Legislative priorities and public opinion: representation of partisan agendas in the Canadian House of Commons

BQ in the House: The Nature of Sovereigntist Representation in the Canadian Parliament

“…Even though oral questions by MPs cannot be considered as actual policy, they nonetheless expose a very important part of the symbolic aspect of the policymaking process (Penner et al 2006(Penner et al : 1009. As such, Question Period is a valuable policy venue to consider when trying to assess the agendas of political parties in Parliament.…”

“…To analyze the parliamentary agenda of the BQ with an eye to the changing nature of attention to issues of national unity, we use Soroka's (2005) The validity of Question Period as an empirical indicator of a party's issue attentiveness has now been well established in ground-breaking work on representation of the public's issue priorities in Canada (Crimmins and Nesbitt-Larking 1996;Howlett 1998;Soroka 2002;Penner et al 2006) and in other parliamentary democracies (Diskin and Galnoor 1990;Breuning 1994).…”

“…Issue attentiveness of Canadian parties is similar in the aggregate for many issue domains: party agendas tend to move together over time (Penner et al 2006). Using a summary measure of preferences for government spending, Penner et al (2006) labour, employment and immigration; constitutional and national unity issues; defence; government operations; and tied for fifth, transportation, and intergovernmental affairs and trade.…”

“…Using a summary measure of preferences for government spending, Penner et al (2006) labour, employment and immigration; constitutional and national unity issues; defence; government operations; and tied for fifth, transportation, and intergovernmental affairs and trade.…”

Exploring the Role of ‘Legislators’ in Canada: Do Members of Parliament Influence Policy?

“…These opportunities include not only PMB, but may also include Question Period, committees, debates, and caucus. Generally speaking, while various researchers have suggested that MPs may affect policy, or at least policy positions, through these arenas (Crimmins and Nesbitt-Larking 1996, Docherty 1997, Howlett 1998, Penner et al 2006, none directly measure influence on actual outputs. As the best example of a systematic study of MP influence in parliament, Kornberg and Mishler (1976) consider a wide range of MP activities that are believed to affect the amount of influence that a given MP holds, yet in that study MPs' perceptions of their colleagues is the study's primary measure of influence.…”