Category: Feature
Both Sides Now: A Roundtable With Parliamentarians Who Previously Worked As Constituency Office Staff
Both Sides Now: A Roundtable With Parliamentarians Who Previously Worked As Constituency Office Staff
Many newly-elected parliamentarians have little or no experience with the day-to-day activities that occur in constituency offices. Setting up such an office and hiring and training staff likely entails on-the-job learning and a lot of trial and error. However, some incoming parliamentarians have previously worked as staff members in these types of offices. In this roundtable, the Canadian Parliamentary Review speaks with two parliamentarians who have gained experience as both a constituency office employee and employer. This unique perspective allowed them to better empathise with staff, provide them with effective training, and offer their parliamentary colleagues support when they had questions about starting up or managing these offices. However, both participants noted that it can be a challenge to delegate responsibilities they previously had as staff members. They conclude with a call for more non-partisan collaboration among parliamentarians to establish best practices or manuals for these offices. They also suggest political parties should make a point to retain institutional knowledge by speaking to longtime parliamentarians and staff about their experiences to help other parliamentarians and staff from having to reinvent the wheel as there is electoral turnover.
Judicial and Legislative Cooperation at the Legislative Assembly of Ontario: The Legislative Process of Estate Bills
Judicial and Legislative Cooperation at the Legislative Assembly of Ontario: The Legislative Process of Estate Bills
Separation of powers between the branches of government is a well-known principle of our democratic system. However, there is a unique parliamentary procedure in Ontario whereby the judiciary plays a role in the scrutiny of proposed legislation. In this article, the authors explain how an Estate Bill is one of the last remnants of the Assembly’s judicial role, describe the legislative process of such bills, and offer a case study of this process in action. They conclude with a call for discussion about whether there is merit in judicial review of other types of legislation provided it would be a worthwhile use of judicial resources and be conducted in a way that did not infringe on the principle of separation of power.
Mapping Canadian Leaders’ Use of YouTube
Mapping Canadian Leaders’ Use of YouTube
Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial party leaders have an established and active presence on several of the most popular social media platforms, including Facebook, X/Twitter, and Instagram. Party leaders tend to be much less active on the video-sharing platform YouTube. With news media taking note of the success federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has found on this platform, the authors of this article sought to learn if it portends a shift in the extent it is used. They conclude that, to date, YouTube has still not joined the ranks of other popular social media platforms, likely due to the cost of production, the time it takes to create a YouTube video, and the disproportionate levels of engagement compared to content posted elsewhere. However, the authors hypothesize that with two other federal leaders, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of the Liberal Party and Jagmeet Singh of the New Democratic Party, increasingly producing Direct to Viewer content in advance of the next general election, Canadian politicians may at some point in the future make use of this technology as much as their American counterparts.
Andrew J.A. Mattan, Aidan Harris, and Tamara A. Small
Indigenous Peoples’ Place in Québec Parliamentarianism
Indigenous Peoples’ Place in Québec Parliamentarianism
The historically difficult relationships between Indigenous nations and government institutions resulting from the European colonization have led many Indigenous people to mistrust and feel alienated from the provincial political system. Even today, their voter turnout is lower than that of the general population. For some Indigenous people, engaging in Québec’s political system is tantamount to legitimizing a regime they do not acknowledge as their own, which could compromise the affirmation of Indigenous nations as distinct polities. In this article, the author looks to New Zealand to show how certain structural measures, such as the creation of reserved electoral divisions and the adoption of a mixed-member proportional voting system, can promote Indigenous Peoples’ participation in the democratic system while still affirming their specificity. The author notes that a reform of the voting system, as was considered in Québec during the 42nd Legislature, could provide an opportunity to adopt measures aimed at promoting the political representation of Indigenous people in the Assemblée nationale. *This article is a revised version of an essay completed as part of the Assemblée nationale’s 2022–2023 program for student pages. It represents the author’s views and does not reflect those of the Assemblée nationale du Québec or its employees.
