The Maple has created a database of family relations in Canadian politics in order to shed more light on the makeup of our political legislatures.
This database focuses on elected representatives at the federal, provincial and territorial levels. In order to be included, the elected representative must have at least one family member that is/was an elected representative in Canada, ran as a candidate in an election or is/was a senator. Eligible family relations include any that are direct or through marriage.
This database can be searched by clicking the link below to head to the special site we’ve created to host the tool.
Every single one of the eligible elected representatives we discovered is included in the database. They’ve each been assigned a card that lists the name(s) of their family member(s), their title(s) and their relation(s) to the elected representative. For example, here is one listing on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s card: “Pierre Trudeau (former prime minister) - Father.”
If you’re curious about any specific elected representatives, you can search them by name. If you’re curious about any specific government body (for example, MPs or MLAs in Nova Scotia), you can use the tool’s drop down menu to narrow the results, perhaps to the province or territory where you live, for example. If a representative you think should be there isn’t, you can email us at opinion@readthemaple.com. Please include specific names as well as sources.
This information is accurate as of April 20, 2023, and may become outdated in the future following new elections, resignations or by-elections. We will do our best to keep it updated, however.
This database is the latest in our series of resource guides, all of which you can find here. These include collections of family relations in Canadian and American journalism, as well as a collection of relations between Canadian journalists and politicians.
This is the first resource we’ve hosted using this specific tool. We plan to host many of our older, though still relevant, guides on this tool in the future as well. All of this takes a great deal of work. If you’d like to support The Maple to help fund more of these projects in the future, please check out our membership page. We are 100 per cent funded by our readers.
We will have more analysis of this database in the future, but for now, here are some things we pulled out from the results.
103 elected representatives met the criteria of the search.
4 of the top seven federal cabinet members were included.
24 of these elected representatives hold the same position as a family member.
14 of these elected representatives have a family member active in politics.
Here is a chart listing the percentage (rounded to the nearest percentage point) of elected representatives in each area/at each level that have been included in this database:
Here is a chart listing the top five elected representatives with the most family members who meet the criteria for this database:
Here is a chart listing all active elected representatives who hold the same position that a family member also used to hold:
Here is a chart listing all active elected representatives that are related:
Member discussion