Public Power? Politicians don't work for you. Here's who they answer to.

The common belief

Hand-drawn panel. Three smiling stick figures shout: politicians work for the public! A grinning politician stands at a podium marked with a parliament dome.

You hear it at every town hall and in every comment section. We pay their salaries, so they work for us. They are public servants. They answer to the taxpayer.

$217,700A year, the basic pay of every Member of Parliament since April 1, 2026. The prime minister draws the same again on top, for $435,400. All of it comes from public funds.

Hand-drawn panel. A puzzled stick figure, hand on chin, with a question mark overhead, thinks: it sounds reasonable… but it's a fallacy.

It sounds reasonable. It is also a fallacy. Being paid from a public purse does not make the public your employer, any more than paying a toll makes you the boss of the highway. The test of an employment relationship is not who pays. It is who can hire you, give you instructions, check your work and let you go.

Run those four tests on your MP, one at a time.

They're not our employees

Hand-drawn panel. A stick figure points to a speech bubble: politicians are elected by the public, paid from public funds, and exercise authority over the public, each with a tick. A yellow note below: none of those facts establishes that they work for the public in the ordinary employer-employee sense.

Three things are true of every MP. They are elected by the public. They are paid from public funds. And they exercise authority over the public. None of those facts makes them our employees.

Members sit in the House of Commons to serve as representatives of the people who have elected them to that office.
House of Commons Procedure and Practice, 4th edition, section 4.44

Representatives, not employees. Canada's Parliament runs on an idea set down by Edmund Burke in 1774, and still taught by the Library of Parliament: an MP owes voters judgment, not obedience.

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
Edmund Burke, Address to the Electors of Bristol, 1774, as quoted by the Library of Parliament

Hiring: you pick from a shortlist someone else drew up

Hand-drawn panel. Five voters face three framed candidate portraits; the middle one is ticked. Caption: voters choose among candidates selected through political and electoral processes.

An employer writes the job posting and picks who to interview. Voters do neither. By the time a ballot reaches you, the parties have already chosen who is on it.

Under the Canada Elections Act, a candidate can carry a party's name on the ballot only if the party has endorsed them, and the party tells Elections Canada exactly who in the party signed off. The returning officer checks it. Each party decides who holds that pen.

17%Only 17 percent of candidates for the major parties won a competitive nomination race, across the 2004 to 2015 federal elections. More than 70 percent of the 3,900 nomination contests had a single person running. Parties appointed more than 2,700 candidates with no nomination vote at all.

The shortlist can change over the members' heads. In March 2025 the Liberal Party revoked the candidacy of Chandra Arya, who had held Nepean since 2015. The party leader, Mark Carney, ran there instead.

Instructions: you can ask. They can say no.

Hand-drawn panel. A worried citizen says: do this! A politician in a tie raises a hand and answers: no. Caption: citizens cannot direct their representative's daily decisions.

An employee takes direction. An MP takes it from the party whip, whose job the House describes plainly.

The whip enforces party discipline … during a division, voting with the party in accordance with the whip's instructions.
House of Commons Procedure and Practice, 4th edition, section 1.17

99.6%How often the average MP voted with their party in the 2015 to 2019 Parliament, by the Samara Centre for Democracy's count. The most rebellious MP still voted with the party 96.6 percent of the time.

What a citizen has is the right to ask. An electronic petition with 500 signatures goes before the House, and the government must answer within 45 days. It is not obliged to do anything else.

In 2026, 111,158 people signed petition e-7025, asking that an MP who crosses the floor face a by-election. The government's answer:

General elections are the fundamental mechanism by which voters hold elected representatives accountable.
Government response to petition e-7025, tabled July 22, 2026

Supervision: a verdict every few years, not a manager

Hand-drawn panel. A hand drops a ballot into a box marked Elections (periodic), followed by dots and a long calendar. Caption: elections provide periodic judgment, not continuous supervision.

A manager checks the work every week. Voters check it once per Parliament. The Charter caps a Parliament at five years, and the Elections Act fixes the next vote for the third Monday of October in the fourth year.

4½ yearsCanada last voted on April 28, 2025. The next fixed election date is October 15, 2029, unless Parliament is dissolved sooner.

Between those dates, the checking is done mostly by politicians themselves.

Their spendingA board of MPs, the Board of Internal Economy, has the exclusive authority to decide whether an MP's use of public funds was proper. The Auditor General examines members' expenses only when a chamber invites it. When the Senate did, the 2015 audit of 116 senators found problems with 30 and sent nine to other authorities, including the RCMP. No such audit of individual MPs has been done.
Their recordsThe Access to Information Act covers government institutions, and the House of Commons is not one. You cannot file an access request for an MP's office. MPs publish set categories of travel, hospitality and contract costs every quarter, and the Speaker can hold items back on grounds of parliamentary privilege.
Their ethicsThe Ethics Commissioner can fine a minister at most $500, and only for paperwork: a late disclosure or a missed report. In 2019 the Commissioner found that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau broke section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act over SNC-Lavalin. The law has no penalty for that. The report itself was the consequence.

Dismissal: "Can't do that until the next election"

Hand-drawn panel. An angry citizen says: you're fired! A calm politician replies: can't do that until the next election. Caption: most voters cannot individually terminate a politician's employment.

