The revolving door is deemed suspicious and raises questions about public institutions’ independence from private interests. If the phenomenon is viewed as an inevitable collateral effect of the American “spoils system”, its prevalence in Canadian politics remains to be studied. Our objective is to document the revolving door in Canada to establish its main characteristics: How frequent is the phenomenon? Has it been a growing trend in recent years? Which sectors of activities are the most concerned? Is it more closely associated with a given political party? To answer these questions, we study the professional origins and destinations of the more prominent POHs at the Canadian federal level, since the mid-1990s. We argue that this compilation is an essential step toward a reflection on the revolving door effects on policy-making.
