Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Governments of Canada/Archive 1

Calibration of importance ratings
Here is a list of suggested ratings using immigration as an example:


 * Importance
 * Top: Government of Canada
 * High: Citizenship and Immigration Canada
 * Mid: Minister of Citizenship and Immigration (Canada)
 * Low: Canada-Quebec Accord
 * Excluded:
 * Monte Solberg (the current Minister of Citizenship and Immigration (Canada). He would be included in WikiProject Political parties and politicians in Canada.
 * Bill C-250 (37th Canadian Parliament, 2nd Session). It would be included in WikiProject Canadian law.

Any views on how to handle old ministries or other historical government articles? I suggest we tag them as historical rather than Government of Canada, which I deem to refer to the current government.

Deet 00:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * That looks about right. We should probably add a history tag to the WikiProject Canada template.  When you were making that ranking, did you know that for whatever ranking you give it for Government of Canada, it gets that ranking on the general Canada project?  I don't think that we need to split up the importance rankings, but it means that Government of Canada will probably be the only item in this project that has top importance.  -Arctic Gnome

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 21:48, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Category:Canadian Forces
Category:Canadian Forces is up for merging with Category:Military of Canada, which is odd, since Category:Royal Canadian Air Force and Category:Royal Canaadian Navy are not being considered, even though CF is a force structure just like the RCAF, RCN, and CA it replaced. see Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_January_18

70.51.8.140 07:36, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Departments
The governmental departments need a lot of work. I'm trying to expand Natural Resources Canada and related pages as much as I can. However, we should really put it somewhere on the todo list. See Template:Government_Departments_of_Canada for a list of them. &#8594; Icez {talk | contrib} 03:13, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

MP lists
About three months ago, I proposed a potential reformatting of the alphabetical MP lists into tables, but to date my proposal has had no response either way. Could I get some feedback on whether the proposal is worthwhile or not? See Talk:List of Members of the Canadian House of Commons - A. Thanks. Bearcat 21:21, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Your proposal looks good to me. I was thinking that some of those list needed to be re-worked, but they've never made it to the top of my todo list.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 00:27, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Parliament FAR
Parliament of Canada has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Marskell 08:56, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Canadian House of Commons FAR notice
Canadian House of Commons has been nominated 14 September 2007 for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. --copying the FAR notice from WP Canada here also SriMesh |  talk  02:51, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to standardize coverage of PMs
The link Harper government redirects to 28th Canadian Ministry. I think that is wrong.

If you look at the other major democracies covered by WP articles of this type, they tend to be histories of that person's administration, and not just a list of their ministers. For example see: (just histories) compare Canada:
 * Clinton Administration (a history with the list in it)
 * Jacques Chirac's second term as President of France, Presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, and Foreign policy of François Mitterrand
 * Premiership of Tony Blair (the history of his government) AND Blair Ministry (the list of his ministers)
 * Stephen Harper, Domestic policy of the Harper government, Foreign policy of the Harper government, 28th Canadian Ministry, Stephen Harper as Prime Minister of Canada, and Stephen Harper out of Parliament

One probem is that Harper is getting more coverage that Laurier and Macdonald put together and probably more than Churchill, and that's not right. Another is that we're not being consistant, either with the other countries or with previous PMs.

What I propose is that the main Stephen Harper article be stripped down as much as possible to just biographical information. Harper government would be a history of his time in office and his policies (with the possibility of sub-articles on certain areas if they get too big [e.g. foreign policy]). 28th Canadian Ministry would be a fork from "Harper government" that would only list the ministers.

AND most importantly, we would do this for all PMs.

Now I realize that WP is inheriently biased in favour of recent events, so could we at least standardize the other PMs (Macdonald government, Trudeau government, etc.) and deal with Harper later. Kevlar67 12:14, 4 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Some of those articles could stand to be sorted out, sure, though I don't think all of the policy stuff would fit in one page, we'd already need to have some sub-articles. I also agree that Stephen Harper should be mostly biographical.  However, I'm not sure whether the 28th Canadian Ministry need only be a list; note that Clinton cabinet redirects to Presidency of Bill Clinton.  I always thought that it was sort of an American thing to focus on the president, whereas Canada (at least formally and legaly) focuses on the cabinet as a whole.  The 28th Ministry is the Harper ministry; it and his prime ministership are the same thing.  That being said, we do have enough information about his policies and the history of the government to fill more than one article.  If we do create a separate article for them, I'd recommend calling it Prime Ministership of Stephen Harper rather than Harper government, seeing how it's technically the Queen's government, not his.  Alternatively, we could just make an article called Policies of the 28th Ministry of Canada and lump all of those policy articles into it.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:25, 4 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Sure, the title doesn't have to be "Harper government" (although that would make common usage), but it needs to be consistent for all PMs, and clearly separate biographical information from the history of policy and politics. Kevlar67 21:55, 5 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree about the inordinate amount of Harper coverage, however, instead of Harper government, I'd follow the British example and call it Premiership of Stephen Harper, as, in reality, that's what it is. --G2bambino 16:01, 4 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Jeez - after seeing that Premiership of Stephen Harper actually links somewhere, I found it led to yet another Harper article: Stephen Harper as Prime Minister of Canada. There must be a lot of repetition out there. --G2bambino 16:02, 4 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I saw that too, after I wrote this. I still thing we should be mergist about this and not have 10 different pages about the Harper government.  Kevlar67 21:52, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay, so I think we all have the same general idea about what should be done. How does this sound: Does that sound about right? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 06:08, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Steven Harper as mostly biographical and pre-PM political life. Merge into it Stephen Harper out of Parliament.
 * 28th Canadian Ministry as a list of members of the cabinet, history and controversies about membership, and some overview of policies, containing many links to articles on the policies themselves and the ministers.
 * Premiership of Stephen Harper about his history as PM and his policies. Merge into it Domestic policy of the Harper government, Foreign policy of the Harper government.  It already has Stephen Harper as Prime Minister of Canada redirecting to it.  If, after trying to merge it all the resulting article is too long, we seperate out articles as needed.


