Currently, this project has about ~66 articles in need of some reference cleanup. Basically, some short references created via{{sfn}} and{{harvnb}} and similar templates have missing full citations or have some other problems. This isusually caused by templates misuse or by copy-pasting a short reference from another article without adding the full reference, or because a full reference is not making use of citation templates like{{cite book}} (seeHelp:CS1) or{{citation}} (seeHelp:CS2). To easily see which citation is in need of cleanup, please checkthese instructions to enable error messages (Svick's script is the simplest to use, butTrappist the monk's script is a bit more refined for doing deeper cleanup). See alsohow to resolve issues.
If someone could add the full references to those article/fix the problem references, that would be great. Again, the easiest way to deal with those is to install Svick's script perthese instructions. If after installing the script, you do not see an error, that means it was either taken care of, or was a false positive, and you don't need to do anything else.Headbomb {t ·c ·p ·b}04:53, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion, sidebars are only a helpful navigational tool when used on an overview article, i.e. atCulture of Canada or similar. There's no good reason to include them in biographies - it's unnecessary clutter, and the effort is better spent maintaining the navboxes and making sure article sections have appropriately placed hatnotes. I see why some like them, they look nice sometimes, but they serve no real purpose.MediaKyle (talk)17:47, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Several months ago there were lengthy discussions on whether to include the results of provincialNew Democratic Party wings on the page of the national party. The conclusion was to exclude them on the basis of each wing already having their own page and supposedly it was mutually exclusive to have both. This claim was made on the basis that no countries that have it included in their national page also have separate pages for regional branches. Having done more research I have found that claim to be false. First example of a party that has both is theLabour Party (UK). As you can see on it's page it includes tables for subnational results for the party. Simultaneously each wing of the party has its own pageScottish Labour,London Labour,Welsh Labour. It is the same for theConservative Party (UK) andLiberal Democrats (UK). This is also true for political parties in the United States e.g.Michigan Democratic Party, in Germany (though most of the state pages only exist in German), and in Australia e.g.Australian Labor Party &New South Wales Labor Party. With this mountain of precedent and evidence, I believe there is no justification for this information to be excluded from the article, and should be added back immediately.Politicsenthusiast06 (talk)12:21, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't the UK or Australia. With that in mind, we've decided (multiple times) tonot include the provincial/territorial wings. PS - We already have a section in prose, concerning those wings.GoodDay (talk)13:44, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have nominatedCalgary Hitmen for afeatured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets thefeatured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process arehere.Hog FarmTalk00:31, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why? We've got pages for federal ministries and many other provincial ministries (eg:Eby ministry) already, these don't seem out of place. They all look like they're in need of citations, but that's not a reason to delete. —Kawnhr (talk)22:08, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I previously made a page for each of the Alberta Executive Councils (see for instance:Brownlee ministry,Notley ministry). All of the dates and positions were imported from the Alberta legislature website listing that information. I believe these are valid pages that should not be deleted. The pages provide the composition of the provincial executive at various points in time. In theory they could be expanded to include other content related to that particular executive as well. -Caddyshack01 (talk)22:40, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely, and I'm glad that you brought this up. I agree with getting rid of political sidebars altogether - for one thing, these navigation templates are far too large. When there's so many links, they cease to be a useful navigational tool for the user. In fact, these sidebars have so many links, that many of the articles included do not even use the sidebar template, making them frustrating for readers. Including or excluding certain things from these political sidebars could also be seen as problematic, especially when we get into listing politicians under these sidebars. We cannot include every topic under the umbrella of conservatism, for example, so by what metric do we decide what to include? Further, their scope is duplicated by navboxes, which are in general a much tidier way of presenting a navigational aid - multiple navboxes can be nested together when things get out of hand, and they have greater flexibility for organization via subgroups. My attempts to trim the bloat from the Conservativism and Liberalism sidebars has received some resistance fromRedBlueGreen93 so I suspect they will have something to say on this matter.MediaKyle (talk)01:30, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I reverted those edits because I think the sidebars should keep notable politicians. I am not opposed to discussing higher notability standards (especially on the Liberalism and Conservatism templates) so to avoid an excess amount of links, but I don't think we should be removing them entirely.RedBlueGreen9320:53, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hello everyone. Moxy makes good points. I'm not opposed to converting these sidebars into navboxes, as long as those resulting navboxes have added value and are not just a bunch of linkspam. I was about to just nominateTemplate:Democratic socialism in Canada for outright deletion for multiple reasons (which I'll explain) until I saw @Moxy's invitation to come and discuss it here. So here I am. :)
^ Most of the sidebars above are almost entirely duplicative of the footer navboxes next to them, or should be converted into a footer navbox for the reasons mentioned by Moxy and @MediaKyle, or in my nominator's rationales at the Culture sidebars TfMs linked above (WP:LEADSIDEBAR,WP:LINKBACK,WP:BRINT etc.).
