A few weeks ago, over at Maclean's, Aaron Wherry penned a special report on Parliament, whose title "The House of Commons is a sham" summarizes his thesis pretty clearly. There are several threads I'd like to pick up on -- and I will do so in greater detail when we release our third MP Exit Interview report, which summarizes how the MPs talk about their work in Ottawa -- but to start, I'll touch upon what I think is Aaron's underlying point: the almost complete disregard for the place from nearly everyone who interacts with it.
This shouldn't surprise anyone. In fact, it's exactly what we should expect to result from the accidental way we approach politics in this country. From the way we teach civics to kids (or don't) through to the way we value (or don't) the experience of elected officials, there are many points along our democratic process where we can do better.
Given that we'll likely be into an election by week's end, I'll focus this post on the some of the early steps that bring people to Parliament in the first place: candidate selection and orientation to public life.
As regular readers of this blog know, we recently completed the first-ever series of exit interviews with former MPs. Exit interviews are common in many organizations, and provide an opportunity for departing employees to reflect on their time and share ideas on how to improve the organization's performance. They're done because people care about those who work in the organization and they care about organization's future. So it's perhaps needless to say this, but I will: exit interviews had never been done in one of the most important workplaces in our country, our Parliament.
Members of Canada's Parliament represent our interests to the larger whole. They are the democratic conduits of the citizenry, and they make critical decisions on our behalves. It's an important job.
But when we asked our MPs why they chose to become politicians, some troubling insights emerge.
It seems that few people who become political leaders in this country said they actually wanted the job in the first place. Almost without exception, the MPs we spoke to described themselves as “outsiders” who were cajoled into running for office. Samara’s introductory report on these exit interviews is called “The Accidental Citizen?” because of how accidentally the MPs described their journeys to public life. We might as well have called it “The Reluctant Citizen.”
Most every MP to whom we spoke said they didn’t stand up and ask to run for office. Rather, it wasn’t until someone asked him or her to run that said they even considered it. We heard numerous stories from former MPs talking about how they turned down requests to run numerous times before finally agreeing – often begrudgingly - to run for Parliament.
Now of course, these accounts come from former Parliamentarians who don’t want to come across as too ambitious. In fact, many of the MPs we interviewed went out of their way to state how unambitious they were, as if ambition were some sort of crippling psychiatric affliction.
And whatever the case – whether our politicians actually have no ambition or, more likely, they’re embarrassed to admit they suffer from a case of ambition – I wonder what would happen happen if they weren’t asked to run. Would they have seriously opted out? And second, and perhaps more important, what is the problem with ambition in public life? We see very little wrong with aspirations in business, the arts or science.
What's probably happening is that these MPs are probably reflecting that sad truth that a politician who actually aspires to lead is, frankly, not very electable in this country.
There’s something wrong with politics if you’re not allowed to say you want to be a politician, and there’s something really wrong with a job if the only way to get people to enter the profession is by mild coercion. We encourage people to pursue excellence in many facets of life, but we don't encourage them to run our cities, provinces or country. We don't encourage them to give though to the issues and how they might help facilitate a political solution.
Given the stakes, this is a problem.
But an even bigger problem is what happens after those "accidental citizens" decide that they’ll take a shot at politics in this country. What's next is something called the nomination process. This is when the local riding association of each political party chooses its candidate for the general election. In "safe ridings," where the same political party tends to win the seat, the nomination process is akin to the election. In other words, it's important.
Yet from nearly every single account we heard, the procedure through which parties select their candidates in a given riding is an alienating, arbitrary and opaque practice. And those are in the words of people who were actually nominated. They won. I can’t imagine how those who lost must feel, never mind an average citizen who might want to participate in politics in the community in which he or she lives.
Making that decision to run. And the nominations process. These are the first two points of contact our future Parliamentarians will have with political leadership in Canada. And, as it stands, this is not a system that fosters or encourages intention or engagement.
But what’s even more disconcerting is that many of those who stumbled upon – or were coerced into - political leadership have little shared idea of what the actual job of being an MP entails.
Most of the MPs to whom we spoke admit to being totally unprepared for the job. They had little training and little idea what to expect. MPs describe their initial orientation to Parliament as hurried, slap-dash or non-existent. For lack of a better term, they went to Ottawa and they were forced to wing it.
It’s not entirely their fault. After being elected, they have about two weeks to set up and staff two offices – one in Ottawa and one in the riding. On average, MPs come to politics in their late 40s, so most of them have spent a generation doing something else entirely, raising a family and building a life in towns and cities far from Ottawa. But the system does little to help them. When they arrive, there is little formal training or orientation, and no manual.
There’s not even a proper job description.
In fact, few of the MPs we interviewed actually agreed on what the job of a Member of Parliament actually is. From 65 people, we had about as many different definitions of what the essential purpose of their job was supposed to be. It is a multi-faceted job, for sure, but at its heart, it is one job.
This surely affects what we see in Parliament. After all, if MPs are confused as to their job description, their ability to do their jobs effectively is diminished. When roles and responsibilities are not clear in any organization, problems ensue. Critical tasks will be overlooked, or efforts will be duplicated. Important work will not be achieved. Inter-personal tension is bound to result. This doesn't make for an effective or happy workplace, as Aaron's article also suggests.
Putting aside things that are in the hands of political parties and Parliamentary administrators, it's worth considering a couple things we citizens can do as we enter into the election campaign.
First, find out how your local candidates define the job of an MP. Is it what you think it should be? Why or why not?
Second, and better yet, write your own job description, and add it to the list here. If you're a teacher, have your students draft job descriptions for their MPs, and encourage discussion. Send us the results, and we'll aggregate them and compile a description. We'll even send to Aaron, and maybe he'll post it on his blog.