 * I like the three page topics, although the names I'm less sure of. (esp "Premiership": too British, confused w/ Prov. premiers)  But, that's basically what I would support.  Kevlar67 (talk) 20:18, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I would prefer Prime Ministership of Stephen Harper over both Premiership of Stephen Harper and the current Stephen Harper as Prime Minister of Canada; but the term "Prime Ministership" might make someone accuse us of making up words. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:23, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

One think I know for now, is that we will probably have to move some parts of the domestic articles into sub-articles because it has 77k and not even 2 years has passed since Harper has been sworn as PM (and probably several months away for an election considering the Liberal problems which force them to not vote or support any legislation). I think the environment and economic elements should have there separate articles with still some resumes in the domestic article still but no more then one or two short paragraphs. I though doing the same think like they are doing with President Bush.

A template for Stephen Harper would possibly be required to facilitate navigation as there are several articles about this current government. A category does exist (like GWB has a template and category), but a template is also needed.

I definitely agree that Harper's article should be only biographical with maybe a separate page for his early political (or pre-PM) career. Like Bush, there should be a page for his general PM term but with resumes and links to main pages. JForget 18:49, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Support Merge There are far more articles about Stephen Harper then any other Canadian PM, there needs to be some consistency to the entire subject of Canadian Prime Ministers. Unlike an American President, I dont see a need for multiple pages about any Canadian PM. --Clausewitz01 (talk) 14:50, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Support merge. Kevlar, who created teh template and seems to be a Harper fan, "likes" having multiple articles; liking is one thing, justifying is another.  Merge 'em all.  Unless you're pepared to give equal time to other PMs and build all their articles for "balance"; having all these articles makes it seem like Harper has a notability he doesn't really warrant (he is notable for having more articles than necessary in Wikipedia, though....).  There's no need for all of this, and not for the template either.....Skookum1 (talk) 15:26, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Support merge and standardization of article structures for our PMs.  PK T (alk)  20:24, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay, we may as well make this format official. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 08:11, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Example Template
This is a VERY rough outline of what I'd like to see. Notice that it is VERY different from George W. Bush or Tony Blair. I purposly neglected their personal history and instead focused on the government as a group.

The exact same thing could be done to Trudeau allready as we have articles like the NEP and FIRA and The Charter to link to. But I would purposly leave out Fuddle Duddle or Margaret Trudeau or Trudeaumania for examples because all related to PET personally, and that's what Category:Pierre Trudeau is for. Kevlar67 (talk) 19:58, 7 January 2008 (UTC) Kevlar67 (talk) 19:58, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I would include links to the various "personal" Stephen Harper pages, whatever becomes of them after the various merges and reorganizations that have been proposed. The main Stephen Harper page is already very long and having visible subpages would encourage the development of those, as well as facilitate navigation. Random89 (talk) 19:01, 15 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, I've already split the environmental policy section into its own article. See: Environmental policy of the Harper government-- JForget 18:14, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Why??? In what way is Harper's environmental policy more notable than Environmental policy of Canada?  Tom Siddon and John Fraser (other Tories) were both far more notable in environment policy, ditto Lucien Bouchard.  What's needed here is not the creation of more Harper articles, but the reduction of the un-needed plethora of them into one or maybe two.  It's not like he's the most prolific, notable, important Prime Minister in Canadian history; in his imagination and in his presskit, perhaps, but not in historical reality. A cogent article on the history of Canadian environmental policy, yes, but having an article on the environmental policies of someone largely vilified by environmental critics is hardly suitable, or useful.  And only notable as a sign of "article bloat" about this man....Skookum1 (talk) 15:23, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

A little later...
Hi all, I'm working through Category:Articles to be merged from November 2007 and I've found this cluster of articles, which doesn't appear to have been actioned. is this decision going to be carried out? If not, I'll remove the merge tags. Totnesmartin (talk) 20:26, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The article would be too big if it was all merged together, so I'm splitting it up and getting rid of overlap, but it's a very slow process. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:00, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, there's stuff all over the place. I'll leave it to you (I know nothing of Harper). Thanks. Totnesmartin (talk) 21:01, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Minor name change
Would anyone have a problem with me changing the name of this project to "WikiProject Government s of Canada" to show that we are interested in both the federal and provincial governments? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 00:12, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Good idea. Ground Zero | t 04:22, 22 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Province of Saskatchewan Government....This, I think answers my question...Started the article Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure (Saskatchewan), which I think may now belong to WikiProject Governments of Canada...Likewise... Category:Saskatchewan government ministries and agencies, Template:Infobox Saskatchewan government ministries and Template:SaskMinistries. Similarly, Royalguard began Crown corporations would they also be under Wikiproject Governments of Canada, as they are owned and operated by the Government.  Kind Regards SriMesh |  talk  04:56, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Just to note taht title - "governments" - also includes Regional districts and their cousins in other provinces, First Nations band governments and tribal councils, plus the Nisga'a Lisims (which is neither), and any stand-alone municipal council articles that may exist; also List of mayors of XXXX if any such articles exist, e.g. for Vancouver, Toronto etc....some standardization of band government articles would be a good thing...many are fairly active with updates, those that do exist...Skookum1 (talk) 15:18, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Templates
On Canadian federal elections articles, e.g., Canadian federal election, 1993, there are at least two templates at the bottom: the "federal elections" template, which lists all of the elections since Confederation, and the "Federal Parliaments in Canada" template, which lists all of the Parliaments since Confederation. In my view, the second is not appropriate because the article relates really only to the parliament formed as a result of the election, and not to any previous or subsequent parliaments. I propose to remove the "Federal Parliaments in Canada" from the election articles in order to reduce template creep, and clean up the articles. Ground Zero | t 00:21, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Support:
 * As above Ground Zero | t 00:21, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I've corrected the shortcut to WP:TCREEP, but otherwise agree with this. The visual arrangement of these templates also leaves much to be desired, for what it's worth. Bearcat (talk) 00:34, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I support this, though we could customize the template so that for each election, the appropriate parliament for that election is listed in the template. (Then again, the link is in the infobox, so it may be superfluous in the template.) Either way, certainly remove the parliaments template. Mind  matrix  14:58, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Oppose:

