Talk to any politically-oriented person in B.C. for long enough and eventually Vaughn Palmer's name will come up. For those living east of the Rockies, Palmer is the provincial political affairs columnist for the Vancouver Sun. A reader of this blog sent me one of Palmer's posts, where he recaps an interview he did with Jim Hume, who is retiring after 50 years of covering B.C. politics. I'm a ... [More]

Over at the Ottawa Citizen's politics blog, Andrew Potter correctly identifies that Canada has a less homogeneous political class than other countries and wonders if that lack of a political class, which leaves Canada's parliament full of relative amateurs, is a problem. It's a good question. First, a few facts. To begin, we'll borrow from Ned Franks again, who shows here that, on average bet... [More]

For most of us, how and where we spend our weekends, probably doesn't have a significant impact on our professional lives. Not so with MPs. Although not a specific area of our research, the MPs' personal and family lives invariably come up. One trend we've noticed, also supported by the research of Queen's professor Ned Franks, is the change in how MPs increasingly structure their work and home li... [More]

Perhaps in keeping with Ottawa's recent nomination as among the "most intelligent places to live," I've stumbled across a few events, coming to a national capital near you, that look interesting. First, IPAC and MASSLBP are turning their minds to the future - 2017 to be exact. That year marks the 150th anniversary of Canada and they rightfully want us thinking now about how we'll celebrate. T... [More]

Here's a line you don't read too often: "it's the best sort of policy story: one where the policy works, the good guys win, and the public interest is served." The line is from what looks to be a great story behind the story of how the British government made its data freely available online. Written by Prospect Magazine's James Crabtree, it's about how Tim Berners-Lee, one of the founders of ... [More]

Through our journalism seminars we've come to know the wonderful people at Massey College. Among its activities, Massey offers an annual journalism fellowship that enables practicing journalists to spend the year at the University of Toronto. Applications for their 2010 fellows are due on March 1, and are available here.

One reader of this blog raised some good questions about the average Parliamentary sitting days we have here in Canada in response to last week's post. Here's my best effort at the answers. First, he wondered how elections skewed the figures. Ned Franks estimates that Parliament sits, on average, about seven fewer weeks (or 35 days) in an election year. Maclean's Aaron Wherry crunched the nu... [More]

This post is for all those aspiring politicos out there: law school is not your only option!A common belief is that most politicians were lawyers before getting elected, an understandable assumption since so many former Canadian PMs (starting with John A. Macdonald, Wilfred Laurier to the more recent slate of Diefenbaker, Trudeau, Mulroney, Chrétien and Martin) were all lawyers. So on... [More]

Not only is our Parliament sitting less, but it's passing fewer bills too. According to Queen's professor Ned Franks, a smaller and smaller percentage of bills receive royal assent (Parliamentary lingo for becoming law). Sixty years ago, more than 96% of legislation received royal assent. During the last Parliament, it was just over 53%. While it hasn't been a consistent downward climb, it has... [More]

MPs are spending a lot less time in Parliament, and according to Queen’s professor Ned Franks, this is a fact that long pre-dated the latest prorogue. Franks has spent over 40 years researching Parliament, and at a recent conference in honour of political scientist Peter Aucoin he had occasion to reflect on his observations on the institution in a paper called "The Functionin... [More]

Two great journalism events are coming up in Toronto this January. 1. The Canadian Journalism Foundation is hosting a great discussion on the rise of multicultural media next Tuesday January 19th. The panel features four senior media executives whose organizations serve new and third-language Canadians. Panelists include: Jagdish Grewal from the Punjabi Post; Shirley Chan from Ming Pao Daily N... [More]

Last week we told you about the 38th Parliament, and this week are a few highlights from the 39th, which followed the January 2006 election and sat from April 2006 to September 2008. This was Stephen Harper's first minority government. It doesn't seem that long ago does it? But you may be surprised by what you've forgotten... The novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseni dominated the fi... [More]

The reputation of MPs took a real beating in the UK last year due to some, shall we say, mishandling of expenses. Already, 120 MPs (of 646) have announced their intention to step down. The UK election, required this year, hasn't yet been called but is widely expected to produce a change in government. At this rate, the UK may be in a situation very similar to that in Canada after our 1993 ele... [More]

It was a treat to listen to Steve Paikin's interview with Frank McKenna and his multiple public lives. McKenna was the premier of New Brunswick and the ambassador to the United States and is now a vice-chair of the TD Bank, where, among other things, he gets to moderate panels like this. Paikin, a great interviewer, is a certified political junkie and the author of two great books on the highs and... [More]

As we mentioned in earlier posts, most Mondays we'll try to share factoids on our MP Exit Interview project. Part of our background work involved putting the MP's service in context of the history of the time. Today: a short overview of the 38th Parliament, which followed the June 2004 election and sat from October 2004 until November 2005. Culturally, it was a time of icons. In 2004 Runaway a... [More]

News-hounds, how do you rank? The Globe and Mail's Jeffrey Simpson's Quiz 2009 is available (in two parts), and the NYT's Gail Collins' is here. They both tally your results, and the Globe is kind enough to compare your performance against all the others taking the quiz. Similar to my performance against the year-end book lists, I resolve to improve in 2010.