Electoral firsts in Canada

This article lists notable achievements of women, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, and gay/lesbian/bisexual and transgender people in Canadian politics and elections in Canada.

This list includes:

Earliest elected woman in Canada (First woman in Canada elected at the federal, provincial or municipal level): Hannah Gale, Alderman in Calgary 1917.

First woman elected to a legislature in Canada: Louise McKinney, first woman elected anywhere in the British Empire, member 1917–1921 of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta for the Non Partisan League, a left-wing Prohibitionist socialist party. (Roberta MacAdams, a member of the Canadian Army Medical Corps, was also elected in the 1917 Alberta general election, as a member at large in overseas voting by Albertans serving in the First World War. McKinney was the first woman declared elected because the overseas voting was completed after the in-province election.)

First woman candidates in a Federal Election Five women ran in the first federal election in which women were allowed to become candidates (1921) (Note: Some women had been granted the right to vote, but not to run as candidates, in the wartime election of 1917. Even in 1921, still many women were denied the right to vote - Treaty Indian women did not get the right to vote until 1960.)

First women elected to the Canadian House of Commons

First female Prime Minister

First women in Cabinet

First female Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons: Jeanne Sauvé, 1980–1984

First female federal Justice Minister (Attorney General): Kim Campbell (Progressive Conservative)

First female Defence Minister: Kim Campbell, (Progressive Conservative)

First female Speaker of the House

First female senator: Cairine Wilson, 1930

First female Governor General of Canada: Jeanne Sauvé, (1984–1990)

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