Conclusion
I'll take this as a "yes", and begin work. Thanks everybody. Ground Zero | t 04:10, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Merge disparate Stephen Harper articles
I came here from the link to Discuss, but I don't really see any coherent talk about why you should or should not merge the articles. Obviously they should be merged, is it the Stephen Harper the Politician article? No, it is the Stephen Harper article, which means it covers his birth, childhood, family life, schooling, work (which in this case is Politics). Even with a job as important as the Prime Minister of Canada, that is not the core of his being, the most descriptive part of him. Furthermore, while you might be trying to Standardize all Canadian PM articles (I'm not sure if this is part of your new standards), its more important that all biographical articles on wiki are standardized to some point, I have never seen another article where they try to seperate the different pieces of a person's life and leave the actual article about the person hollow. Support —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.137.207.191 (talk) 19:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Support There are too many separate articles with the same subject matter. --Clausewitz01 (talk) 14:30, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Member of Parliament
In hopes of making Canadian MPs infoboxes content correct. When does a MP assume his/her seat? if their predecessor is still in office & if the seat is already vacant. GoodDay (talk) 16:51, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
 * From section IV.50 of the Constitution, a House goes from the return of the writs of one election to the dropping of the writs of the next election. Note that there is therefore a time when there are no sitting House MPs, unlike for cabinet ministers who keep their minister title until the day that they are replaced.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 18:37, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

So anybody who was elected to the House (for example) in the 2006 Federal election? He/she became an MP on February 6, 2006? GoodDay (talk) 18:47, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
 * No, that was the day when the people in Harper's cabinet were made members of the Prvy Council and took the places of their old counterparts as ministers. They, and the rest of the House members, were already the members for their ridings, although none of the House members would take their oaths or seats until after the first session opened.  The return of the writs doesn't make the news because it makes no difference, we already know who's getting in and they can't do anything until after the thrown speech anyway.


 * 1) Election
 * 2) Writs returned (All elected people become MPs)
 * 3) Privy Council swearing-in (Ministers, including Prime Minister, get their titles. eg. February 6, 2006)
 * 4) Throne speech (MPs take their seats and the first session starts)
 * 5) Any number of prorogations, new thrown speeches, and new sessions. (Usually 3-4 sessions per parliament)
 * 6) Writs dropped for a new election (All House members stop being MPs. This includes Ministers, but they keep their Minister titles despite not being MPs)
 * That is how I understand it. I can't remember when MPs take their oaths, but I think it is the first day that they take their seats. I'm not sure where to go for something to use as a citation for all that, because it is a mixture of constitutional law and historical precedents. For back bench MPs, it might be best just to use the election date; that is what readers are going to care about.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 19:11, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

What's got me wondering, is the article Jack Layton. It says he assumed his seat upon his election (June 28, 2004). Basically, they're inconsistancies among the Canadian MP bios (past & current). GoodDay (talk) 19:22, 9 March 2008 (UTC)


 * They do have to be standardised, I agree. For MPs, I think that we should use the election date rather than the return of the writs or the opening of the first session, mostly because this is what the reader is most going to want to know, plus it lets us throw in a link to the election article. However, on the infobox we would then have to change "assumed office" to "first elected". Okay, that template is more widely used than I thought.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 19:28, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

The same (of course) would have to be done for the MPs who've acquired their seats via by-elections. Use 'by-election' date, under first elected. GoodDay (talk) 19:36, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Peter MacKay
Since nobody has answered me at the MacKay article? I'll ask it here. Is MacKay still deputy leader of the Conservative Party? or did that post get abolished upon Harper becoming Prime Minister? MacKay's party status isn't clear at his article. GoodDay (talk) 16:41, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme
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Lists of Members of Parliament
The members of the House of Commons for each parliament are listed in the article on that parliament, except for the 39th. For the 39th, there is a separate List of House members of the 39th Parliament of Canada and List of senators in the 39th Parliament of Canada. This leads me to ask a few questions:


 * 1) Should older parliament's pages be changed to be more like the one for the 39th?
 * 2) Do lists of senators for each parliament such as the one for the 39th already exist, or would we need to generate them from the provincial lists of current and former senators?
 * 3) Election infoboxes have navigational links to the members of the previous and succeeding parliaments. I changed the 2004 and 2008 election pages to link to List of House members of the 39th Parliament of Canada, since that is where the list of elected members is. Do members of the wikiproject agree with that choice?
 * 4) Should those links somehow also include the senators, since they are also members of the parliament?

-Rrius (talk) 04:47, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Governments of Canada
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List of current Canadian senators
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, Scorpion 0422  19:49, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Council of Keewatin GAR request
Please check out the Council of Keewatin GAR request at the Canadian wikiproject notice board.... SriMesh | talk  02:39, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

2006 Census figures re 2007 muni/RD changes

 * Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Canadian_communities. Changes to Electoral Area J, Central Okanagan, and Stikine Region/Kitimat-Stikine are indicative of other post-census changes; figures may need revision across all RD articles and many municipal ones.Skookum1 (talk) 13:39, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Further to that, I opined in the section linked that regional districts should have the government switch, as they are in fact governments more than they are communities; I did add the community switch to Regional District of Central Okanagan and am about to do that for the rest of the RDs, but think maybe the government switch is more apt. comments?Skookum1 (talk) 13:45, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group
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Government Houses of Canada → Government Houses in Canada
Government Houses of Canada → Government Houses in Canada has been requested at WP:RM 76.66.201.179 (talk) 04:24, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

