canada lists two final days for recent PMs).


 * I agree that we should say something about time the offices has been vacant, and maybe also make a note of that on List of Prime Ministers of Canada. We could do the math ourselves, but it would be nice if we could find a source to cite that time to. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 04:16, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Terminology
I believe this article uses the word "term" incorrectly. For example:
 * “Jean Chrétien served for three full terms in majority governments. The final six months of his last term was served out by Paul Martin.”

There is no "term" or "full term" for a Canadian prime minister. Even a Parliament as a whole does not have a "term" (except, arguably, in this century after the enactment of fixed-term election laws). Mathew5000 (talk) 02:23, 18 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree with this comment. The article confuses the time a PM spent in office with the term of the Parliament.  (I think we can use term of the Parliament, because each Parliament has a term of five years, unless sooner dissolved.)  I can take a crack at trying to tidy it up.  As it stands, it is confusing to read. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 22:06, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

PMs who didn't sit in Parliament
There is confusion over the issue of prime ministers who never sat in Parliament as prime minister.

Sir Charles Tupper was already an MP when he became PM – but Parliament wasn't in session, so he never sat in the Commons as PM. http://www.parl.gc.ca/parlinfo/Files/Parliamentarian.aspx?Item=24d7bdd8-53ef-4f57-a585-5c5b9effd3dd&Language=E

John Turner was Liberal party leader without being an MP; in the election that made him a member of Parliament, his party lost power. The few days between the election and his resignation as PM would fall into the same category as Tupper's time as PM, i.e., being PM and also an MP but while Parliament is not sitting. http://www.parl.gc.ca/parlinfo/Files/Parliamentarian.aspx?Item=2d6cfb9d-1d91-419c-835b-2bc796126fab&Language=E

If Tupper forms a category, Turner definitely belongs in it as well. The article should be simplified (take out the could-be-might-be) and the language clarified (replace "never served as a Member of Parliament or Senator" with "never sat in Parliament" or "never sat in the House of Commons or Senate").

– Justinbb (talk) 01:02, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

I just read this article, and it's still very misleading. John Turner held several Cabinet posts, yet it sounds like he was just some person picked off the street. - Sailor7sakura 17:15, 7 November 2015 (AST)

Campbell sitting in Parliament
In the Comments section, there was this passage: "Campbell is one of three prime ministers who never sat in Parliament while prime minister, the others being Tupper and Turner." An editor deleted that, stating that Campbell had sat in the Commons briefly after becoming Prime Minister, so I checked the sources. According to the Library of Parliament bio page on Campbell, she was sworn in as PM on June 25, 1993. As well, the Library of Parliament page on the 34th Parliament states that the last House of Commons sitting prior to dissolution was on June 16, 1993. After that date, only the Senate sat prior to the dissolution in September. Since the Commons was never sitting after Campbell became PM, I think it's clear that Campbell never sat in the Commons as prime minister, and have restored the comment. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 05:12, 10 August 2018 (UTC)


 * From June to September, Prime Minister Campbell was a member of parliament. She was a member of parliament while prime minister for several months...so yeah, she was "sitting" while prime minister.Arglebargle79 (talk) 12:13, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 03:10, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Turner 1968 cropped.jpg

List of prime ministers of Canada by age
There should be a List of prime ministers of Canada by age, or else age information should be added to this article.

Here is an official source for age upon first taking office, but I think it would also be notable to show their date of birth, date and age at death, and date and age when finally leaving office. --142.112.221.64 (talk) 08:18, 6 August 2023 (UTC)