4.0

Samara leaders Alison Loat and Michael McMillan write a tight, anecdotally-based analysis for why Canada's federal government is malfunctioning. Samara conducted interviews with a number of former MP's who claim a strong distaste for the political climate due to leader-centric parties, party domination over MP duties, lack of guidance and ambiguous MP job descriptions. The chapters are organized according to these themes, and why the media and events such as Question Period erode the reputation of politicians and the desire for citizens to uptake political service. The authors speckle the text with insightful analysis, and the final chapter is prescriptive on how to fix the issues. One shortcoming is that some names recur too often, suggesting a lack of breadth of participants while preparing to write this work. This is a minor quibble to an ultimately satisfying and insightful book.