Strong Shadows: What makes an effective opposition

Transcript:Strong Shadows: What makes an effective opposition:
Strong Shadows: What makes an effective opposition critic? Eric Zinn, Ontario Legislature Internship Programme 2015-16 In their mission of keeping the government accountable to public, the opposition has come to rely on its members’ roles as critics of portfolios. Today in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, every ministerial portfolio has at least one opposition critic charged with shadowing that particular ministry or a significant policy of that ministry. While opposition critics make their positions well known through their actions in Question Period and through interaction with the media during press scrums, there is a relative lack of academic literature investigating the role in the context of Ontario or Canada at-large. In order to address this gap, Strong Shadows analyses the role of opposition critics in the Assembly, identifying and examining which qualities make an opposition critic effective in their role. Building on a review of current academic literature regarding the role of members of Westminster parliaments, the article is centered on interviews from a stratified, non-random sample of current and former members of provincial parliament. With an examination of the attributes, skills, and qualities of critics through these interviews, a critic’s effectiveness can be understood as demonstrating a strong knowledge of their portfolio and presenting themselves as a credible, reliable voice for their party, advancing their party’s objective as critic and ultimately being able to hold the government to account. Abstract Introduction Strong Shadows combines a brief literature review to provide a background of the work of members of parliament in the Westminster system with interview results from current and former members of provincial parliament along with other actors connected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. The interview subjects were selected through a stratified non-random sample of current and former members of provincial parliament (MPP) of Ontario. The sample size of MPPs was set at 30, 10 current government MPPs, 10 opposition MPPs, and 10 retired MPPs of varying experience and background. Additional selection factors included MPPs who had served or are currently serving as government ministers, parliamentary assistants, critics, or who had never served as critics themselves. Four broad questions were asked in each interview with participants providing a variety of answers as well as providing a consensus on certain issues: What would you characterise as effectiveness overall? What makes a critic effective in their role during Question Period, committee work and commenting on bills? Outside the house and