Beyond The Commons

 Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

The inexperienced lifer

by Aaron Wherry on Tuesday, August 31, 2010 11:05am - 0 Comments

Over the weekend, Jeffrey Simpson lamented for the lifers he sees as presently dominating federal politics. He defined a lifer as one who has been involved for a long period of time at any level of politics, not just as a candidate or elected representative. In this way, for instance, Mr. Harper is a lifer because he has been involved in politics since the mid-80s.

The academic research in this regard—though Simpson’s definition complicates a direct comparison and his focus on party leaders is relevant—has generally raised the alarm about the exact opposite concern: that our MPs have too little experience and are too prone to turnover. To wit.

When the Public Policy Forum surveyed the House of Commons in 2008, it found our MPs had generally less experience in their jobs than their counterparts in Britain and the United States. Of the 139 MPs surveyed by Samara, only 19% had been primarily occupied by government or politics before being elected. And considering Samara’s work alongside Ned Franks’ research on turnover, Alison Loat has wondered whether the “amateur” status of our political class is a problem.

Franks has specifically pointed to the 1993 federal election, when Parliament saw a 72% turnover, as the starting point for a slow slide into our current state of acrimony. One way or another, ’93 does mark a pretty resounding demarcation. By my count, of the 307 current MPs, only 16 served in the House at any point before 1993 (Maurizio Bevilacqua, Jean-Pierre Blackburn, Gilles Duceppe, Ralph Goodale, Albina Guarnieri, Jack Harris, Jim Karygiannis, Derek Lee, Lawrence MacAulay, Peter Milliken, Rob Nicholson, Louis Plamondon, Bob Rae, Lee Richardson, Greg Thompson and Joe Volpe).

One of those (Bevilacqua) has already essentially departed and another (Greg Thompson) is due to whenever the next election occurs. Nine have served continuously (Bevilacqua, Duceppe, Guarnieri, Karygiannis, Lee, MacAulay, Milliken, Plamondon and Volpe), the others having taken short or extended breaks from the House before being reelected in recent years. Ten (all those plus Goodale) can claim more than 20 years of experience as an MP. Only one (Plamondon) can claim more than 25.

For the sake of whatever perspective it provides, only 14 of the current 307 MPs served while Brian Mulroney was prime minister. Only two MPs (Rae and Goodale) sat in the same Parliament as Pierre Trudeau.

The average term of service for current members is just under seven years and four months. The average age is 53.

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  • Stewart_Smith

    This came up earlier in a discussion with Alison Loat regarding the Samara survey. While the Samara survey is clearly accurate in its depiction of a typical MP as being an amateur politician, any quick review of the party leaders and front line MP's show that a disproportionate number are Simpson's lifers. My speculation is that this clear divide is damaging for parliament. As noted, the leadership lacks "real world" experience, while the majority of MP's lack political savvy. In principle of course there should be an opportunity for synergy, but I suspect human nature more often leads to the discounting of the value of each others contributions.

    Two new points:
    1) it would be interesting to look at the non-lifers that have made the top echelons of their caucus to see how they stand out. 1b) it would be sad to look at the lifers who will never get off the bench.

    2) Kudos to Harper and the Conservatives, for the proposed establishment of backbench committees to work with Ministers. It is a great idea, hopefully they carry through with it, hopefully the opposition parties copy it.

    • BC Blue

      "2) Kudos to Harper and the Conservatives, for the proposed establishment of backbench committees to work with Ministers. It is a great idea, hopefully they carry through with it, hopefully the opposition parties copy it. "

      Agree…

    • http://twitter.com/AlisonLoat @AlisonLoat

      Hi Stewart – I haven't forgotten our discussion and have had some volunteers help compile information on this. Here's a bit here – http://bit.ly/dh4PKf. Like most things, it's not as clear as it appears. While this doesn't include anything on the leaders, I'd imagine it's not dissimilar to many organizations, where those with more experience in the sector tend to be in front.

      • Stewart_Smith

        Thanks Alison! Hopefully Wherry will run a link to your repose in a more prominent spot (hint, hint, HINT!)

        I will quibble later when I have more time to write.

        • http://twitter.com/AlisonLoat @AlisonLoat

          Great. I have some additional info as well, but I will write it (if relevant) in response to your observations.

          • Stewart_Smith

            Ok, to start with I do not want to argue Simpson's case since I find it inane and insulting to some of the politicians that I admire most. So rather than the term lifers, I will propose Wherry's term (or is it yours) of a political class versus an accidental politician.

