The Influences of Political Career Paths on Public Policy: The Case of Canadian Federal Parliament Members

This presentation will examine how the political careers of parliamentary members in Canada affect their activities as policymakers. I will focus on politicians who are moving into the federal government from the provincial and/or municipal level. Many studies show that parliament members in the Canadian federal government start out in professional occupations such as accounting, legal practice, and medicine before becoming politicians. This is because the federal political party is completely separated from the provincial party in Canada, and provincial and/or municipal politicians are not regarded as a significant pool of candidates for the federal parliament. Even though it is often said that local autonomy is the school of democracy, Canadian local and/or provincial politics is separated from its federal politics in terms of political careers. This disconnection results in intergovernmental relations between federal and provincial governments characterized as “diplomatic negotiations” in Canada. My presentation will investigate this feature of political careers in Canada by examining how many federal politicians are coming from the provincial and/or municipal level and then analysing how they behave in the parliament. Indeed, over 25% members of the House of Commons after the 2015 election have had a previous political career at the provincial and/or municipal level. These parliament members are expected to behave in parliament to reflect provincial/local interest in the policymaking process. First, I investigate the former jobs of all parliament members in the House of Commons since the 1990s, including former party affiliation and types of political careers, such as mayor, provincial legislative assembly member, etc. Second, I will investigate if politicians with provincial/local career experience behave differently in the parliament from those with other past careers. To achieve this goal, this presentation will analyse several key policymaking process relating to provincial/local interests.