Marianne McNicoll
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Liberatory Intimacies: Constellations of Co-Resistance in Parliament
Liberatory Intimacies: Constellations of Co-Resistance in Parliament
Liberatory intimacies are the everyday relationships between Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) folks in which they seek to affirm and relate to one another counter to the matrix of domination. It is the foundational, every day advocacy and resistance necessary for transformative change. Equally, it is these affirming relationships which allow new knowledge to be expressed and shared to tangibly further strategies and solutions for transformative action. All the while, liberatory intimacies are the invisible, emotional labour to care for the well-being of BIPOC organizers to continue this work every day. Ultimately, this research seeks to understand if racialized MPs on the Hill exhibit liberatory intimacies in ways that affirm their sense of belonging and well-being on the Hill and supports their political work for social justice. It argues that BIPOC MPs on the Hill do demonstrate liberatory intimacies within and across party lines as aligned with their varying party conceptions of space and social justice. Their understanding of these intimacies as well as nature and extent to which they exhibit and invest in them is framed differently across party lines.
Rayna Charanjit Sutherland
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Reaching a Critical Mass: A Roundtable with Black Parliamentarians
Reaching a Critical Mass: A Roundtable with Black Parliamentarians
In our democracy, a parliamentarian has a duty to represent the interests of all people in a particular constituency or district. But parliamentarians who belong to communities that extend beyond their electoral district often find they assume a secondary responsibility to bring attention to community interests and/or share some common experiences with other parliamentarians who are part of these communities. In this roundtable, Canadian Parliamentary Review Intern Kaitlin Gallant spoke with three Black parliamentarians to discuss their experiences campaigning, as members of legislatures and political parties, and about the value of Blacks caucuses and multiparty organizations such as the Canadian Congress of Black Parliamentarians. *Responses from two separate telephone conversations were compiled into a transcript which was then reviewed and revised by all participants.
Participants: Patrice Barnes, MPP, Tony Ince, MLA, David Shepherd, MLA Moderated by Kaitlin Gallant
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The Independents: A Roundtable Discussion with Independent and Independently-Minded Parliamentarians
The Independents: A Roundtable Discussion with Independent and Independently-Minded Parliamentarians
On January 18, 2024, the Churchill Society for the Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy welcomed three parliamentarians to discuss the experience of Independent parliamentarians and independently-minded partisan parliamentarians in Canada. Moderated by Professor Alex Marland, roundtable participants included Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin, an MLA who won re-election as an Independent after previously being elected with a party, Bobbi Ann Brady, an MPP who was elected as an Independent without previously being elected with a party, and Scott Simms, a backbench MP who spent time on both the government and opposition sides of the House. Topics included the pros and cons of sitting as an Independent or as a party member, the constraints of party whips and “messaging,” and how these parliamentarians carved out a degree of freedom while either inside or outside of a party during their time in office. The session was dedicated to the memory of Peter Russell, author of Two Cheers for Minority Government: The Evolution of Canadian Parliamentary Democracy and other works, who passed away shortly before the event. *This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. The original recording of the event is available on the Churchill Society’s YouTube Channel.
Common Seat Allocation Methods in Proportional Representation Systems and a Novel “Priority Allocation by Rank” Method
Common Seat Allocation Methods in Proportional Representation Systems and a Novel “Priority Allocation by Rank” Method
There are many examples of elections in Canada in which the successful parties who formed government earned a majority of seats that were disproportionate to their proportion of the vote. Some argue these outcomes signal the need to transform to a system of proportional representation. Several types of proportional representation systems exist. In some of those systems, determining how seats should be distributed among parties requires applying some form of seat allocation method. This article discusses two such methods, the largest remainder and highest average methods, and presents a novel method developed by the author, referred to as “priority allocation by rank.” Voting results from British Columbia’s 2020 election were used to create a hypothetical election scenario for the purposes of comparing seat allocations produced by these three methods. The results suggest that the priority allocation by rank method has potential to be a viable alternative to the other two methods.
The Medium is the Message: Usage of Messaging Apps by Parliamentarians and their Staff
The Medium is the Message: Usage of Messaging Apps by Parliamentarians and their Staff
The days of hushed huddles and paper note passing between MPs appear to be coming to an end. The use of messaging apps by parliamentarians and staff have permitted instantaneous communication between people on the Hill and beyond without anyone ever needing to leave their seat. But do parliamentarians and their staff believe this new technology has changed their work for the better or the worse? In this article, the author uses interviews with MPs and staff from all recognized parties in the House of Commons to analyze how and why they use and choose specific messaging apps. Although there are clear benefits of having open channels to communicate among and between staff and parliamentarians, concerns over information security, work-life balance, and the growing influence of the Leader’s and Whip’s office were identified by interviewees.