            Now in http://bit.ly/dh4PKf you got a little sneaky in only looking at the Ottawa experience of the current cabinet. Clearly both provincial and municipal experience should count. To be mathematical, I would suggest the following formula

            ((Person's age -20 – "training") – (years in party politics)) / ( Person's age – 20 )

            where the training factor accounts for years spent getting experience explicitly for a political career.

            to yield a number between 0 & 1, where 0 would be someone whose sole activity as an adult is politics and 1 is an accidental politician just getting started.

            to take two notable examples

            Ignatieff would score over 0.8
            Harper would score less than 0.2

            My prediction (which I am far to lazy to verify) is that the leading MPs in the parties average less than 0.4 while the remainder of the MPs are above 7. Indeed I will go so far as to guess that the house would show a distinct bimodal distribution separating the two groups.

          • http://twitter.com/AlisonLoat @AlisonLoat

            Hi – cross-posting this response:

            Interesting idea, although like you, I'll leave it to someone else to do the statistics on this one! Two quick observations:

            1. I'm assuming that when you say "experience explicitly for a political career" you mean political work (versus, say, being a constitutional lawyer, working in communications, running an organization or anything else that would help you build the skills you'd need to be a good MP). If that's the case, you'd want to define what constitutes political experience a bit more carefully. Provincial or territorial experience is an easy one. But what about those who worked as staffers. Does that count? And what if you were on a riding association, or a party volunteer? And in many communities, municipal politics is more of a volunteer or part-time undertaking, not a full-time paid job and is a largely non-partisan undertaking. Should that count too? Or what about working in a government department in a non-political role?

            I didn't really know, which was why I focused on their years in Ottawa, although acknowledged many also had elected roles at other levels of government. This was the cleanest way to do it.

            2. I don't know about your hypothesis. It may be true for the backbench versus the cabinet (but again, that's probably reasonable as a PM would chose his or her most experienced people to be in charge), but for the overall House it would depend on the composition of the opposition benches. For example, at the moment, the Liberals as a whole have greater average tenure than the Conservatives.

    • Be_rad

      1)
      Reform/Alliance/CPC – Manning (non-lifer), Day (lifer), Harer (hybrid)
      Prog Cons – Clarke (lifer), Mulroney (non-lifer)
      NDP – All lifers snce Broadbent at least
      Liberals – Trudeau (non-lifer) Turner (lifer), Chretien (lifer), Dion (non-lifer), Ignatief (non-lifer)
      BQ – Bouchard (non-lifer? Drafted in at high level right away), Duceppe (hard to say)

      Successful non-lifers had either very good parliamentary support (Trudeau had his 3 wise men and Mac Eachan) or strong charismatic populism instincts (Mulroney). The most successful lifer, Chretien, had tons of upper echelon experience, after tons of backbench success.

  • PolJunkie

    Ok but… one can witness the same kind of turnover in just about all sectors. The boomers are retiring. Politics is probably the only sector that won't suffer from the gap that this mass retirement will create in the workforce.

    • Loraine Lamontagne

      How strange it would be if this mass of boomers would produce only one prime minister (Harper), ( I think Kim Campbell is a boomer, so two if we stretch it…).

  • PeteTong

    I would be interested in an analysis of the extent to which politicians in Canada move between different levels of government (eg. retire from provincial politics to run federally).

  • June Kim

    I would love if the press gallery had term limits. Canada would be better served by journalists that weren't Otta-washed.

    • Blacktop

      Now there is a good suggestion. They might as well be politicians because most of them suck up to one party or another. Probably hoping for a job in the tent someday.

    • M_A_D_world

      It used to be wise editors had a good feel for when journalistic integrity was compromised. However in the days of blogs, it seems to be the style they wish to push.
      No one gets to be an insider without leaving something at the door.

  • Aongasha

    I agree with BC Blue
    Lots of media political 'lifers' in Ottawa & TO with the same lack of well-rounded experience. Especially those who did not get their jobs through talent but rather inherited the 'family' mantel or had some connections. Many have also lived on the public purse as well and never had a real job in their lives. Yet from their ivory towers they tell us how to live, think and vote.
    Leeches all!

  • Stewart_Smith

    To the champions of statism and government meddling in private parts above;
    I (truly) hate to come to Simpson's defense ( I truly do!) but the guy works for CTVglobemedia, not the public. You don't like what he writes, don't read it. You don't like that his boss likes him, screw off.
    Sorry, but even some of us Liberals have a bit of libertarianism in us.

    Also, having politicians decide who gets to cover them (and for how long) is just plain dangerous.

