List of LGBTQ politicians in Canada

The following is a non-exhaustive list of LGBTQ politicians in Canada who have been identified or acknowledged on public record. The list is grouped by members of the two houses of the federal parliament, provincial legislatures, mayors, municipal councillors, and others.

Canada got its first openly gay MP in February 1988 when Svend Robinson, an NDP MP first elected in 1979 representing the riding of Burnaby, came out publicly. Despite facing much abuse after the announcement, he went on to become one of the longest-serving MPs with 25 years in parliament. In the following 16 years until Robinson stepped down in 2004, three other sitting MPs came out while in office - Réal Ménard of the Bloc, Robinson's close ally and fellow BC NDP MP Libby Davies, and Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative MP Scott Brison who crossed the floor to the Liberals a year after coming out and went on to become the first openly LGBTQ cabinet minister, serving in the cabinet of both Paul Martin and Justin Trudeau. The 2004 general election returned the first two MPs who were openly gay when first elected: Robinson's aide and successor Bill Siksay and Ontario Liberal MP Mario Silva, and brought the number of openly LGBTQ sitting MPs to five. The 2021 general election returned nine openly LGBTQ MPs, the high watermark for LGBT representation in parliament and with representation from the three main national parties (four Liberals, three NDPs, and two Conservatives). Three of those MPs served in cabinet concurrently between 2021 and 2024, the highest number of LGBTQ cabinet members to date.

Party affiliation or grouping: █ Liberal █ Conservative █ Independent Senators Group █ Progressive Senate Group

Peter Maloney was Canada's first known openly gay candidate for political office.^[6] The first locatable media reference to Maloney publicly identifying as gay is of a national Liberal Party policy conference in early 1972, several months after the election was over.^[7] Later the same year, he unequivocally earned the distinction regardless, when he ran as an out gay candidate for the Toronto Board of Education in the 1972 municipal election.^[8][9] 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 also been credited as Canada's first openly LGBTQ political candidate by some media outlets,^[10] but was in fact merely the first to run as a candidate of an explicitly gay-identified advocacy organization rather than a traditional political party or for a non-partisan office. Other confirmed LGBTQ candidates who preceded Cook included Ian Maclennan running for a seat on the Ottawa Board of Education in 1976;^[11] Therese Faubert running as a League for Socialist Action candidate in Brampton^[12] and Frank Lowery running as an Ontario New Democratic Party candidate in Scarborough North in the 1977 Ontario provincial election;^[12] Dean Haynes running for Toronto City Council in 1978, although he withdrew from the race before election day;^[13] and Jim Monk running for the Windsor Board of Education in 1978.^[14] George Hislop was a candidate for Toronto City Council in 1980, and later ran as an independent candidate for St. George in the 1981 Ontario general election.

The first documented LGBT provincial politician actually predated confederation. George Herchmer Markland, a protegee of Bishop John Strachan, was first appointed to the Legislative Council of Upper Canada in 1820, and to the Executive Council in 1822 when he was only 32. A leading figure of the Family Compact by the late 1830s, he resigned from all public offices in 1838 in exchange for having the investigation into his potential liaisons with several young men dropped.^[15] Richard Hatfield of the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick never acknowledged his sexuality to the public during his lifetime and it was not until three years after his death that his sexuality was formally confirmed in the press by cabinet colleagues and journalists.

Quebec is the home of the first openly LGBTQ legislator in Canada, electing in 1985 Liberal MNA Maurice Richard (who also has the distinction of being the first openly LGBTQ person elected to any public office in Canada, having been elected mayor of Bécancour in 1976). The province further produced Canada's next two out provincial legislators when it elected André Boisclair and André Boulerice in 1989. Boisclair, the record holder as the youngest MNA until 2007, has the distinction of being the first out LGBTQ Cabinet minister anywhere in Canada, having been tapped to join Lucien Bouchard's cabinet as immigration minister in 1996. Boulerice joined the Landry ministry as a secretary of state (junior minister) in March 2001, which made him the third out cabinet minister in Canada.

In the English-speaking provinces, British Columbia in 1996 elected its first two openly gay MLAs, NDPer Tim Stevenson and Liberal Ted Nebbeling; both of whom went on to serve in provincial cabinet later. Stevenson became employment minister in 2000, toward the end of the NDP time in power, making him the second out cabinet minister in Canada, and Nebbeling joined the Campbell ministry as a minister of state when the Liberals ousted the NDP in June 2001. Ontario and Manitoba both elected their first out legislator in 1999, with Ontario Liberal George Smitherman in June and Manitoba NDPer Jim Rondeau in September. They would both become their respective province's first out cabinet member in 2003, Smitherman in June as health minister when the Liberals formed government and Rondeau in November as a junior minister of health after a term on the backbench.

First elected as an Ontario Liberal MPP in October 2003, Kathleen Wynne was the first out woman to serve in a provincial legislature, and the first out woman to be elected at either the federal or provincial levels. (NDP MP Libby Davies came out in 2001 but did not face re-election as an out woman until 2004) Parti Quebecois MNA Agnès Maltais, who was first elected in 1998, became the second out woman in a provincial legislature when she came out in November 2003, and secured her first reelection as an out women in March 2007, just two months ahead of Manitoba's NDP MLA Jennifer Howard, the third out women in a provincial legislature. Wynne was also the first out woman cabinet minister anywhere in Canada, having been appointed education minister in the in McGuinty ministry in September 2006. Howard joined the Doer ministry in Manitoba in 2009 as labour and immigration minister, which made her the second out woman cabinet minister in Canada, and would later serve as finance minister in the Selinger ministry before resigning with four other cabinet members in 2014 to call for Selinger's ouster. While Maltais previously served in cabinet under Premiers Bouchard and Landry, the PQ did not return to power until the third election after her coming out (slipping briefly to third place under out leader Bosclair), delaying her chance to serve as an out woman cabinet minister until September 2012, when she joined the Marois government as employment and labour minister.

With the election of New Brunswick Liberal MLA Luke Randall in 2024, all Canadian provinces and territories have elected at least one openly LGBTQ member to their legislature. Two Canadian provinces have been governed by openly LGBTQ premiers: Kathleen Wynne was premier of Ontario from 2013 to 2018, while Wade MacLauchlan was premier of Prince Edward Island from 2015 to 2019. Openly LGBTQ politicians have been Cabinet ministers in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Quebec. There are two openly LGBTQ people serving as leaders of provincial or territorial parties: the Conservative Party of Quebec's Éric Duhaime and the Quebec Liberal Party's Charles Milliard.

 Light purple background : indicates the person was not openly LGBT while in office (entire row) or when first elected (first elected cell)

 Light red background : indicates the person served as first minister

People who did not hold a political office at the federal, provincial or municipal levels, but have some other form of political significance.