Talk:List of current senators of Canada

Updating Chart Formatting

Hi, I've been updating some of the chart formatting here, and happy to work collaboratively with folks on this. I'm not a wikipedia expert but I think we can clean it up a bit? Please let me know if I do anything bad. Canadianpoliticaljunkie (talk) 18:02, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Upcoming Retirements

I removed the section called "Upcoming Retirements" because this information is readily available in the main chart if you sort by retirement date. Canadianpoliticaljunkie (talk) 09:36, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Understanding that we should have a discussion here before making this change, (with apologies to User:Wellington Bay), I'd like to recommend that we remove this section, as it unnecessarily adds to the length of the article, when the same information (and more) can easily be seen by sorting the list by "Mandatory Retirement Date".

Is there any benefit to maintaining a separate list? Canadianpoliticaljunkie (talk) 14:03, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

From what I can tell, the list of upcoming retirements specifically listed the senators due to retire in the current session of parliament (presumably it stretches to 2026 because, constitutionally, a parliament can last a maximum of five years, even if the fixed-election dates mandates four). It's a quick indicator of how many appointments the incumbent PM could make. Whether that is worth keeping is a fair question, but that seems to be the reason it's split into its own section instead of left to the reader to discover in the tables. — Kawnhr (talk) 18:05, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

It's also useful as it flags to editors when updates to the page need to be made (and those of the senators on question) due to imminent retirements. Also, as retirements are an ongoing feature of senate composition it merits a section. Wellington Bay (talk) 18:32, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Proposal: Collapsing supplementary tables for readability

I’d like to suggest collapsing three sections of the page by default, just to tidy up the layout and improve readability for most users:

• Membership changes since the last election
• Standings changes since the last election
• Upcoming retirements

These sections present helpful information, but they’re all essentially different views of data that’s already visible in the main list. For example:

- The “Membership changes” and “Standings changes” tables are just historical breakdowns for readers who want a deeper dive. - The “Upcoming retirements” table only exists to help editors track when updates might be needed — the same retirement dates are already shown in the main list (with thanks to User:Wellington Bay for clarifying for me how this section is used).

None of these are critical for understanding the current Senate lineup, and hiding them by default could make the page cleaner without removing anything. I’d use {{Collapse top}} and {{Collapse bottom}}, with clear labels so anyone can expand the sections easily.

This seems in line with WP:Manual of Style/Layout#Collapsible content, which advises against collapsing *essential* information — but that's not the case here.

Happy to hear any thoughts or concerns. If there’s no objection in the next little while, I’ll go ahead and make the change. Thanks! Canadianpoliticaljunkie (talk) 13:37, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Major table update and article cleanup (March 2025)

Just wanted to flag some major updates to this article that I’ve been working on. Most of the changes are aimed at cleaning up the structure, improving consistency, and making the page easier to read and maintain.

What changed

• Main table completely rebuilt – All 105 current senators are now represented, sorted correctly, with consistent formatting and layout. Colours and affiliations are aligned with the {{Canadian party colour}} template.
• Shortened long titles – Many of the titles in the "Titles" column were wrapping and causing the rows to expand vertically. I shortened them (e.g. "Deputy Representative of the Government in the Senate" → "Deputy Gov. Representative") while preserving clarity.
• Affiliations cleaned up – Abbreviated groups like ISG, CSG, and PSG now use `` for hover-tooltips instead of direct links. “Conservative” is spelled out for clarity. Non-affiliated stays as-is.
• Sticky headers, colspan, and layout fixes – Header sticks when you scroll. Colour bars now appear in their own cells using `colspan=2`, like the official Senate layout. Also fixed some duplicated row markers and width issues.
• Date format switched – The article now uses day-month-year (dmy) format, which is standard for Canadian topics. The tag at the top reflects this.
• Footnotes added to headers – The "Name" column now includes a proper citation for the source list, and the "Division" column explains Quebec’s special Senate division setup.
• Broken references cleaned up – The old MapleLeafWeb source was broken, so I replaced it with references to the Senate and Parliament’s own sites.

New collapsible sections

To help reduce visual clutter, I made three sections collapsible:

• Membership changes since the last election
• Standings changes since the last election
• Upcoming retirements

This keeps the focus on the current senator list but still keeps everything else easily accessible.

Retirement table updated

The "Upcoming retirements" section is now a full table instead of a bullet list. It includes all senators scheduled to retire before the next federal election (currently set for 28 April 2029), sorted by retirement date. It uses the same formatting as the main table for consistency.

Looking ahead

Still open to more improvements (maybe a provincial breakdown next?), but this should be a solid foundation.

Would love any feedback — if you like the new format, or if anything looks off or could be improved, feel free to jump in or leave a note here. Thanks! Canadianpoliticaljunkie (talk) 06:08, 26 March 2025 (UTC)