About

What is floor-crossing?

Floor-crossing occurs when an elected member of a legislature leaves the political party under which they were elected and joins another party - or becomes an independent - without resigning their seat. In Canada, this practice has a long, colourful, and sometimes controversial history stretching back to Confederation.

Why this project?

Despite being one of the most dramatic events in Canadian politics, floor-crossing has never been systematically catalogued. Crossing the Floor aims to be the definitive, bilingual database and analysis tool for every documented floor-crossing in Canadian federal and provincial history.

Our data

We have catalogued every confirmed floor-crossing in Canadian federal and provincial legislatures. Each entry is sourced from parliamentary records, news archives, and academic research. We apply a consistent methodology to classify, score, and contextualise every crossing.

The team

Crossing the Floor is an independent, open-source research project. It is built with care for accuracy, accessibility, and bilingual presentation.

Contact

Have a correction or know of a missing crossing? We'd love to hear from you. Reach out via our GitHub repository or email us.

Open source

This project is open source. The code, data, and methodology are all publicly available for review, contribution, and reuse.