    • John W.

      Oh come on! Simpson led with his chin on this one.

      • Stewart_Smith

        You were just in the way John (sorry, acceptable losses & all). It is one thing to laugh at Simpson, another to propose limits on the press gallery.

        It does raise an interesting point though. We collectively seem to have a visceral hatred for the "career politician". That might lead one to believe the public wants newbie politicians. Yet on the occasion when one of those newbies raises their heads and makes the inevitable rookie mistake the public joyfully trashes them. The net result that we seem to be happiest with the career politician who hypocritically (but with a straight fact) describes (lies about) themselves as being "outside the political mainstream".

        • Be_rad

          Happy Century mark, by the way.

          • Stewart_Smith

            Thanks I guess, but every since the "Sean" experience I feel oddly compelled to start at the delete profile button for hours on end.

          • Crit_Reasoning

            Copycat suicide?

          • Stewart_Smith

            No, I just like to stare at buttons.

          • Crit_Reasoning

            I've considered it too, but it seems unnecessarily drastic. I'd rather phase out gradually, and maybe start a blog or something as a diversion.

  • Blue

    Those nine MP`s that have been there continously since at least 1988 are testimony to the fact that incumbency is the greatest weapon for reelection. They are an uninspiring bunch but the remains of the pork that they have taken credit for throughout their ridings over the years is too large an obstacle to entice good candidates to oppose them or to encourage a lazy electorate to take a chance on change.

    Good Gawd it`s been 22 years and counting—they`re worse then Senators. Get them outta there—fire them if they won`t leave.

  • http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/ Open_Democracy

    The system needs to be changed. Like all occupations, "employees" reach a "best before date" after which they become less effective. Here's one suggestion which, if adopted, will have wider ranging benefits for Canadians than just preventing MP staleness:

    Canadian politicians should be limited to a 3 term maximum. Time and time again, I have seen that once politicians of all levels reach their third term of "public service", they lose their efficacy as a result of ambivalence, arrogance or a combination of the two. As well, if a politician hasn't achieved their goals for their constituents within their first 3 terms of service, they are unlikely to do so during additional terms. As an added benefit, by limiting the number of years of service, Canadians will also be limiting our growing MP/MLA/MPP pension liability.

    Having politicians with limited "real life" experience does not make for better policies or decision-making. Living most of one's working career in the "Disneyland" that exists on Parliament Hill can hardly produce MPs that are well balanced.

    To read more about this topic, see:

    http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2010/03/best…

    • Thwim

      It's very strange.. public service is the only place where we'd consider throwing someone out because they're doing a decent job for too long. How do we know they're doing a decent job? Because they keep getting elected.

      Apply that to any other sector, and you see how ludicrous it is.. "Hmm.. it seems I've been hiring the same contractor for 12 years now. Guess I better find someone new.. whaddya mean look at his record? I've been hiring him repeatedly for over a decade now, it's obvious he's no longer useful."

      • Blue

        Your contractor analogy only works in regard to returning MP`s if he is the type who convinces your neighbors to contribute, through a neighborhood tax, to pay for your renovation.

        • Thwim

          And tell me why on earth I'd fire such a contractor if he could do that?

          I'm assuming that your analogy (don't let Wherry know) is equating my neighbors with other ridings.

    • Stewart_Smith

      Sorry, don't think you have thought this all the way through especially in the modern era of potentially annual elections.

      Consider what this rule would do for the upcoming election. Harper is out, so before any election Baird would have to become PM. (had enough yet?) The most senior accomplished Ministers that would survive to help John would be the amazing Mr. Cannon and the pinch faced Mr. Blackburn. Of course all of those would only have 1 term left, so maybe for leadership you want someone who could be there for two terms. That sets up the dream match between Lisa (oh so sexy) Raitt and her arch nemesis the adorable Ms. Aglukkaq. Paradis, Ashfield and Kent round out the remaining surviving "talent?".

      I suspect the talent in the Liberal and NDP sides would be similarly wiped out.

    • Lord Kitchener's Own

      I'm torn about this kind of term limit. On the one hand, I can see the advantages of new blood and all that. On the other hand, if the voters want to return MP X to Parliament for 50 years straight, who am I to argue? If the voters think the MP is no longer effective, they can do something about that. If, on the other hand, they think their MP is the bee's knees, why force them to move on to someone else if they don't want to?

      • Be_rad

        Despite my direct answer to the post, my reply to your question would be that there are a number of ridings where who the candidate is matters far less than who they are running for. It is a fallacy to suggest that our votes hold individual MPs to account for their actions as an MP when they are also weighted forward towards the prospect of the aprty they support getting in or not. Nonetheless, for many reasons I think this import is unnecessary.

