Introduction: Why the title?
It is these narratives that led to the title of our first report: The Accidental Citizen?.
We chose the word “accidental” because it encapsulates the way so many former Parliamentarians described their own journeys. Few said they set out intending on a career in public life, and even many who served in local or provincial office indicated that politics was something they fell into unexpectedly. Furthermore, the road to politics is subject to chance. There was no obvious “farm team” in Canadian politics: the MPs we interviewed came to Ottawa with a wide variety of backgrounds and motivations. The ways people were approached to run, and accepted, were equally varied. The nomination process was also described as inconsistent and often confusing. This report contains many examples of how such experiences turned these MPs into “accidental” citizens.
We chose the word “citizen” because we believe elected office to be an intense expression of citizenship. Ultimately, it gets to the heart of representative democracy: the concept that citizens govern themselves by electing members of their communities to represent them. Members of Parliament are the citizens who we choose to represent our interests, to gather and debate, and to make decisions regarding the ongoing building of our country and Canada’s way forward in the world.
We chose the interrogative form in our title – indicated by the question mark – to make clear that the MPs’ description of arriving in politics largely by accident may require further reflection. It seems unlikely that they hadn't thought about politics before. Indeed, many were active for years in their communities. Perhaps they were expressing a belief that politics is something for which one cannot admit ambition, even after the fact. If that is so, it is quite a comment on the state of political leadership in Canada.
This series of exit interviews imparts the stories and advice of those who dedicated significant portions of their lives to serving Canada. We hope it will afford us insight into how we live together and suggest ways to strengthen our democracy.
Who becomes an MP, and how? It wasn’t quite what we expected.