FLRC
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)

former Governors General of Canada
The introduction of those articles (beginning with Vincent Massey) are confusing. It begins with when the GG left office & ends with when they were appointed to office. The intro makes it appear as though the individual was GG from their birth 'til they left office. GoodDay (talk) 15:18, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Unshuffling the cabinet(s)
I just spent some time creating separate articles where had been redirects to complete the following series: Now aside from noting the two unnecessary disambigs (1950-66/1966-95) and the fact that "Minister of Mines" currently redirects to the first on the list, but should be a "global" disambiguation page, including the provincial ministers but especially because of all the other countries which have the same title for a cabinet post....aside from all that, all of these are in Category:Canadian ministers and I'm a bit nonplussed to thing of a subcategory for defunct positions like the first four here; "defunct ministers" just won't work - "defunct cabinet posts" maybe? But that got me thinking - theoretically "Canadian ministers" has subcats for "British Columbia ministers" etc or it should; but it also happens that most BC portfolios are (SFAIK) written as ministRY articles, not minisTER articles, and categorized similarly....riffing off this and noting htere's also Category:Canadian ministries there appears to be some redundancy going on, as well as the fact that "Canadian ministers" can refer to a minister of, say, the United Church; the category should be "Category:Canadian cabinet ministers"; and somehow there should be an interface between the ministers and ministries categories, no/  Another issue would seem to be that the "ministers" category should be for the individuals who had been cabinet members, not for the posts themselves, which really are the portfolio and should be categorized as part of the ministry; maybe I'd guess that the "ministers" categories are a convention inherited from UK-wikispace but at present it's a jumbled-up usage; i.e. Lisa Raitt should be in Category:Canadian ministers, but her portfolio should be in Category:Canadian ministries" category.....and there should be Category:Former Canadian cabinet ministers (would work only for actual people, not their titles) as well as Category:Former Canadian cabinet ministries/ or Category:Former Canadian ministries, though re the latter I still think unqualified use of "ministries" invited confusion with things like Protestant reverends/preachers, ministry organizations like the Campus Crusade for Christ or Young Life Canada, and /or the position of chaplain etc....or even the ministries of the missions, missionaries etc...there's a further problem with the mutation/merging/splitting of portfolios but I'll be back about that....Skookum1 (talk) 04:29, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Minister of Mines (Canada) (1907-1936)
 * Minister of Mines and Resources (1936-1950)
 * Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys (Canada) (1950-1966)
 * Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Canada) (1966-1995)
 * Minister of Natural Resources (1995-present)

Treasury Board
I just proposed a couple of mergers into the Treasury Board article: see Talk:Treasury Board for details. Project members are invited to comment! --RFBailey (talk) 04:30, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Senate of Canada
The above article is supposedly of high importance to this project; will people take a look at addition of a table setting out the number and party identification of appointments by prime minister and the accompanying discussion. -Rrius (talk) 20:35, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * No one even bothered to comment one way or the other, which I take to mean I should lower the importance level. -Rrius (talk) 02:50, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Please don't. The "importance=high" rating is correct because the Senate is a major portion of our system of government (notwithstanding the debate over whether it should be abolished - let's not go there at the moment). I skimmed through the discussion to which you refer, which is a long-winded debate about a relatively minor addition to the article. An addition I happen to like, and for which I contributed the current title.  PK  T (alk)  12:59, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement
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Small ref tags
A discussion is occurring at Talk:Prime Minister of Canada that is relevant to numerous articles scattered around this project. A subset of Wikipedia articles have developed with a quirk not found elsewhere. Some editors complain the ref links are too small, making them unnecessarily difficult to click, while the editor who favours them says normal-sized refs make the spaces between lines bigger than when there is not a ref. Not much discussion has taken place yet, but the arguments are laid out at User talk:Miesianiacal. -Rrius (talk) 18:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I see np with them in the articles it does not effect the layout or harm anyone. From what i can see this is the norm in this types of articles dealing with the Crown in Canada (yes i am aware Miesianiacal is the main contributor to them). Like Miesianiacal says it helps line up the lines in some browsers (although this is rare), i see no need to change an editors hard work because someone does not like the coding. Is there another reason to change it except the fact its rare? Who are this people who complained -  because  or  etc... also makes them small in modern browsers (Explorer is excluded from this).    There has been some talk about using Template:Smallref in its place, but this template still is not working properly so the norm would still apply no??..Moxy (talk) 18:54, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Your contribution is welcome at Talk:Prime Minister of Canada. I'm not sure it will be noticed here. To address your point, the problem is not that we don't like the coding; it's that the reflinks are unnecessarily hard to click because they are too small. That is to say, the little number in superscript between square brackets that links to the footnote is too small. It is not about the size of the text of the footnote at all. -Rrius (talk) 22:12, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Well that's interesting ,,i do not see any size difference. I will comment more over there if i think of anything to add. (but like i say its the same size for me)... Does Template:Smallref make them small too?? for me they all look like this [1] ..Moxy (talk) 22:18, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Governments of Canada articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release
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Governments of 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 Governments of Canada articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (&diams;) 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 Sunday, November 14th.

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Rejected and Declined Ballots
Do these get included in the totals? As in does the vote percentage get divided by the total ballots cast or total valid ballots? Krazytea ( talk ) 23:54, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

PM infoboxes
I'm considering adding the Governors General to the PM bio infoboxes. I've already added the GGs to the Australian & New Zealander PM infoboxes, without objections from their respective WikiProjects. What's the opinon here? GoodDay (talk) 21:38, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Census divisions of Canada
Just in case someone disagrees, I was wondering if we should move these census division by province lists into the standard naming of lists. I have made a chart of the current and proposed names of these CDs. If no one disagrees, then I will start to move them. --  K.Annoyomous  (talk)   21:51, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

✅ Moved --  K.Annoyomous  (talk)   16:36, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

WikiWomen's History Month
Hi everyone. March is Women's History Month and I'm hoping a few folks here at WP:Governments of Canada will have interest in putting on events (on and off wiki) related to women's roles in Canadian politics. We've created an event page on English Wikipedia (please translate!) and I hope you'll find the inspiration to participate. These events can take place off wiki, like edit-a-thons, or on wiki, such as themes and translations. Please visit the page here: WikiWomen's History Month. Thanks for your consideration and I look forward to seeing events take place! SarahStierch (talk) 20:59, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

CFIA-ACIA heraldic emblem.jpg
file:CFIA-ACIA heraldic emblem.jpg has been nominated for deletion -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 00:45, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

David Johnson - Titles
We need another opinion on the titles for the David Johnston article. 2 of us have been verging on a edit war. The titles as they are in the section David_Johnston seem odd and confusing to me yet in an overly long discussion on the talk page, the editor with most edits on this page insists they are best. Right now, "First Months" covers over a year and the second title has three items that are completely unrelated among themselves save they happened at the same time. You can see my original proposal here and a revised version I proposed as a compromise on the talk page and got no response in over 2 weeks .>> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 13:38, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