It has many generic links under "Schools" and "Principles" that are not Canada-specific;
It has a rather long list of active and defunct parties in a sidebar, whereas a category would suffice much better. PerWP:TG no. #6,Templates should not be used to create lists of links to other articles when a category, list page, or "See also" section list can perform the same function.;
Thanks for your work on this, that all sounds good to me. the Democratic Socialism sidebar is quite recent, I see no reason why we can't just delete it, especially given it was never really implemented properly. Seeing the way the tide is going, I'm going to start converting the Nova Scotia sidebars as well before I'm forced to clean up merges. Already redirectedTemplate:Culture of Nova Scotia. --MediaKyle (talk)13:27, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You're welcome, and thankyou for also taking the initiative!
I could nominate the Democratic Socialism in Canada sidebar for deletion, but I'd like to leave the possibility open for improvement if anyone wants to have a go. After all,Template:Conservatism in Canada is properly transcluded, it just should be a navbox rather than a sidebar. The Democratic Socialism and Liberalism templates are not unfixable, but rather than trying to salvage it by converting it into a navbox and overhauling it with transclusions, starting over from scratch might be a better idea (WP:TNT). @Moxy what do you think?NLeeuw (talk)15:20, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Back in May I recreated theNova Scotia Portal, and I would describe its rollout as a resounding success - diligent application to high-traffic articles has brought it up to 435 views in the past month, in contrast to 297 views for what should be the more popularPortal:Ontario, but still a far cry from 3,671 views atPortal:Canada. I think this is a good sign for the future of provincial portals, and I would like to create another one soon, as long as nobody is vehemently opposed to it. Which province should receive a portal next? Are there any other editors who would be interested in maintaining the featured content section for a specific province? Thanks,MediaKyle (talk)12:45, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
SeeUser talk:Rushtheeditor#Adding unreferenced biographies. They have added that the newly elected MLAs in the2025 Nunavut general election took office on 27 October 2025 as soon as the election was over and this is standard throughout Wikipedia.JTtheOG and myself have been removing them. On page 5, section 12, Oaths oOfficial Consolidation of Legislative Assembly and Executive Council Act it says "Every member shall, before assuming any duties of office, take an oath of allegiance in Form 1 and an oath of office in Form 2 of Schedule D in the presence of the Commissioner." My reading of that, is they are not officially MLAs or can assume office until sworn in.
