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List of Canadian federal parliaments

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When I first found this list, in was nothing but a collection of links, and I proposed to delete it. When it survived that, I decided to make it worthwhile. I changed it into a table and added exact dates, elections, the prime ministers, opposition leaders, parties, speakers, number of sessions, and graphical illustrations of the house after each election. I also re-wrote the intro and added a picture. I arranged it into straightforward horizontal rows to make it easy to read. Considering that I had to assemble this information bit by bit, I believe that it is now the most comprehensive list of Canadian parliaments on the Net. --Arctic Gnome 14:21, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. I really like the list, but I have a comment about the images that represents the seats in the parliament. I know that there have been a lot of work creating all of them, but why the number of seats differs from one image to another? Is it because the number of seats varies from a parliament to another? What does the isolated cell represents? And does the position of the cells really represents the position of seats? If it isn't, I would suggest using a half pie chart to represent the proportion of political parties. CG 16:02, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Point 1: The number of seats in Parliament has been increasing. For the first hundred years, new provinces joined the country, and they needed representation. Since then, population distribution has changed, but the relatively shrinking provinces can’t loose seats (constitutionally), so the relatively growing provinces gain them. Point 2: The isolated cell is the speaker of the house, who is an elected member of parliament, but does not get a vote. Point 3: The position of cells is where the members actually sit. The goal is to have the governing party on one side (the bottom, from our point of view), the opposition party on the other side, and let the small parties not get split up. --Arctic Gnome 16:35, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - certainly featured material, however one source to "parliaments trivia"... spoils the hard work. Renata 16:32, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • That one source is the Library of Parliament, which is managed by the government and is physically attached to the parliament building. You can't get much more reliable than that. --Arctic Gnome 16:37, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - The list is very good, however, I'd like to see a column with the number of MPs in each session, otherwise readers will have to count the squares in each picture. Along with that, some of that pictures need appropriate explanations, like the MP count to each party and a colour explanation. A note saying that further info about the distribution pictures is available in its own page would be great. Afonso Silva 17:47, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Dates need to be linked for preferences. Rmhermen 23:20, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object for now:
(a) Presently, one of the references is to Wikipedia. This has to change: can a replacement source be found?
(b) The "Party" column should presumably be "Governing party" (is there a technical term for this in Canada?). Similarly, would it not make more sense for the words "Official opposition" to wikilink to the appropriate article, rather than the following word "Party"?
(c) The graphics are lovely (my only criticism is that on some, e.g. Image:Cdn1867.PNG, I couldn't always link the key to the parties represented: in the 1867 example, who are the red MPs in the top right? In Image:Cdn1878.PNG, who is represented by the especially dark blue box in the top left?) but, as this conversation has established, their meaning, though well thought out, is impenetrable to most readers. Could the legend be expanded to include some of the key points brought up in this thread, e.g. that the speaker is in the isolated cell on the left, and the governing party is to the speaker's right)? In addition to an expansion of the legend used on the images, can a footnote be put in to the list itself?
(d) It would be helpful to see the seat count for the official opposition too. Perhaps this would be best accommodated if there was a distinct column for the total number of seats in parliament? Or alternatively if the total seat count was given in the "Parliament" column, next to the number of sessions? I am warming more to the latter idea; certainly the total number of seats seems more a characteristic of the parliament than the governing party.
(e) There are sometimes two speakers listed. I presume this is because the speaker changed mid-parliament: in that case, shouldn't the date of changeover be given? At any rate, some explanation should be given.
None of these concerns should be too hard to change. While I would really like to see (d) acted on, I would probably be content if (a)-(c) and (e) were addressed (or persuasive grounds given for (b), (c) and (e) not to be acted on). These criticisms aside, there has been a lot of excellent work on this list and I congratulate the editors involved for it, Arctic.Gnome especially. Getting these last few concerns addressed would make it a brilliant and definitely feature-worthy list. TheGrappler 20:17, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • (a) Now fixed. --Arctic Gnome 04:27, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • (b) Now fixed. --Arctic Gnome 04:36, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • (c) The off-colour seats are MPs who ran under different party names, like how there were Conservatives, Nationalist Conservatives, and Liberal-Conservatives, all of which were pretty much the same party. I’ll talk to the user who made the images, because I’m not sure how to change them. --Arctic Gnome 04:48, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • (d) Depending on the parliament, there are from three to seven opposition parties. I’m not sure if the exact seat counts can fit. I’ll try a few arrangements and see if any work. --Arctic Gnome 04:41, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • (e) I chose not to give an extra row to show the changes in speakers or opposition leaders because they change more frequently and they don’t really affect the way the government is run when they change. --Arctic Gnome 04:32, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Looking even better, thank you! Still tentatively opposing until it reaches a more stable form with which people are happy. (a) and (b) are definitely fixed now - fantastic!.
        • (c) Please do get in touch with the guy - the fact that the color-coded legend and the images don't actually match left me thoroughly confused. And a footnote on the table and perhaps a legend on each image explaining the layout of the parliamentary diagrams is, I believe, essential - perhaps the way to incorporate it into the table is to actually give the column a heading (not sure quite what: "Diagram" sounds a bit bland) and put a footnote by that, which if clicked on gives an explanation of e.g. what the speaker's position is. The color-coded legend that's in each of the articles could be altered to include these details, or some text could be copied-and-pasted into the image pages - either would be fine by me. Getting the legend to match the images isn't such an important thing from the FLC point of view, since the images are distinct from the list and their legends aren't visible in the list. However, explaining the schematic diagrams in a footnote somewhere is important, given that people asked for clarification in the FLC.