John Edward Brownlee
There is an ongoing featured topic candidacy for the articles relating to John Edward Brownlee, a former premier of Alberta. Any constructive contributions you would be willing to provide would be greatly appreciated. Neelix (talk) 15:27, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Re-organization of assemblies and legislatures
I've been working to standardize and re-organize pages about Canadian provincial assemblies and legislatures. In case anyone is confused, assemblies include bodies like a legislative assembly or a house of assembly or one of the now-disbanded provincial upper houses, while legislatures are the assembly (or assemblies) plus the Queen. Most legislatures in Canada are just called "Legislature", except for NL, NS, and PE which use "General Assembly" and ON and BC which use "Parliament". For a list of all affected assemblies, see Legislative assemblies of Canadian provinces and territories. Here are the major changes I've made so far: If anyone has any comments or wants some other changes to be made or wants something undone, let me know. I might be in Internet-silence for a few days, but I'll reply eventually. Happy holidays! —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:06, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Standardized all the articles about terms of assemblies (e.g. 15th Legislative Assembly of Manitoba) to be about the terms of the legislature (e.g. 15th Manitoba Legislature). In common usage people and media will use either one in every province, and it varies by province which is more common. For the sake of consistency I went with the legislatures, which are the names used for numbering terms in the Hansards and on bills.
 * Changed lists of legislatures (e.g. List of Alberta Legislative Assemblies) to be an article about the legislature in general (e.g. Alberta Legislature). I started out trying to make a articles about legislatures so we would have somewhere for infoboxes and Wikidata pages to link to. However, that article would have just been a stub, and the list articles only had short intros, so it made sense to merge the legislature pages with the list pages. If a legislature pages gets long enough, we can always split the list page off again like we did with Parliament of Canada and List of Canadian federal parliaments.
 * Added Template:Infobox legislature to all assembly and legislature pages and allowed the template to replace the term "unicameral" or "lower house of X Legislature" with "unicameral house of X Legislature" for Canadian provinces so that assembly and legislature infoboxes link to each other.
 * Sorted articles about assemblies and legislatures into categories in the format Category:New Brunswick Legislature or Category:Parliament of Ontario (or subcategories of those). There was some inconsistencies in how these categories were organized. I considered also creating subcategories for each legislative assembly to put inside the legislature categories, but it often wasn't clear whether a given article should go in the child category or the parent category, so I figured that one parent category per province is best.
 * Looks like you've done your research, from what I read of 's comments on your talk page, he hasn't. 117Avenue (talk) 02:20, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I've been formulating a revised comment about this, for this discussion. Despite hte use of "Parliament" in certain contexts in BC, the MOSTCOMMON term is "Legislative Assembly" and though this is a public muddle about that, it's rare to see "Parliament" in referring to anything to do with the Legislative Assembly.Skookum1 (talk) 02:23, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I was teaching somebody at the time of that last note; what I meant by that closing comment was that it's rare to see "Parliament" in referring to anything to do with the Legislative Assembly in regular, daily proceedings or in pres mentions. When you do see it, i t's in the sense of the ceremonial aspects, and the legal technicality, as with openings after a new election, as in this google. Regular coverage of events during a term (NB "session" refers to sittings of the Leg within a "Parliament" (as on page 548 of Elections BC's Electoral History) is when you will near-always see/hear the term "in the Legislature" or its abbreviated forms "Leg" and "Ledge", or the term "the House".  You will not hear/see a journalist saying "in Parliament in Victoria" or "in the provincial parliament" or "in the BC Parliament today" in reference to goings-on in the House, nor will you hear/see "the Assembly".  You will hear in explanations that the Legislative Assembly is the house of the Parliament of British Columbia, or when the context is "in the Parliament Buildings" (which is the formal name of the buildings housing the Leg and also refers to offices within the buildings, not just the House).  The terminology  most in the public mind, and in the media and most other usages, other than in things concerning formal proceedings and constitutional order, is "Legislative Assembly" rather than "Parliament", and yes, it's confusing to the general readership (and like much of Canadian constitutionality, including the concept of the Crown, completely obtuse to non-Canadians as much as to many Canadians).  As for my issue about content of such articles as 1st Parliament of British Columbia, I'll try and have a go at that right now to demonstrate what's missing; there's not much to be done for now to do with the replication of content between the elections articles and the "Parliament" articles, other than the different layout of the MLA/riding tables.  One thing that's confusing is that a "Parliament" is not directly correlated with a "government" i.e. during the Term of the 1st Parliament, which had four sessions of the Legislative Assembly, there were three Premiers - McCreight, de Cosmos and Walkem, and there are many other such cases.  I'm not sure if there are cases where an L-G was changed during a sitting of the Parliament of BC, and where the monarch him/herselfchanged during the same.  Probably, but the concept of a "Parliament" being the combination of the Crown and the House is I suppose more flexible and/or abstract than individual personages.  But what you will find is that the terms of these parliaments correspond to the Category:British Columbia general elections pages.  Though true to the quirky nature of BC politics, there is often a considerable lag between an election and the first sitting of a new Parliament.  My main point is that "most common use" and yes the confusing nature of the "Parliament" terminology, which is technical and procedural is not common use.  True, we don't number sessions formally, though we do number "Parliaments", but the danger in these names is that someone is going to come along and, as I noted, argue for "member of the Parliament of British Columbia" for a category name. The lede opening for the category has to be explicit about "Parliament" being the combination of the L-G/Monarch and the Legislative Assembly.  And watching out for article-text substitutions of "Legislative Assembly" with "Parliament" has to be watched out for. And if the articles are titled "Parliament" then they have to have the full details of that Parliament; who the L-G was and the monarch at the time, and the content should be more than just a list of ridings/members and byelections (all of which is already found elsewhere). Really for now, as they are now, these articles might as well be titled Results of the 1st British Columbia election, as that's all that's in them. Skookum1 (talk) 05:00, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Leaflet for Wikiproject Governments of Canada at Wikimania 2014
Hi all,

My name is Adi Khajuria and I am helping out with Wikimania 2014 in London.

One of our initiatives is to create leaflets to increase the discoverability of various wikimedia projects, and showcase the breadth of activity within wikimedia. Any kind of project can have a physical paper leaflet designed - for free - as a tool to help recruit new contributors. These leaflets will be printed at Wikimania 2014, and the designs can be re-used in the future at other events and locations.