Currently, we use the election date for the start of a term. You'd have to get a consensus (for all Canadian politicans) to change that.GoodDay (talk)20:48, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So you're saying I need a consensus to add sourced material to BLPs but I don't need consensus to add unsourced information that directly contradicts a valid source? Can you point to where a consensus was formed to allow original research to be added to BLPs?CambridgeBayWeather (#1 deranged),Uqaqtuq (talk),Huliva22:26, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that, legally speaking, an MP's start date is backdated to the day of their election, in order to simplify things like payroll and record keeping. PingingBearcat, who is most knowledgeable about MP start and end dates. —Kawnhr (talk)23:44, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We've had this argument about what is or isn't the start date of a Canadian politician's term in office before — but for most politicians, we have no consultable sources totell us what the person's official swearing-in date evenwas. The "swearing-in" date falls sometimein between election day and the first sitting of the legislature, and isn't always even the same day for every member, but media don't generallyreport the swearing-in dates as any kind ofnews, and even the legislature websites don't make any special point of recording the dates of individual members' swearings-in for posterity either. So even if we wanted to use the swearing-in dates, we rarely ever have any sources of any kind to even tell us what date that even was in the first place. So literally the only dates it's evenpossible for us to use are either (a) election day, or (b) the date of the first formal sitting of the new legislature, because those are the only dates we can reliably and consistentlyverify for the vast majority of Canadian legislators — so while there are legitimate arguments in favour of both of those options, the consensus decision, when it came up for discussion here in the past, was to go with the election date. The rule also absolutely cannot be that we use the election date for all other legislatures in Canada while using a later dateonly for Nunavut — the rule has to be thesame for all Canadian federal, provincial and territorial legislaturesacross the board, because this is one of those things where it's incredibly important for us to beconsistent. So, unfortunately, the choices here are either (a) we use the election date for Nunavut whether you like it or not, or (b) you personally commit to gnoming your way through every single person who's ever served in any Canadian legislature to change themall to "first sitting of the new legislature" across the board, because this absolutely cannot be a "one rule for everybody else and a different special rule only for Nunavut alone" thing. Nunavut has to follow thesame rule as all other Canadian legislatures when it comes to this. It's either "always the election date for all legislators" or "always the opening of the first legislative session for all legislators", not "the election date for some legislators and the opening of the session for others".Bearcat (talk)02:00, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. For instance, unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope.
The design and content of biographical infoboxes must comply with Wikipedia's verifiability policy, as well as the infobox and biographical style guidelines. All content displayed by this template must adhere to the biographies of living persons policy when applicable. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material must be removed, especially if it is potentially libelous.
Which means that start dates can be removed as per Wikipedia policy.
As to me going through all office holders and changing it to the date of the first sitting I'm not about to change one type of OR with another. If there is no source to say when they assumed office they no date should be put in. However, if a site wide consensus is achieved, andWikipedia:Village pump (policy) would probably be the place to start, then an agreed upon date can be entered.
"The rule also absolutely cannot be that we use the election date for all other legislatures in Canada while using a later date only for Nunavut". That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that we use sourced dates where we have them and no dates where there are no sources. In other words we follow established policy. "the rule has to be the same for all Canadian federal, provincial and territorial legislatures across the board, because this is one of those things where it's incredibly important for us to be consistent." No it isn't important to be consistent. If possible it should be consistent but accuracy is more important. Wikipedia, and Canadian articles, are full of inconsistencies when it would compromise accuracy.CambridgeBayWeather (#1 deranged),Uqaqtuq (talk),Huliva15:36, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you can get a consensus for the changes you want? so be it. Until then, it's likely any changes you make, will likely end up reverted.GoodDay (talk)16:31, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not about to start an edit war. However, now I'm curious as to the start date of the premier. Our former premier,P.J. Akeeagok, didn't run in this election. Based on the above comments he ceased to be an MLA and also as premier as of 27 October 2025. So will the new premier's start date be the day the regular MLAs choose them or will it be backdated to the day of the general election?CambridgeBayWeather (#1 deranged),Uqaqtuq (talk),Huliva19:07, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Akeeagok's tenure as premier ends, when he resigns as premier. That occurs on the day the new premier is appointed. You don't have to be an MLA, to be premierGoodDay (talk)19:19, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like a classic case of POV-pushing to me, and the speed at which the sections are being added doesn't inspire confidence. I trust your judgement to handle it.MediaKyle (talk)12:20, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Beguiling has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to thereassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article.Z1720 (talk)00:48, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