There is no way for voters to remove a federal MP between elections. No recall law exists at the federal level. An MP who changes parties keeps the seat.

A member who changes party allegiance or decides to sit as an independent is under no obligation to resign their seat and stand for re-election.
House of Commons Procedure and Practice, 4th edition, section 4.43

Since the April 2025 election, five MPs have crossed to the governing Liberals without facing their voters.

Chris d'EntremontConservative, Acadie–Annapolis. Crossed November 4, 2025, budget day.
Michael MaConservative, Markham–Unionville. December 11, 2025.
Matt JenerouxConservative, Edmonton Riverbend. February 2026.
Lori IdloutNew Democrat, Nunavut. March 2026.
Marilyn GladuConservative, Sarnia–Lambton–Bkejwanong. April 8, 2026.

169 → 173Liberal seats on election night, and Liberal seats in the House today. A minority became a majority between elections. An NDP bill to force a by-election after any floor crossing, C-278, has passed first reading and nothing more.

This is not new. David Emerson was elected as a Liberal in Vancouver Kingsway in January 2006 and sat in a Conservative cabinet two weeks later. He kept the seat. Kevin Vuong was dropped by the Liberals two days before the 2021 vote, won Spadina–Fort York anyway, and sat out the term as an independent over calls to resign.

Only two provinces let voters recall a legislator, and neither has ever done it.

British ColumbiaA petition needs signatures from more than 40 percent of the riding's registered voters in 60 days. Thirty-one petitions since 1997. None succeeded. The closest, against Paul Reitsma in 1998, ended when he resigned while the signatures were being checked.
AlbertaSince 2025, signatures equal to 60 percent of the votes cast in the riding, in 90 days, and then a recall vote. Twenty-eight petitions were issued between October 2025 and March 2026, including one against Premier Danielle Smith. None reached the threshold.

Competing loyalties: four bosses, and you are one

Hand-drawn panel. A worried politician in the centre, with arrows pressing in from four sides: party, donors, institutions and constituents. Caption: politicians face multiple pressures, not just the public's interest.

An employee has one employer. An MP answers to at least four, and the voter is the only one who checks in once every few years. Tap each one.

Representation, not agency

Hand-drawn panel titled The key distinction: representation versus agency. A crowd of citizens, with an arrow labelled we delegate authority, points to a politician. A speech bubble: but the people who delegate it retain limited direct control over its use.

The real relationship is delegation. We hand over authority on election day. After that, the people who delegated it hold very little direct control over how it is used.

If they were our employees

We would choose who gets the job
We could give instructions
We would review the work as it happens
We could let them go
They would answer to one employer

What we actually have

A choice from a party shortlist
Petitions the government must answer, not obey
A verdict at the next fixed date
No federal recall, and an MP can change party
Party, donors and institutions pulling too

The real democratic question

Hand-drawn panel. Three ticked reminders: being paid by the public does not make you accountable to the public; being elected by the public does not make you an employee of the public; exercising power in the public's name does not prove it is exercised in the public's interest. A thinking stick figure below: the democratic question is not simply who elects politicians, but who can instruct them, constrain them, audit them, and remove them between elections?

Being paid by the public does not make you accountable to the public. Being elected by the public does not make you its employee. And exercising power in the public's name does not prove it is exercised in the public's interest.

Not simply who elects politicians, but who can instruct them, constrain them, audit them and remove them between elections?

Today in Canada, the honest answer is: mostly, other politicians. The section below shows what you do hold, where you live, and how to ask for more.

What you hold between elections

Your four powers, where you live

Where do you vote?

Instruct

You can ask

Write to your MP, or start an e-petition. At 500 signatures it goes before the House and the government must reply within 45 days. It does not have to act.

Start or sign an e-petition →

Constrain

Others decide

Only an MP or a senator can formally ask the Ethics Commissioner to investigate a minister. Anyone can send the Commissioner information. Fines top out at $500, for paperwork.

Office of the Ethics Commissioner →

Audit

MPs audit MPs

Read your MP's quarterly expenses. You cannot file an access request for their office, and the Auditor General looks only when invited.

See your MP's expenses →

Remove

Your MP: no recall. You wait for the next election.

Ask for more

Tick what you want your representatives to support. Your list goes into the email below, or copy it anywhere.

Cross the floor, face the voters
Bill C-278 would do it. It has not moved past first reading.

Federal recall
There is none today. B.C. and Alberta show what an unreachable threshold looks like.

Independent audit
Not a board of MPs ruling on MPs.

Ethics with teeth
Today the maximum is $500, and only for filing failures.

More free votes
99.6 percent party-line voting leaves little room for the riding.

Your asks

Pass it on

Most people still believe the employee story. One share puts the four tests in front of someone who votes.

Support the watchdogs

These groups work on the gaps this page describes.

Democracy WatchEthics enforcement, lobbying and government accountability.Support →
Samara Centre for DemocracyResearch on how MPs are chosen and how they vote.Support →
Fair Vote CanadaMaking every vote count in who sits in Parliament.Support →

The record

The panels on this page are hand-drawn illustrations.

We pay them, so they work for us?