This is particularly aimed at highlighting less discoverable but successful projects, e.g:

• Active Wikiprojects: Wikiproject Medicine, WikiProject Video Games, Wikiproject Film

• Tech projects/Tools, which may be looking for either users or developers.

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• Wiki Loves Parliaments, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves ____

• Wikimedia thematic organisations, Wikiwomen’s Collaborative, The Signpost The deadline for submissions is 1st July 2014 For more information or to sign up for one for your project, go to: Project leaflets Adikhajuria (talk) 15:30, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal
Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!


Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

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Move proposal: Disambiguate Burning of Parliament (British) and Burning of the Parliament Buildings in Montreal
There is a proposal to move Burning of Parliament to Burning of British Parliament and Burning of the Parliament Buildings in Montreal to Burning of Canadian Parliament. Please take part in the discussion at Talk:Burning of Parliament. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 15:16, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Politicians resigning/dying on election day
On Alberta's election day, after the results were clear but before all polls had reported, Jim Prentice resigned. We have a policy at WP:CANSTYLE saying that if a politician resigns or dies after the election but before taking office, we list them as holding the office between election day and their resignation/death. Presumably, if someone resigned or died before the election, they would never take office, even if they won the election. Jim Prentice raises the interesting question of where the cutoff line is. Should we count someone as briefly holding office if they resigns/dies on election day at a time when they probably won but not all votes are counted? —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 19:19, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I am unsure of the context here. Prentice already held these offices, so all that should matter is what dates he is officially no longer recognized in each role. In terms of being an MLA, his resignation would have ended that on May 5. The same date may be true of his Premiership, depending on the legalities of who (if anyone) occupies the role of Premier in the time between an election and when a new Premier is sworn in. Resolute 19:38, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The issue came up on 29th Alberta Legislature. MLAs don't sit during elections like Ministers do, so was he ever a member of the 29th Assembly? —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 20:31, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * In that case, since he resigned before the Assembly was even sworn in, I would say no. Though it makes sense to note that Prentice was elected but resigned immediately. Resolute 22:20, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's a tricky one I don't know how to handle — it's a fairly unprecedented situation that I don't think anybody ever really took into account as a possibility. While it's not unheard of for a leader to announce right away on election night that they'll be stepping down as leader, generally either they've lost their own seat, and thus their term in the legislature has already ended, or they were reelected and intend to stay on as leader and MLA/MP until a new leader is chosen, and thus their term in the legislature will continue for a few more weeks or months. But I don't think we've ever seen something like this before.
 * My best idea at the moment would be that for now we hang back a few more days to see what happens — even though he's announced his resignation as leader and MLA, technically he does still hold both positions until they're formally declared vacant by the appropriate authority (the party executive in the case of the leadership, Elections Alberta in the case of the MLA seat), and the processes for filling the vacancy formally initiated. It's kind of like giving notice that you're leaving a job — you've communicated your intent to resign, but for the next two weeks you do still have the job you're leaving. And political offices normally work the same way: usually when an MLA or MP announces that they're resigning their seat, they still hold it for another week or two or three to wrap up files and other business before they actually submit the paperwork to make it official — Glenn Thibeault, for instance, announced his resignation from the HoC on December 16 last year, but his seat wasn't formally vacated until January 5 of this year. And Michael Ignatieff announced his resignation as leader of the federal Liberals on May 3, 2011 — but he still held the position until May 25. Only on very, very rare occasions does the resignation take formal effect the very moment that the intention to resign has been announced — the person normally still holds the position for another couple of weeks until the necessary processes have been followed to make it official.
 * It now appears that an interim leader was chosen to replace Prentice earlier today, so his term as the leader of the party ended today, not on May 5. But for the moment, we still need to consider Prentice the incumbent MLA, until we can confirm that the vacancy has been formally registered with Elections Alberta. Bearcat (talk) 19:41, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Generally politicians don't immediately take office after the ballots are read. They are sworn in by the governor general or his lieutenant for that province. Usually this takes place a few weeks to a month or two after the election. They aren't in office until they are sworn in. -  Floydian  τ ¢  20:21, 11 May 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree that they don't officially become MLAs until they're sworn in, or maybe at the official return of the writs. But how should we reconcile that with our policy of using election day as their first day in office? Should the rule be "If they eventually get sworn in, their start date is retroactive to election day, but if they don't eventually get sworn in, they never take office."? —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 20:31, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Officially that's true, but in practice it's generally not possible to reliably source the date on which an MLA's swearing-in actually occurs — it's a private one-on-one formality which occurs before the government gets formally sworn in as a government, doesn't necessarily occur on the same day for all newbies, and which doesn't actually get covered as any kind of news in its own right. Generally speaking, on their own websites virtually all legislatures denote the MLA/MPs term in office as beginning on the date of the election itself, rather than a followup date one or two weeks later — so the consensus here has been to use the date that the legislature's website uses regardless of any debate about its rightness or wrongness, because it's simply not possible for us to properly source any other date. "Officer" positions (the first minister, the cabinet, etc.) are different from regular member positions, however — that does get covered as actual news, and in the case of the cabinet we don't even know who's getting what position until the swearing-in ceremony itself. As of right now, Prentice is still the premier of Alberta in a caretaker sense — nobody's gainsaying that fact. But there's an open question about when to denote as the end of his terms as party leader and as MLA, which don't have to be the same date as the end of his term as premier. Bearcat (talk) 20:32, 11 May 2015 (UTC)