He has resigned from the Conservative caucus and told CBC News he'd be joining the Liberals. That'll probably be done before the House of Commons website updates his status.G. Timothy Walton (talk)00:26, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If anybody's looking for a project, a (non-Canadian) editor whacked a whole bunch of Canadian newspapers with prod tags earlier today, including several that already haveWP:GNG-worthy sourcing in them to establish notability — and while some others were admittedly poorly sourced or unsourced, the ones I've looked at so far have proven almost painfullyeasy to repair with simple searches in Proquest and Newspapers.com. But there are comsiderably more than I can tackle by myself, so if anybody wants to help salvage some Canadian newspaper articles they're inCategory:Proposed deletion as of 5 November 2025. Thanks.Bearcat (talk)23:18, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm wondering howWikipedia:Does deletion help? - Wikipedia is one of the places people start their search for old newspapers in regards to researching local history. If AI doesn't take over information spreading the articles will eventually just be rewritten.....as we have a few Canadians that deal just journalism articles. This happened to a few university papers I remember 10 years ago but I see that most of them are back anyways.Moxy🍁00:24, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Don't worry, I'm on the case :-)
In a perfect world, newspapers above a certain circulation would have inherent notability. Its very useful to be able to wikilink newspapers in citations so readers can know where the information is coming from, and have an idea of who the publisher was (and thus the paper's bias). Maybe someday...MediaKyle (talk)00:34, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Evander Kane has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to thereassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article.Z1720 (talk)01:32, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is a persistent editor atMagrath, Alberta that asserts the local mayor is notable due to goldfish eradication and whitetail deer culling. An extra set of eyes would be appreciated to counter the persistence. Cheers,Hwy43 (talk)01:37, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can anyone explain what exactly is the issue with having list articles of Canadian premiers by time in office? Can we resestablish if this position still has concensus, because following anAFD from 2007 makes no sense to me. The arguements in that AFD claimed that the articles were unnecessary because the information was too similar to that of the general "list of premiers" articles. If that were the case, we may as well go around and systemically delete every articles in theCategory:Lists of people by time in office. A first minister's tenure in office and other supplemental information such as how many elections they won is useful and notable information, and it should not be crammed into an already busy list of premiers by order of office, especially considering that the template used to make this list ({{Canadian first minister list}}) does not generate a sortable table.
Why don’t we get rid of lists of officeholders completely then, since any information about them beyond their mere existence is apparently trivia now. Have I got that right? I for one think these lists are good for researching and providing Wikipedia users with information that helps users understand political trends in Canada. It’s also worth mentioning that first ministers are not term limited, and legislature term lengths are not fixed, so the large variation of term lengths among premiers is notable information. This should not be crammed into the bottom of an article. Even the 2007 afd suggests this, that having multiple lists in one article is impractical.RedBlueGreen9304:16, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, that's my bad… I had clicked on a few of those links to check if the "by time in office" tables appeared on the page, and saw they were, but Ontario was not one of the ones I looked at. Sorry! To that end, I've just added the table to the Ontario list, since this discussion seems to be leaning against restoring the page. —Kawnhr (talk)17:30, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you @Kawnhr. I am happy with this compromise. Just in time for a Ford bump!
I don't have any strong opinions on this, honestly. I do like having these "by time in office" tables, and don't think that's simply trivia, but I'm ambivalent on whether it's better suited to its own page or not. On one hand, it does feel a bit like clutter on the "List of premiers…" pages; but on the other, splitting them off arguably results in a pretty thin page. I'm fine with whatever the community decides. —Kawnhr (talk)07:05, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thelist of prime ministers of Canada by time in office has a notes column which can explain some of the details surrounding the length of a premiership. I think it would make sense to restore the premier articles, but add a notes column describing the context of how premiers secured legislative mandates. Taking BC for example, a lot could be said about Hart, Johnson, WAC Bennett, Horgan, and all the non-partisan premiers, but not having an independent list would lead to excessive clutter.
