Open events

The Parliamentary Internship Programme (PIP) is a joint initiative of the House of Commons and the Canadian Political Science Association that each year brings 12 recent university graduates to Ottawa for non-partisan work-study experience. Following an intensive orientation, each Intern completes placements with both a government and an opposition Member of Parliament while also attending weekly academic seminars, completing study tours to other legislatures in Canada and abroad, and producing an original research paper. The Interns’ research papers draw on insights from their unique position embedded in the offices of Canadian MPs. This panel will feature a selection of innovative papers from the 2023-24 Parliamentary Interns, which will employ a diverse set of methods – including surveys, interviews, legal analysis, and the quantitative study of parliamentary debates – to explore a range of pressing subjects, including: the democratization of Canada’s foreign policy, the anglonormative culture of the House of Commons, the shifting political alignment of “blue collar” workers, the impact of partisanship on the House of Commons as a workplace, the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the work of political staffers, and MPs’ perceptions of the Indigenous Pacific in Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy.