Parliament resumes today and with it, more than 100 newly elected MPs take their seats to begin their first full session in the House of Commons. Marked by the passing earlier this summer of NDP leader Jack Layton, the 41st session of parliament is Canada’s first majority government in over a decade.
As we look ahead to a busy year, we at Samara couldn’t think of a better time to push our conversation about the health of Canadian democracy further by asking the question: What is an MP elected to do?
As our latest report shows, the answer is far from clear – even for the most seasoned of MPs. The Outsiders’ Manifesto: Surviving and Thriving as a Member of Parliament, is the fourth and final instalment in our series of exit interviews conducted with 65 former MPs, the first systematic study of its kind in Canada. Following our release of the report last Wednesday, media from across Canada highlighted some of its more persistent and thought-provoking themes. Here are some notable mentions:
In an interview on CBC’s “The Current”, Samara Executive Director Alison Loat discussed the role of the MP in the riding and function of constituency offices (a Parliamentary feature introduced for the first time in 1968) alongside veteran MPs Flora MacDonald, Libby Davies, John Godfrey and Sue Barnes. While many MPs related stories of how they helped constituents navigate their way through difficult bureaucratic processes, others expressed dismay at their constituents' expectations in this regard. A podcast of the full interview is available here.
Other coverage zeroed in on MPs’ suggestions for professionalizing the management of politics and improving the culture in which it is practiced. Susan Delacourt’s article in the Toronto Star pointed to MPs’ collective lament about the lack of formal training opportunities and orientation sessions for new MPs, noting that many of those who we interviewed “complained that they were ill-equipped for the demands and vagaries of political life in Parliament.” National columnist Chantal Hébert also picked up on this theme, writing about the consequences of a “highly compartmentalized parliamentary environment” in her piece in the Toronto Star this weekend.
iPolitics.ca explored some of the common recommendations MPs made for solving parliament’s “people problem,” as well as increasing the overall efficiency of our political system. The article is complimented by a fun info-graphic and is sure to note that, despite the systemic flaws of our parliamentary system, solutions are possible.
Finally, writing for the Ottawa Citizen, Andrew Potter offered a provocative take on the “outsider” narrative persistent throughout all four of our MP exit interview reports. Indeed, that many former MPs describe some of their proudest moments as those spent working outside Parliament’s agenda, or that of their own party, is cause for concern. Potter’s analysis raises many of the key issues around which we hope to spark dialogue with the exit interview project.*
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*A small clarification. Potter incorrectly implies that only defeated MPs participated in the research, asserting that the outsider theme woven throughout our study is the result of a selection bias. In fact, of the 65 MPs we interviewed for the report, 57% had retired and 43% left as a result of electoral defeat. The MPs represented ridings from all the regions of the country and from all political parties in the House of Commons, reflecting the many different facets of the Canadian population.