Also, I'm not too keen on setting a precedent that would force the deletion of:
Political Wikipedia has a really bad habit of wanting to shove tons of contextless statistics into everything. I don't see any reason we need to have these be separate. Can't we just use a sortable table in the main list to sort by time in office?MediaKyle (talk)18:47, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here's what I said at the time, which other editors seemed to agree with:
Keep Since Prime Ministers do not have fixed terms of office, having a list organised by term of office provides significant information about the relative political significance of the different PMs. They are inherently notable, both individually and as a group, and their relationships to each other is illustrated by a list showing terms of office. The list by time in office thus serves an informational function that a chronological list or an alphabetical list would not do. (I also think it would be difficult to produce a sortable list; I tried to do that with this list, but was defeated by the fact that some PMs served separated terms. But then, I'm not the most techno-wikipedians around, so maybe someone else, more versed in wikidom, would be able to figure it out.) Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:22, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
I've started working on theCrown Attorney article. I think the current name is not accurate, since "Crown attorney" is not uniform across Canada. For example, federal prosecutors are "Crown counsel" in English. I've started a discussion on the Talk page for a better name, but I've not proposed a new name. Would welcome comments from anyone who is interested.Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk)03:44, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hey everyone, I need some help settling an edit war. Another editor removed theGreen Party of Canada andPeople's Party of Canada from the infoboxes on the2019 Canadian federal election in Quebec and 2015 subpages without any prior discussion. Based on long-standing precedent, I reverted and restored the entries. To me the criteria for inclusion here seem clear. For the PPC, the party is included in the main2019 Canadian federal election infobox because it held a seat in Quebec going into the election, so it only makes sense that the Quebec subpage reflect the same. The Green Party should also be included: they had incumbent MPs in Quebec going into both the 2015 and 2019 elections, and they received substantially more votes in Quebec than the PPC (4.5% vs. 1.5%). Precedent from the2021 Canadian federal election shows that a party should still be included in the infobox if it earns more votes than another party that holds seats, even if it wins none itself, and gets below 5%.The other editor’s conduct has also made productive discussion difficult. They repeatedly reverted without opening a talk-page discussion, and only engaged after many many rounds of back-and-forth. Their edit pattern suggests a refusal to discuss content and instead continue the revert cycle, and I can see past blocks on their account for similar edit-warring behaviour. I’m asking for outside input or guidance on how this should be resolved, and whether the parties should be included in these infoboxes based on established practice. For reference, the discussion so far is on my talk page:User talk:Politicsenthusiast06#Canadian federal election in Quebec.Politicsenthusiast06 (talk)20:50, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's a bit to unpack here. In the main articles, the PPC doesn't meet the general critieria for inclusion (5% or seats) but its is my understanding that we gave it an exemption because of how frequently the party showed up in secondary sources, and its implications on the Conservative vote share. I was unaware that their inclusion was also based on the grounds that they held a seat going into the election. Normally, I would say get rid of both the Greens and the PPC, but if we care about the latter standard, then I definitely agree with your logic that a party that performed better than the PPC should be included if the PPC is also included. So for now, I suppose it makes most sense to include all 6 parties in that infobox.RedBlueGreen9322:24, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Your assertion is the other way around: we do what reliable sources do, period. We have adopted a general guideline that a party that gains a seat or earns more than 5% of the popular vote islikely to attract coverage from reliable sources (especially for future elections), in the way that a notability guideline provides criteria for when a subject islikely to achieve notability, but it is always coverage in reliable sources that ultimately determines inclusion. I wouldn't count on precedent from a federal election article carrying over to provincial elections, especially in Quebec - this should be settled by discussion on the election articles' talk pages.Ivanvector (Talk/Edits)21:33, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I came here to start a centralized discussion about the same thing, since there are now parallel discussions on several pages about this same issue which really should impact all Canadian province infoboxes. GoodDay, along withMoxy andMediaKyle, have re-started a discussion from earlier in the year (at least on the PEI talk page) about infoboxes including any alternate name that is not an "official" name sourced to a government document. I and a few other editors (courtesy pingSimonm223 andW.andrea) have challenged this view, arguing that infoboxes are a summary of information about a topic, not a repository for official information only, and as such including place names in other commonly-used languages (not just French; Mi'kmaq and Gaelic have also been removed) is acceptable and expected. No consensus has really formed; I would like to hear more opinions.Ivanvector (Talk/Edits)21:27, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