 * He's certainly Premier until his replacement is sworn in. But remember that MLAs do not sit during elections, so for lists of MLAs the question is whether he ever retook the seat after the election. I don't think Elections Alberta is the proper source for this; they would call him the winner of the election even if he had resigned or died halfway through the campaign, and they wouldn't become involved again until a byelection is called, but such a person clearly would not have spent any time in office. A better source would be the Legislative Assembly itself. I know they didn't include Prentice when they listed the members of the 29th Legislature on their website a couple days after the election. But unfortunately they don't have a list of all past-and-present members of the current Assembly, so we don't know whether Prentice spent one hour as MLA. In my opinion, you can't be called an MLA until all of your riding's polling stations have reported. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 20:31, 11 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Let's get things straight, right off the bat. Jim Prentice is still Premier of Alberta & will continue to be until he tenders his resignation to the Lieutenant Governor (on May 14), to make way for the appointment & swearing in of Rachel Notley. The only other way he'd ceased to be premier, would be death or the lieutenant governor dismissing him. As for an MLA? Prentice a re-elected (or about to be re-elected) MLA resigned immediately on election night May 5, 2015, therefore that should be his MLA end date. GoodDay (talk) 20:39, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * A resignation does not become official the very moment it's been announced — even regular grunts still have to give at least two weeks' notice of leaving a job, and still have the job during those two weeks. As I noted above, Michael Ignatieff announced his resignation as leader of the federal Liberals on May 3, 2011 — but he still was the leader of the federal Liberals for another three weeks after that date, and did not become the party's former leader until May 25. And Dalton McGuinty announced his resignation as premier of Ontario on October 15, 2012 — but he still was the premier of Ontario for another four months after that date. A resignation does not take effect until it's been made official, by virtue of (a) his seat as an MLA having been formally declared vacant by Elections Alberta, and (b) his position as leader having been formally accepted by the party by virtue of its choice of his replacement. Until that's been done, it's still just an announced "two weeks' notice" intention to resign, and not a fait accompli. Bearcat (talk) 20:43, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * If I recall correctly, Ignatieff did not announce his resignation as Canadian Liberal leader on May 2, 2011. He said |"I will serve as long as the party wants to make me serve....". Prentice said otherwise for his Alberta PC leadership. GoodDay (talk) 21:01, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * That video is Ignatieff's speech on election night, which was May 2 rather than May 3. He did announce an actual resignation the following day — May 3, as I said in my comment — but still held the leadership for another three weeks after that. Bearcat (talk) 21:06, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Okie Doke, I missed your May 3 date :) GoodDay (talk) 21:42, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * One can hold a Ministerial position or party leader position until a replacement is found (even if one isn't an MLA). But you don't sit as an MLA until the by-election. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 22:11, 11 May 2015 (UTC)


 * One does not officially become an MLA until they are sworn in, or arguably when the official count is announced. Since we don't always have sources for those events, we use election day as a standard. That part is fine with me for the sake of consistency and cite-ability. However, in my humble opinion, this "retroactive to election day" rule should not be used if the person doesn't ever become an MLA. Ideally, we would have a cite-able source to tell us whether they were sworn in, but lacking that, I think we should at least exclude people who resign or die before the return of the writs. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 22:11, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * To avoid the possible confusion of exact date. I've often chosen to disregard month & day & just use year. GoodDay (talk) 22:17, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if re-elected MLAs are even sworn in again. That might just apply to newly elected candidates. Resolute 22:20, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'm not sure about that either — of course in many cases it's a moot point, since the infobox wouldn't denote reelection to another four years as MLA or MP for the same district as a new office but simply as a continuation of the same one, but the question does come into play if a sitting member gets reelected for a redistributed and renamed district. Bearcat (talk) 22:58, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, just as an example, we have the case of John Dahmer, who won election as an MP in 1988 but then died scant days later before ever actually sitting in the House of Commons (and, in fact, before even being sworn in at all.) But he is still considered to have been a Member of Parliament, so it's still appropriate for us to maintain an article about him and to denote him as serving the same length of time (five days) that Parliament's website ascribes to him. And there's also the oddball case of Gary Keating — who also never actually sat in the legislature, and technically hadn't even been formally sworn in as an MLA either, but got elected and then resigned 22 days later. But there's no natural way to deem him ineligible for a Wikipedia article — where else could we go into the necessary level of contextual detail to explain how the guy won the election but then never actually served in the legislature? Bearcat (talk) 23:02, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The Parliament website for John Dahmer shows that if you haven't resigned/died by the day after the election, you did serve for at least one day. So what's the cut-off point? What if you resign/die the morning of the election? What about after the polls close but before a winner is declared? What if, like Jim Prentice, you resign when most, but not all votes in your riding have been counted? —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 05:34, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

What's to be done with the article Calgary-Foothills? Shall we restore Prentice in the infobox or leave it 'vacant'? GoodDay (talk) 22:58, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Leave it as vacant, imo. For the sake of an infobox of a single riding, I'd say the real situation on the ground is more relevant to a reader in that case than our pedantic efforts to be precise on the length of Prentice's term as MLA on his article. Resolute 01:10, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm more concerned about the article 29th Alberta Legislature. If you resign/die the day before the election you aren't listed. If you resign/die the day after the election you are listed. But where is the cut-off line? When Jim Prentice resigned he was declared winner of his seat in the media, but not all votes had been counted. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 05:38, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Outgoing & Incoming MPs/MLAs
Note: We've inconsistancy throughout the MP & MLA bio articles, concerning leaving/assuming seats dates. Some use election dates & others use swearing in dates. GoodDay (talk) 21:03, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * None use "swearing-in dates"; those are almost never actually a properly sourceable fact at all. Some have historically used the date of their first formal sitting in the legislature, which isn't the same thing. A consensus was ultimately established to use the election date instead of the first-sitting date, although not all of the old articles which had used the first-sitting date have actually been corrected yet. Bearcat (talk) 21:09, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * For example: PEI MLAs who took their seats in 2007, are shown with the date June 12 (when R. Ghiz became premier), not May 28, when 2007 election was held. GoodDay (talk) 21:12, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Then that's one of those cases where a wrong date was used and still needs to be corrected. An MLA's swearing-in as an MLA does not coincide with the government's swearing-in as a government — an MLA got sworn in as an MLA in a separate ceremony from the premier-and-cabinet ceremony, which (a) occurred sometime between May 28 and June 12, (b) didn't necessarily happen on the same date for all newly elected MLAs, because each MLA is individually sworn in one-on-one rather than in any kind of en masse gathering, and (c) didn't get covered as news by anybody, and thus isn't reliably sourceable as to what exact date pertains to any given person. Bearcat (talk) 21:18, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Okie doke. PS - If only we had been a republic ;) GoodDay (talk) 21:42, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * FWIW, the newly elected MLAs on PEI, are being called members-elect. GoodDay (talk) 21:13, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I'd thought they were only members-elect as well FWIW when I created the articles. Usually the video of the swearing in ceremony gets posted to the Legislature website as well, by the way (for Alberta). Connormah (talk) 03:44, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Feedback from Alberta Legislature Library
I asked someone in the legislature library and got this interesting reply:
 * Hello,


 * Thank you for your request. All Members who were elected on May 5, including Mr. Prentice, are considered Members-elect until eight business days following the election (May 15) at which point they are declared elected. Following that there is a 10-day appeal period should any of the results be called in question. Members are officially considered MLAs at the end of the business day on May 25 and will be sworn in after that date before they can sit in the Assembly as Members of the 29th Legislature.


