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41st Canadian Parliament

term of the parliament of Canada (2011–2015)

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ2816776 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 41st Canadian Parliament was in session from June 2, 2011 to August 2, 2015, with the membership of its House of Commons having been determined by the results of the 2011 federal election held on May 2, 2011. It was dissolved prior to the 2015 federal election.

There were three sessions of the 41st Parliament:

Overview

Parliament convened on June 2, 2011, with the election of Andrew Scheer as Speaker, followed the next day with the Speech from the Throne.

On August 2, 2015, Prime Minister Stephen Harper asked the Governor General to dissolve Parliament and issue the writ of election, leading to an 11-week election campaign period for the 2015 federal election. Significant legislation adopted during the 41st Parliament included the Copyright Modernization Act, the Safe Streets and Communities Act, the Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, the Jobs and Growth Act and the Fair Elections Act.

Party standings

Major events

The orange wave during the 2011 election saw a surge in support for the New Democratic Party. This resulted in them becoming the official opposition for the first time in the country's history, as well as marking the Liberal party's first time not taking first or second place in a Canadian election. Jack Layton was the Leader of the Opposition until his death on August 11, 2011. Nycole Turmel followed as the party's interim leader until Tom Mulcair won the 2012 leadership election.

Legislation and motions

First session

The parliament's first session ran between June 2, 2011, and September 13, 2013, and saw 83 bills adopted.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “41st Canadian Parliament” is term of the parliament of Canada (2011–2015). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through 41st, Canadian and Parliament, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2011, 2015, 2012, 2013—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2011-06-02. For this dossier, 41st, Canadian and Parliament is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “term of the parliament of Canada (2011–2015)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2816776. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2011, 2015, 2012 and 2013.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “41st Canadian Parliament”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 41st Canadian Parliament primary sources, 41st Canadian Parliament archive and 41st research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “41st Canadian Parliament”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “41st Canadian Parliament” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.