The Accidental Citizen?

Most of my blogging has been over here lately (RSS accordingly please!) or here, where I've been writing mostly about political leadership, Parliament and innovations in public affairs journalism.

With others at Samara I've also been working on Canada's first-ever series of exit interviews with former Parliamentarians, and on June 15th we will release the first report from this project. It's called The Accidental Citizen? and reflects the varied, and often unexpected, ways so many MPs described their journeys to public life.

We hope this report, and those that follow, will be a basis for further discussion and will contribute to a greater understanding of political leadership in Canada. With time, we hope this effort will draw attention to the things that function well in our public life, and contribute to a constructive discussion on what can be improved.

If you have a few minutes, please visit the Samara site and let us know what you think.

MPs and religion

UPDATE: Thank you to a reader who pointed out a factual error in the initial post. It has been corrected.

Over at Samara we're working on our MP exit interview project. One observer , in reading this post about this post about Canada's amateur politicians, asked me over Twitter if our lack of a "political class" meant there was more influence of religion in our politics and wondered also how that was related to the amount of formal education MPs had. I agreed to look further into the educational backgrounds of MPs to see how many had religious training.

The answer only includes the sub-set of former MPs involved in our project, and we know a bit about their backgrounds already. However, for more specific detail on any religious training, I emailed our summer intern, Devan Sommerville, for help. Devan compiled excellent biographical packages on 139 MPs involved in our project and is a wealth of knowledge on politics in general.

His response is longer than Twitter allows, so I've paraphrased his answer here:

Several of the former MPs in our sample had formal religious training. The Hon. Bill Blaikie (NDP Elmwood-Transcona) is an ordained minister in the United Church. Raymond Gravel (Bloc Repentigny) is a practicing priest of the Roman Catholic Church. Those are the former MPs that stand out in my mind from our sample, and there may have been another one or two with theology degrees.

It is worth noting that both these men championed social policies that were often at odds with their respective denominations. In fact, Gravel was forced to resign or be removed from the priesthood due to his support for issues such as gay marriage.

Your questioner also wondered about party affiliation. While there certainly are some vocal Christians in the Conservative party (Stockwell Day, Chuck Strahl, Harold Albrecht, David Sweet, Maurice Vellacott, etc), it is not a purely “low-brow” Conservative issue. Many have post-secondary education, although not in theology. Furthermore, longtime Toronto Liberal MPs like Tom Wappel (ret) (Law – Queen’s) and John McKay (Law – Queen’s) are active Christians as well, and have legislated from that perspective. In fact, the strongest bastion of Liberal opposition to the gay marriage amendment was in the GTA (Scarborough, Etobicoke and Mississauga) – mostly from MPs that opposed it on religious-moral grounds that went beyond just Christianity.

So there's a bit more colour on the question. As with many things, not as straightforward as it may seem.

Farewell Doug Frith

As some of you may know, I'm involved in starting a new organization, Samara, through which we're trying to spark projects that support a culture of public service in Canada.  My friends from Canada25 will remember the feeling of possibility that comes with starting something new that we hoped would create a better future for our country; I hope Samara will provide that same sense for those involved with it.

One of the projects we're working on is a series of exit interviews with MPs from the past Parliament who are not serving in this one.  The idea is to capture their collective experience and shine some light on the good things we don't know much about, and on the areas where change may be needed.

Thus far, the process has enabled us to meet with some incredible individuals.  Among them was Doug Frith, who in addition to his career as a public official in Sudbury, in the Canadian Parliament and in private industry, chaired the Canadian Association of Former Parliamentarians.  I met Doug in early 2009 to talk about our exit interview project in hopes that the Association would work with us to make it happen.  Much to my delight, he welcomed the project and has been instrumental in moving it forward.  At the time, he commented to me that Gordon Fairweather, who had passed away on Christmas Eve, was the last living member of the Diefenbaker cabinet and that it was a pity we hadn't captured his voice.*  

Very sadly, I learned this afternoon that Doug passed away yesterday.  Here is an obituary from the Sudbury Star.  No doubt there will be more.  It was a priviledge to know him, if even for a few short months.  We will continue to work on the MP project in his honour.

*As an aside, I learned from Bill Young, Canada's chief librarian, that there were some interviews done of MPs, including Gordon Fairweather, in the 1970s.  I have the list, and one of my colleagues is currently navigating the Archives of Canada in an attempt to gain copies of them.  If anyone knows of these interviews or how to maneuver the Archives, please let me know.