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The Samara Centre has been studying the experience of federal Parliamentarians for over a decade. Before our MP Exit Interview (MPEI) project began, Members of Parliament had limited opportunities to share reflections on their role and provide insight about the practice of politics in Canada. With MPEI, we capture this valuable data, using it to monitor the health of our democracy, educate the Canadian public on the functioning of our democracy, and provide experienced-based recommendations to strengthen Canada’s civic culture.

Our questions to MPs cover a lot of ground — from the interviewee’s path to politics to how they navigated power dynamics within their political parties. These conversations demystify life in the House of Commons and identify how political leadership can evolve to face the current challenges to our democratic culture, providing the basis for innovative civic programming to engage diverse audiences across Canada. To date, we have conducted exit interviews across six Parliaments (38th to the 43rd).

This project has produced many impactful outputs, including our 2014 best-selling book Tragedy in the Commons and the follow-up volume Real House Lives. Research from MPEI has been referenced in Parliamentary debates, helped inform the creation of the Reform Act and has received extensive media coverage. MPEI is frequently cited by academics and serves as a key resource for aspiring and new MPs. In addition to reports that cover many aspects of the MP experience, including constituency work, partisanship, and party politics, we have drawn on over a dozen interviews to create engaging podcasts that take listeners behind the scenes in the House of Commons, to better understand the human side of politics. 

Our award-winning Humans of the House podcast and our chart-topping French-language podcast Les Personnages de la Chambre have over 20k listeners across a range of podcast platforms. These shows provide an innovative way to introduce students to civic engagement, democratic institutions and the art of digital storytelling. We have partnered with educators to develop creative, informed and easy-to-use teaching resources in both official languages for secondary and post-secondary students. 

A data breakdown of our interviews to date is available, and an overview of our most recent set of interviews is available here. 

If you are a former MP who left the House of Commons and would be willing to participate in this study, please contact us at hello@samaracentre.ca. 

If you are a teacher who has used our learning resources, please provide your experience and feedback here for our English-language resources and here for our French-language materials. 

If you are a researcher and would like to access our interviews, please fill out the Samara Centre’s data sharing agreement or contact us at hello@samaracentre.ca.