THE DILUTED ROLE OF THE BACKBENCHER IN ONTARIO POLITICS: HOW DID WE GET HERE AND DOES IT NEED FIXING? by Mitchell Davidson MA Political Science, University of Western Ontario Director of Policy and Legislative Affairs Office of the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition 200 North Wing Queen's Park Toronto, Ontario M7A 1A1 Phone: 416-326-6412 (O) Email:
[email protected] Paper presented at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Toronto, Ontario, Tuesday, May 30th, 2017. Draft, Do Not Cite Everyone who runs for office does so because they believe that being a Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) means they can affect change for the better. Despite this common desire, the ability for individual backbench members to affect policy change is considered weak at best by those who study it. Alison Loat and Michael MacMillan described Canada’s democracy as failing after they interviewed 80 federal politicians about their abilities as parliamentarians.1 Michael Atkinson argued that most parliamentarians are frustrated and unenthusiastic about the prospect of doing legislative work and instead prefer constituency work.2 Kelly Blidook found that the ability for individual members to impact change was quite poor, even titling a chapter of his 2012 book “Does it Matter? Do Members of Parliament Influence Policy?”3 Even as far back as 1987, C.E.S Franks suggested most complaints about parliament stem from party control, the inability to affect policy change through parliamentary institutions, and the lack of influence from individual members.4 The inability for an MPP to affect change may be apparent in the various literature, but nearly all the literature is specific to the Federal Parliament.