Canadian Press recently reported that 151 of Canada's 308 MPs earn income above their parliamentary salaries, or have investments in businesses of various sorts, including rental properties.  While it's not stated directly, it can be read from the journalist's lede and subsequent framing that she holds some contempt for this prospect. The figures come from the office of Parliament's ethics c... [More]

Yesterday's Globe and Mail carried a thoughtful editorial reflecting on the findings in The Accidental Citizen? (and conveniently provides a fantastic 500 word summary of the report and its main implications for those who don't have time to read the whole thing). The Globe's piece rightfully points out that the report, which highlights the varied and often unexpected ways many MPs described their... [More]

We are pleased to share the introductory report of Canada's first-ever series of exit interviews with former Members of Parliament. It's called The Accidental Citizen?, and it sets the stage for a larger series of publications that will share the stories of the MPs who participated in the exit interviews. The title reflects the varied, and often unexpected, ways so many MPs described their journe... [More]

These MPs came from a wide variety of backgrounds, yet Parliament is older, more male, whiter, and more educated than the Canadian population. Is this a problem? If so, what could be done to engage a wider group of Canadians in our politics?

Today in The Hill Times, long-time Ottawa-watcher Donald Savoie decries our political parties as having lost their connection to Canadians, and our Parliament, which has turned over its accountability function to various agents of Parliament, including the auditor general and the privacy commissioner. According to the Hill Times (which has a paywall, so I'll crib and attribute bits here), in Savo... [More]

Lots of interesting articles to keep up with these days: On democracy and society: An extremely thoughtful piece on balancing citizen participation with delegating expertise in a democracy, by Mike Ananny, a new media PhD student at Stanford.  Here's another good one, on the rise and fall of GDP as a good way to measure social progress.  I'm also trying to sort out my views on this piec... [More]

Last night I was a fly on the wall as Maclean's announced the results of its annual Parliamentarians of the Year awards, as voted by their peers. The overall winner was John Baird, which drew a few surprises from those in the room, as well as on the Maclean's site.  But Baird's speech was gracious and paid testament to his seventh-grade teacher, to whom he attributed his interest in politics... [More]

Regular readers of this blog know about our MP exit interview project, the first time this kind of information has been gathered systematically in Canada. We're putting the final touches on our first report, which will talk about the MPs' motivations for running and their paths to politics, and are turning ourselves to the next one, which focuses on their transition to politics and their work as ... [More]

Maclean's Aaron Wherry links to the debate on Michael Chong's recent motion that aims to "strengthen the dignity and authority of the House" by proposing a number of changes to Question Period. From Chong's opening remarks: "Canadians know that something is not quite right with their democratic institutions. They know that something is not the way it should be. They may not know exactly what pro... [More]

Andrew Potter reacts to one MP's recent proposal to change Question Period, using it as an opportunity to elaborate on reasons for the relative weakness of our legislature branch when compared to the executive (i.e., the PM and cabinet). His reasons include: Low quality MPs, and too few of them The size of the country, whose associated travel and lifestyle demands makes it hard to attract com... [More]

More from the Parliamentary possibility corner.... Conservative backbencher Michael Chong was on CBC Radio yesterday morning* talking about how to make MPs matter. He's concerned about the role of individual MPs in our legislature, which he called "the weakest in the Western world" in this regard.  Like many observers, he believes the executive branch (the PM and cabinet) is much stronger t... [More]

It's been a good couple of weeks for those who think the Canadian Parliament matters. Last week, the House of Commons' Speaker's ruling on questions of Parliamentary privilege. This concerned Parliament's right to access to the documents on the Afgan detainees, which the Government argued should be withheld due to national security concerns.  In a thoroughly-researched and, at moments, oddly... [More]

Yesterday I stumbled upon OpenParliament.ca, a fabulous new resource that does much to make Parliament more meaningfully public. About a decade ago, when I was working with several hundred other Canadians on how cities can attract and retain young talent, one of our team members, a municipal employee, had hired someone to compare the number of times the words "urban" and "rural" were used in Parl... [More]

Lovers of politics and lovers of data may have found their nirvana in this handy website. OpenParliament.ca is a volunteer effort of Michael Mulley, who created it because he thinks "Parliament's goings-on are important and because [he believes] that public information should be meaningfully public, which today means shareable and computer-readable."  Here here. The site lets you track publ... [More]

I added my two cents to the discussion, started here by Alan Broadbent and reinforced here by Andrew Potter, that argued that more MPs would help "reclaim the House of Commons" and "make for more accountable government."  By enlarging the size of party caucuses, so the argument goes, we'd both loosen the grip of the Prime Minister and create more safe seats.  The prior would allow for m... [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]

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]

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]