 * Section 139 of the Election Act (http://www.qp.alberta.ca/1266.cfm?page=E01.cfm&leg_type=Acts&isbncln=9780779733903) outlines the process for a candidate who has been declared elected to disclaim that right.


 * Regards

So it sounds like the official start state is 8 business days + 10 days. For the sake of convenience and keeping Alberta pages in line with the rest of the country, I'm happy to keep using election day. However, in the case of Jim Prentice, notice that subsection 139(3) of the Election Act says that if a candidate declines the seat before becoming an official member, "the election in which that candidate was declared elected is void". That suggests to me that if he does his paperwork before the 25th, he never becomes a member of the 29th Assembly, and in fact was retroactively never even elected. No matter what we do, we're going to need some footnotes to explain this. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:51, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Haha, I always knew that the election date was wrong to use as the ending/starting date of service for MPs & MLAs :) GoodDay (talk) 18:04, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Sure, nobody ever thought it was the right date. But it's virtually never possible to reliably source the date that is actually the correct one — leaving us with absolutely no valid or possible choice but to arbitrarily pick one of two dates, either the election date or the date of the first legislative sitting, which are equally wrong because the real date is some almost always unverifiable date between the two. So consensus landed on the election date, solely because we had to pick something. That's the part you're missing — nobody ever thought that the election date was the right one, but it's almost always impossible to adequately source the more officially correct one (and even in the rare case where we can properly source a correct date, we can't justify treating that one person differently than we treat anybody else who was elected alongside them.) It's an issue where we're stuck in a position of having to pick one of two imperfect dates as there are no reliable sources that can actually be consulted to determine the actual "perfect" one. To be honest, I'd actually prefer, for a general MLA position, to just avoid the exact dates entirely and include only the year in the infobox — but that hasn't been the consensus position so far. Bearcat (talk) 18:12, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree that we have to agree on a date if we want to include more than just the year, but what do you make of the above Alberta law? It seems to me that "10 days after announcement of the official results" is a verifiable date that's more accurate than election day. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 14:52, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The first problem I have with that is that private correspondence with an insider doesn't count as reliable sourcing for our purposes. I have no substantive reason to doubt that they're telling the truth, but we can't point to private e-mail if somebody asks about it later on — we would need to find and cite a publicly accessible source citation for the official date before we can call it verifiable by Wikipedia's definition of what verifiability means. The e-mail you received only gives an "exact text of the relevant law" citation for the "MLA-elect disclaiming the seat" portion of your request — it doesn't give us a usable citation for the "people officially become MLAs ten days after Elections Alberta confirms the official results" part.
 * The second problem is that it only applies to Alberta — what do we do for the other nine provinces, three territories, and the federal House of Commons, for which we still don't have a confirmed exact date? Do we institute a rule that we use the election date for every legislature in Canada except Alberta, for which we use "ten days after the official declaration of results" instead? Treating Alberta differently than anywhere else, just because it's the only province for which we've been able to locate an alternative date so far, seems a bit dodgy to me — we need a consistent practice that's common to all 14 legislatures. So as far as I'm concerned, it's an all or nothing situation — until such time as we can nail down the exact correct dates for the House of Commons and all 13 provincial and territorial legislatures, and thus are able to establish a consistent across-the-board policy that has no loopholes or exceptions or inconsistencies to it at all, knowing what date one province uses doesn't change what we should do, even for that one province's MLAs, in the meantime. YMMV, but that's my view. Bearcat (talk) 15:39, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Federal, provinicial & territorial election results & their immediate effect.
I highly recommend that in future, when an election occurs where the results are a likely change in government, we get all related article semi-protected for about two weeks. It's almost a daily struggle to revert well-intentioned 'but' ill-conceived pre-mature edits by IPs & other newbies. The latest examples are at Jim Prentice, Rachel Notley, Alberta, Premier of Alberta etc etc.... you get the picture. GoodDay (talk) 01:55, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree. Wikipedia is usually wary of preemptive protection, but it's pretty clear that these well-intentioned edits are going to be a problem after every election. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 14:57, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
 * That has been proposed as standard practice in the past, but it's always failed — Wikipedia, as an institution, tends to be highly allergic to pre-emptive page protection on the basis that there might be a problem in the future. Unfortunately, we're stuck just having to deal with it as it happens — we can page protect if necessary once a problem has actually been identified, but cannot just automatically lock politicians' pages the moment election results which change their status have been announced. Bearcat (talk) 15:46, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
 * If recent polls are accurate, we'll be having a heck of a time in October 2015. GoodDay (talk) 20:09, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, yes — but again, we do have the option of imposing page protection if and when a problem actually does crop up for real, so that does help mitigate things a bit (I agree not enough, but it's still better than nothing at all.) To be honest, I've long been a proponent that Wikipedia should entirely stop being editable by anonymous IPs, and should instead require full registration/login for all contributors — to me, the distinction between "anyone can edit" and "anyone can register to edit" is not compelling enough to override the significant problems we have with inaccuracies and misrepresentations and partisan spin and BLP libel other assorted bullpuckey regularly perpetrated on here. But there's never been a general consensus to move in that direction, and unfortunately there's not likely to be one anytime soon. Bearcat (talk) 20:32, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Members of the Diefenbaker government
Looking for specialists of the Diefenbaker era willing to help match names of members of the Diefenbaker government with faces on. (I tentatively identified a few but could have made mistakes. Please correct if you find any.) Thanks in advance. -- Asclepias (talk) 19:41, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Anyone here?
Just wondering. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:46, 3 October 2016 (UTC)please ping me

A new newsletter directory is out!
A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.
 * – Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)