    • Be_rad

      "Time and time again, I have seen that once politicians of all levels reach their third term of "public service", they lose their efficacy as a result of ambivalence, arrogance or a combination of the two."

      That's a pretty broad statement. Why don't you let the wisdom of the voters decide when they have had enough of a particular representative? When the average service of MPs is measured in relative nanoseconds, why get rid of any inherent corporate memory you may have? Part of your assumption later on is that so-called lifers start the job as the first thing they do – al Poilievre type. Do you have comprehensive data to support this?.

      • http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/ Open_Democracy

        Unfortunately, Parties tend to nominate the incumbent in a riding whether or not there are better candidates out there. In my riding, we've had the same MP since 1993 and he definitely needs replacing, however, Party etiquette demands that he stay as the only candidate. When I lived in Western Canada, it was the same thing; we had an MP who refused to leave once he lost his usefulness, fortunately after 4 terms, he was replaced with a candidate from another Party by the voters in his riding. Often, voters in a riding would prefer to vote for a certain Party, however, they would rather change the candidate that represents their chosen Party because they have been in office too long. This forces voters to enter the polling booth and hold their nose while they mark an "X". That is the dilemma that the current system creates.

        I think that part of the issue is the MP pension – it's just too lucrative for MPs to leave once they reach the 6 year kick-in period. As well, many of today's MPs come from occupations where they would make far, far less than the $157,000 MP base salary. That was less often the case decades ago.

        I am making assumptions, no doubt. However, politics as a chosen career is the same as any other career. Most people grow stale without a change of either employer or focus of their chosen occupation. Unfortunately, when a person chooses to be a politician they have only one choice of employer so their options for re-invigorating their careers are far more limited than in the private sector.

        http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/

    • ex-canuck

      Aw shucks. If the system had been changed, we wouldn't have had Goodage and Rae and McCallum to grace the nation. That would have been a great pity, no?

  • bergkamp

    I agree with Simpson about life long employment in political arena. My perception was that prior to 1990, say, people worked outside government for a decade or two and then went into politics in their 40s after experiencing world for a bit.

    However, it doesn't matter how long MPs experience is if they insist on continuing to behave like sheep as they do now. As long as the leader, and a couple others, know what they are doing is all that matters because impose their agendas on the caucus and they don't care what 95% of their colleagues think anyways.

    • Holly Stick

      I would expect people who have earned their liviing out in the real world to be less apt to act like sheep and to have more to contribute.

      • Be_rad

        There isn't a whole lot of evidence to support that.

    • http://twitter.com/AlisonLoat @AlisonLoat

      Hi bergkamp,

      Your perception is largely true today as well. On average, MPs come to politics in their late 40s, meaning they've spent about a generation doing something else. Some are active in politics, for sure, but most are not. There is a bit more information on that here – http://bit.ly/dh4PKf

      And I agree with you, experience shouldn't be the issue. We tend to criticize politicians as a whole rather than focusing on the behaviour and/or tactics of a few that we may not like.

  • Lord Kitchener's Own

    The average age is 53.

    This perhaps doesn't even tell the whole story of how old Parliament is (not that Parliament is "old" compared to, say, Congress in the U.S). While the average age is 53 in the House, by my quick count only 36 Members are 40 years old or younger, whereas 98 are 60 years old or older.

    Of course, it's hard to say how meaningful this type of number is, given that of course we have no Members under the age of 18 (nor would we expect to have such) but of all the numbers I played with just now, most of which I dismissed out of hand when I came up with them, one that I still find interesting, for what it's worth, is that 89.6% of Members of Parliament are above the median age of Canada. However, perhaps that's only noteworthy to someone below the median age :-)

    • http://twitter.com/AlisonLoat @AlisonLoat

      Hi LKO – age is one factor, but the larger and maybe more interesting question, I think, is what kind of politician do we want in this country?

      Demographics are one factor… and you're right, MPs are older than Canadians, and they're also more male, whiter, more likely to be born in Canada and more often from a white collar profession than the average Canadian (See http://bit.ly/b3qL6Q for the numbers). Should these backgrounds be generally in line with the Canadian population, or would we prefer a different mix? Should they have deep community experience, or would we prefer a more national, or international perspective? Should they have a background in government? What about in local or provincial politics? And if so, how much is too much?

