The following is a list of the first openly LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender) holders of elected or appointed political office in Canada.
LGBT people have served at all three main levels of political office in Canada: municipal, provincial and federal. As of 2022, every Canadian province and territory has been represented by at least one out LGBTQ officeholder.
In addition to the milestones noted below, Canada has also had a number of prominent politicians who were not out as LGBT during their careers in politics, either coming out after they retired or being officially outed only in posthumous biographical sources, as well as openly LGBT politicians whose election or appointment to office was not a historically significant first as other LGBT people had already held the same office before them. For a more thorough list of Canadian LGBTQ politicians regardless of whether they represented historic firsts or not, see also
List of LGBT politicians in Canada.
First overall
First openly gay political candidate, regardless of electoral status:
Peter Maloney ran for a seat on the
Toronto Board of Education in the
1972 Toronto municipal election as an openly gay candidate.[1] (He had previously been an
Ontario Liberal Party candidate in
St. George in the
1971 Ontario provincial election, and some later biographical sources have stated that he ran as an openly gay candidate at that time as well,[2] but no indication of his sexuality is seen in any media coverage of the 1971 election. The first known coverage of Maloney which makes any reference to his sexuality is of a party policy conference in early 1972, several months after the election was over.)[3] Robert Douglas Cook, a
Gay Alliance Toward Equality candidate for the electoral district of
West Vancouver-Howe Sound in the
1979 British Columbia provincial election, has been credited with this distinction by some media outlets,[4] but was in fact merely the first to run as a candidate of an explicitly gay-identified political organization rather than a traditional political party or for a non-partisan office.
First openly gay person elected to office:
Raymond Blain (
Montreal City Council, 1986) is commonly credited with this distinction, although
Maurice Richard, who was elected to the
National Assembly of Quebec in 1985 after coming out as gay sometime during his term as mayor of
Bécancour, Quebec from 1976 to 1985, predated him and the story was simply not picked up by national media until later on.[4] Out lesbian Sue Harris won election to the
Vancouver Park Board in 1984.[9]Jim Egan (
Comox-Strathcona Regional District board, 1981) may also have predated all of them, although sources are unclear on whether he ran as an openly gay candidate at the time.
At least two federal MPs who predated Robinson,
Heward Grafftey and
Charles Lapointe, and one who was first elected alongside him in 1979,
Ian Waddell, are known to have come out as gay or bisexual after their retirement from politics.[16][17][18]
By provincial delegation
As of 2015, seven of Canada's ten provinces have elected at least one LGBT MP to the House of Commons or had an LGBT senator appointed from their province.
Deputy leader of a federal political party represented in Parliament:
Libby Davies (
NDP) – 2007
Provincial and territorial
To date, only
New Brunswick has never had a person serve in its provincial legislature who was out as gay during their term in office, although
Richard Hatfield was outed as gay after his death.
The provinces of
British Columbia,
Alberta,
Manitoba,
Ontario,
Nova Scotia and
Quebec and the territory of
Yukon have had more than one LGBT member, and all except Nova Scotia have had both gay men and lesbian women serve in the legislatures; Nova Scotia to date has only elected LGBTQ women, with no out gay men yet serving in the legislature. The other provinces and territories which have had out LGBT legislators have had only one each to date. Alberta, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Yukon have had elected MLAs who identified as non-binary.
To date, most LGBT people who have served in provincial or territorial legislatures have represented
urban districts in larger cities, while very few have ever served in a purely
rural district.[4]
One provincial premier, Richard Hatfield in New Brunswick, predated Wynne but was not out as gay during his political career, instead being outed only after his death.
Genderqueer:
Estefan Cortes-Vargas, 2015[30] Cortes-Vargas publicly identified as a lesbian woman at the time of their election to the legislature,[31] and came out as non-binary during a debate in the legislature later in the year.
Mayor of any municipality:
Maurice Richard served as mayor of
Bécancour,
Quebec from 1975 to 1985. Contemporary biographical sources indicate that he came out as gay sometime during his mayoralty, but are not clear about when; it is known, however, that he was out as gay by the time of his campaign for election to the
National Assembly of Quebec in 1985.[4] After serving in the provincial legislature from 1985 to 1994 as its first openly LGBT member, he was reelected to another stint as mayor of Bécancour in 1995.
Mayor of a major city:
Glen Murray (
Winnipeg) – 1998 (credited as first openly gay major of a major city in North America)
One mayor,
Charlotte Whitton in
Ottawa (1951–56, 1961–64), has been the subject of unresolved debate about her sexual orientation. Whitton spent much of her adult life in a
Boston marriage-style living arrangement with another woman, Margaret Grier; in 1999, 24 years after Whitton's death, the
National Archives of Canada publicly released many intimate personal letters between Whitton and Grier. The release of these papers sparked much debate in the Canadian media about whether Whitton and Grier's relationship could be characterized as lesbian, or merely as an emotionally intimate friendship between two unmarried women.[34] Whitton never publicly identified herself as lesbian during her lifetime, and thus could not be considered Canada's first out LGBT mayor regardless of the status of her relationship with Grier.
City councillors
First city councillor: At the last
caretaker meeting of
Tecumseh,
Ontario's municipal council following the
1980 municipal elections, outgoing councillor and unsuccessful mayoral candidate Cameron Frye acknowledged that he was gay.[35] The campaign had been marked by rumours about Frye's sexuality, including the distribution of hate literature claiming that Frye would promote a "gay lifestyle" as mayor and would lead the town into "moral decay",[36] although Frye refused to confirm or deny the claims about his sexuality during the campaign.[37] Frye was first elected to the municipal council in 1972.[37]
First city councillor already out at first election:
Raymond Blain (Montreal), 1986
School Board Trustee
First trans school board trustee:
Lyra Evans[38] was elected in October 2018.