MP voting records in Canada

Most decisions are never recorded by name

When the Speaker puts a question to the House, members answer by voice. Unless enough members rise to demand otherwise, the question is decided without anyone's name attached. A recorded divisionis the exception: each member's yea or nay is taken down and published in the Journals and the House's open data.

So a voting record covers only the contested moments, typically second and third readings of significant bills, opposition day motions, budget and supply votes, and confidence questions. Plenty of legislation passes a stage without a single recorded vote, which is why a thin voting record does not mean a quiet MP.

Party discipline sets the baseline

Canadian caucuses vote together to a degree that surprises people used to other systems. Across the 164 recorded divisions held in the House between May 2025 and June 2026, at most about 0.4% of party ballots went against the member's own caucus, and two caucuses did not split once. The mechanics behind that are ordinary Westminster practice: the government must hold the confidence of the House, whips tell members how the caucus is voting, and party leaders control committee and critic assignments.

The practical consequence is worth internalising before you read any individual record: for most MPs, most of the time, the record tells you their party. The informative entries are the rare divisions where a member broke ranks. Our article How to Read a Voting Record works through the numbers in detail.

Attendance is a real signal with real caveats

Roughly 96% of expected ballots were cast across those 164 divisions. The rest were recorded as "didn't vote" or "paired". Both count as non-participation in our figures, and there are legitimate reasons for each:

• Pairing is an arrangement in which two members on opposite sides agree that neither will vote, so one can be absent without changing the result.
• The Speakervotes only to break a tie, so a Speaker's attendance always reads near zero. Presiding officers in provincial legislatures follow the same convention.
• Ministers travel on government business, and any member can be away for illness, family leave or a constituency emergency.

Because of that, we withhold an attendance rate entirely when we hold too few ballots for a member to judge fairly, rather than publish a number like 0.25% that describes a job, not a work ethic.

Where the records come from

Federal divisions come from the House of Commons' published division records, which we ingest in structured form. Provincial legislatures vary enormously: Ontario, Quebec and Alberta publish divisions we can parse, while Saskatchewan records them only as lists of names inside the daily minutes, which we read sitting by sitting. British Columbia's divisions are not in our database yet. Our Data coverage page tracks the current state, and the Saskatchewan write-up shows what parsing one of the harder formats involves.

Looking up a vote

1. Open your member from Members or find them by riding with My Riding.
2. Read the question, not just the yea or nay. A vote against an amendment is a different act from a vote against a bill at third reading.
3. Follow the bill link to see the full division, which parties voted which way, and the stage the bill had reached. Our Legislation pages carry the reading stages and sponsor for each bill.
4. Compare two members of the same caucus in Compare. Differences within a party say more than differences between parties.

Every division links back to its official source, so you can verify any row against the government record before you rely on it.