Ralph Goodale Is Canada's Parliamentarian Of The Year

Ottawa - Ralph Goodale, the Liberal Member of Parliament for Wascana and former Minister of Finance, has been named Canada's Parliamentarian of the Year by his House of Commons peers in this first annual survey of Canada's 306 sitting Members of Parliament (MPs), in which an impressive 144 MPs participated. The study was conducted by Ipsos Reid on behalf of Maclean's in partnership with L'actualitй and the Dominion Institute of Canada. Bill Blaikie (NDP), Stephen Harper (Conservative), and Gilles Duceppe (Bloc) receive the top marks for their respective parties.

Based on the scoring system outlined below Ralph Goodale received 35.45 points out of a possible 60 total points. The top point getters for best MP in the other parties are Bill Blaikie (NDP) at 32 points, Stephen Harper with 30.5, and Gilles Duceppe with 17 points .

The objective of the survey was to allow all MPs the opportunity to recognize and honour their peers across party lines for their performance in the House of Commons and in fulfilling their duties as Members of Parliament.

Each MP was given the opportunity to evaluate MPs within their own Party and within each of the other Parties against six criteria including: hardest working; best orator; best at representing constituents; most collegial; most knowledgeable about the issues of the day; and best overall performance.

To ensure that parties with more elected MPs or those parties with higher participation rates in the study would not dominate the selection process a scoring system based on the ordinal rank within each category was used. More details on the methodology are outlined below.

The point distribution among the top MPs in each party were as follows:

Five other awards were given out by Maclean's including Hardest Working (Paul Szabo Liberal), Best Orator (Ralph Goodale, Liberal), Most Knowledgeable (three-way tie: Stephen Harper, Conservative, Ralph Goodale, Liberal, and Bill Blaikie NDP), Best Constituency Representative (Peter Stoffer, NDP), and Most Collegial (Peter Stoffer, NDP).

Methodology
There are 306 MPs currently sitting in the House of Commons and 144 MPs participated in the survey. Four members of the Bloc Quйbйcois, 55 members of the Conservative Party, 64 members of the Liberal Party and 21 members of the New Democratic Party participated in the study.

Each MP was given an opportunity to evaluate MPs within their own party and within each of the other parties against six criteria including: hardest working; best orator; best at representing constituents; most collegial; most knowledgeable about the issues of the day; and best overall. Please note "best overall" was one of the six categories and that the determination of the best Member of Parliament was not based on this one category alone but on an aggregate scoring system (see below) that encompassed all six categories.

To ensure that parties with more elected MPs or those parties with higher participation in the study would not dominate the selection process a scoring system based on the ordinal rank within each category was used.

• MPs were asked to assess their colleagues on both sides of the House of Commons by choosing a best MP from each party in each of the six categories.
• These six categories were then divided, based on the votes an MP received from within their own party and on the votes received from the other parties combined, essentially creating 12 categories.
• The top five MPs in each category were given points based on their ranking within the category. For each first place ranking an MP received five points, for second place four points, for third place three points, for fourth place two points, and for fifth place one point. For example, if an MP finished first in a category within their party they would receive five points, and, similarly if they finished first in a category according to the combined votes of the other parties they would receive five points. The most points an MP could receive is 60, meaning they would have been chosen first in every category by their own party and first in every category by the other parties combined. If an MP finished fifth in all categories they would receive 12 points.
• Only current Members of Parliament were invited to participate and only current members of Parliament were eligible to be chosen as the best MP. MPs were provided with several options for completing the survey, including the ability to respond via the Internet, over the phone or by fax. Each MP was provided with a unique, randomly generated PIN to enter the survey online and only faxes that were received from MPs offices were accepted to ensure that each MP could only answer once. Faxes were monitored and verified to ensure there were no duplicate responses.
• There were not enough Bloc members (4) who participated in the study to assign points for votes received by Bloc MPs from within their party.

The table below shows how the points were assigned.

For more information on this news release, please contact:
MIke Colledge
Senior Vice President and Managing Director
Ipsos Reid Public Affairs
(613) 241-5802
[email protected]

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