      My sense is that we'd like our MPs to have some experience or appreciation of Parliament, but we'd also like more than that. Maybe we'd ultimately like them to be more like an abstract sense of "us," a motivation which, by the way, many MPs themselves cited (in so many words) as a reason for running in the first place when we interviewed a bunch of them.

  • marco

    i think Simpson actually believes his own BS. he jumped the shark years ago.

  • tedbetts

    Career politicians will always end up being more about politics and political games than policy: Harper and Chretien are perfect examples. For them, policy is a means to an end: getting and keeping power.

    Those who have had more real life experiences, had to make their own way, bring something that career politicians just can't. I'm thinking of someone like Harris or Mulroney or Trudeau. For or better or for worse, they rise above the pettiness of political games. Like them or (more likely) hate them, they have entered politics for something they think is higher and more important. For them, power and politics is the means to an end.

    • John W.

      I think Harris was a career politician for sure.

      • tedbetts

        That is a somewhat fair comment. He was first elected in 1980 at the age of 36 and so had 14 years as an MPP before becoming Premier. So lots of time in politics.

        Before that though he had been a teacher, a ski and golf pro, and managed a golf club for a while, all of which were clearly outside the politician/pundit career politician track that a Harper/Layton/Duceppe grew up with. In other words, he had an ordinary life before politics that did not relate to politics.

        • John W.

          What would you call his career since leaving office??

  • Canuck237503

    It is worth a bit more dwelling on the fact that the average length of terms is less than in the US. Observing from afar (i.e. in the US) Canadian elections are far more dynamic than American ones. Think of the US Senators who've been in the Senate for decades at a time (and I think a comparison of the US and Canadian senates is apples to oranges; the US Senate is a far more powerful body). Similarly, congressional districts are so incredibly gerrymandered to benefit incumbents in a way that Canadian ridings simply are not.

    My point being I don't think you can read much into the difference between the two.

    That said, I've never heard any real compelling argument as to exactly why it is that, as a blanket rule, there should be term limits. Yes, it would be good if bad politicians didn't linger, but the flip side of that is that good ones should be able to carry on. MacDonald, Laurier and Mackenzie King all were long-serving prime ministers and arguably their long service and experience–plus the respect their long service commanded–did good things for the country. I really don't buy the "oh well they get used to it and it's better to have fresh blood." It's a complete lie that politicians are slackers or they don't care deeply about their jobs and (in their own way and in ways that 2/3 of the country at any given time disagrees with) are trying to do the best for their country. To suggest people stick around 'cos it's cushy–when they could be working in the private sector for vastly more money and less hassle and work–is to completely ignore reality.

    • Doug Irvine

      Have lived in Ottawa 1952-1961, 5 years of which in RCAF. Also have known Paul Hellyer for longer than that, meeting 1946,
      and many times sat in Members Gallery watching Parliament at work, I agree that there should NOT be term limits. Posters are forgetting that all Members MUST be elected by their constituents. Sometimes bad politicians are re-elected, that can't be helped. However they eventually are not, and their Party finds that very quickly and do not support them. I met some very great politicians, such as Jack Pickersgill amongst others. In my opinion having had that experience, it is my belief that most all of the people elected to serve in our Canadian House of Commons do so for the betterment of our country, through a deep sense of duty. I deeply regret the fracturing of our system by the French Canadian separate party,
      which is NOT a Federal party, and should not have been allowed. We Are All Canucks!

  • Guest

    Yeah comparing a political analyst and novelist to a opportunistic parasitic politician is completely valid. The main difference being that Simpson has a marketable skill; actually I guess politicians would as well, talking out your @ss is tougher than it looks.

  • Harvey Mushman

    I'm curious as to what effect Proportional Representation (which IMO would be a worse system in Canada) would do for this situation.

    My understanding is that in a true PR system MP's would be picked from party lists. This bothers me because it would likely lead to the cronyism we've lived with in the Senate. In terms of MP "longevity"…it would also seem that incumbents would be a virtual "shoe in" under such a system. Especially in the more left-leaning parties who would probably view it as "seniority" over new candidates.

    I can see that leading to the creation of a complete political "job for life" class running our country…which is not a good thing.

    …and while I'm rambling…it seems to me that one of the legacies of the Harper government is MP's taking more "day to day" control over issues previously handled by the (one would hope relatively stable over different governments) civil service. This would indicate that "noobie" Ministers are at a real disadvantage and more likely to mess up.

    Gee…we have so many things wrong with our system today it's hard to figure out where to even start reforming it.

  • ex-canuck

    Goodale and Rae and McCallum, the dreary face of the Liberal party. Is there anyone I have left out?

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