        • (d) Perhaps I didn't make myself clear - at the moment, we list governing party and official opposition party but only give the seat count for the former. The seat count for the latter is relevant and could be accommodated fairly easily; and it would also make sense to also move the total number of seats available into the "Parliament" column (it's an attribute of the Parliament, just like the number of sessions, not an attribute of the governing party). I didn't intend to ask for individual seat counts for all opposition parties, just for information about the official opposition.
        • (e) Again, I didn't make myself clear and I apologise. I certainly wouldn't want to see yet another breaking up of the row just for a change of speaker. But what about, where the speaker changes, putting something like (from 12 Sep., 1932) behind the name for the new speaker? Adds information, doesn't take up much space, makes it clear to people like me who are utter ignoramuses on Canadian governmental affairs that they aren't concurrent speakers (which is what the "slash" had actually led me to believe originally, I'd assumed it was some kind of weird power-sharing arrangement... ). Just a suggestion, but I think it's a useful one.
        • (f) This is new - I'd oppose getting rid of the leader of the opposition. If this is anywhere as important in Canada as it is in the United Kingdom, where I have a bit more familiarity with the system, then dumping this would lose valuable data. I would be concerned if this was removed. I see Renata shortened two columns into one; I have tried to reduce the column heading in length so it looks more reasonable. The Leader of the Opposition is incredibly important in Commonwealth governmental systems, not only because of their power in parliamentary affairs, but because they are the Prime Ministers-in-waiting if an election makes power change hands. It's vaguely like being a cross between Minority Leader and the opposition's Presidential Candidate. Please keep this in, though not necessarily in its own column.
        • (g) This is also new - there are some formatting issues in the present version. At the top of the table there are no gridlines between columns, at the bottom there are, and in between there is a bit of a mess. Also, the inline citations don't seem to be working; by clicking on the arrow in the footnotes I arrive back at the correct position in the table, but clicking on the footnote link in the table body doesn't seem to work. This point probably just needs a tidy-up to solve (and I can't work out what's going wrong with the footnotes) but until it is sorted, I will continue to oppose. A featured list clearly should have its table format correct and its footnotes working! I hope this doesn't sound too negative - I really like the way this list has been coming on and greatly appreciate the effort that has been put into it. I just think the "featured" bar for a list deserves to be pretty high. I'm certainly not going to be impossible to please though! :) TheGrappler 21:44, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • (h) Latest and possibly most important problem - I am concerned that the list of opposition leaders doesn't match its cited source ([2]). One clear difference is that this list contains some but not all of those listed there as "acting" leaders of the opposition. However, this is not the only issue. The differences in full:
          • Richard Hanson, 1943-5, should be Conservative?
          • Gordon Graydon, 1943-5, Progressive Conservative - missing from the list
          • Should be William Earl Rowe, 1954-5 followed by George Alexander Drew, 1955-6?
          • Michael Starr, 1967
          • Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray, 1990
          • John Douglas Reynolds, 2001-2
        • There may be good reasons why the apparent "reference" list is not being followed, but they ought to be explained. TheGrappler 21:46, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • This remains my sole criticism of the list, but the fact that it doesn't agree with its supposed references is a good reason to oppose until this can be straightened out (perhaps with the use of an alternative source if the one being used is wrong). TheGrappler 20:53, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
            • The list didn't include people that were just acting for someone else, but I've now added them so that everyone who has done the job is included. I've also added a footnote about the party membership of Hanson. Arctic Gnome 06:25, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. —Nightstallion (?) 10:55, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with a question - the table as squeezed right now. If you noticed I myself did my best to shorten the dates and made two columns into one. But I also see the names of opposition leaders and I don't like them. Would you mind if I remove them? Renata 14:51, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Do you mean listing the opposition party but not the opposition leader? I guess if that column looks really bad on other display sizes leaders can be removed. Alternatively, I can remove all of the interim opposition leaders and MPs who were leading on someone else’s behalf. --Arctic Gnome 15:19, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, list just the party and not the leader. It's not a big deal, just I feel like the table is to overcrowded and my screen shows everything in new line which is completely annoying. Renata 19:24, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please see my comment (f) above in relation to this, though I'm not sure how to deal with overcrowding. TheGrappler 21:44, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Dates do not have to be linked. It's neater like this. But I have a question: what is the policy in Wikipedia about using honorifics like "Sir"? CG 17:44, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) re date linking. Rmhermen 21:05, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - to address overcrowding and squeezing info I made font size 90% and combined prime minister and speaker columns. Hope it's ok with you. Renata 06:11, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't mind the smaller font size, but the Prime Minister is too important a role to have to share a box with someone else; so I’ll have to revert that. Much of the squeezing problem on my display is caused by the fact that the image of the house extends below the text so the table can't use the rightmost couple centimetres of the page. I add line breaks to the end of the text to fix it, but they keep getting removed. --Arctic Gnome 14:26, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I quite agree: Prime Minister is an important political and governmental position, Speaker is a relatively unimportant bit of information primarily useful for parliamentary buffs. It would be odd to mix the two up, especially since they change at different times. In an effort to ease the squeeze, I merged the elections column into the parliament one. The information this loses is the exact date of polls closing - I didn't believe this was of critical importance to the list, especially as there is a distinct list of elections where it seems more suitable. I even dared to raise the font size to 100% after that, but wouldn't object too strongly if it went down again. However, if font size is reduced, I don't think we should use "small" text too, as it will become very hard to read. I'm still opposing the nomination on the basis that there are several discrepancies with its sources, but that aside I think the quality of this list is good. TheGrappler 20:53, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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