Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Political parties and politicians in Canada

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[edit] 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

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] Cat:Canadian politician stubs split

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)

[edit] That was close

"All names should be in English."

  • After reading that quote, I thought that we were going to have to cange Jean Chrétien to John Christian. NorthernThunder 07:09, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)


[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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 (talk • contribs) 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 (talk • contribs) 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 3rd Canadian Parliament

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)


[edit] All names should be in English?

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

[edit] 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 (talk • contribs) 05:51, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 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 ( Talk • Contributions ) 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 ( Talk • Contributions ) 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] Template:Canadian federal political parties

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

[edit] 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 (talk • contribs) 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 (talk • contribs) 22:06, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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 (talk • contribs) 00:28, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Parti Populaire des Putes

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)

[edit] 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 (talk • contribs) 16:22, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal to standarize coverage of PMs

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

[edit] assessment drive

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

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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 (talk • contribs) 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)

[edit] Notability

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)

[edit] 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 (talk • contribs) 23:32, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 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)