The declining numbers in the Parliamentary Press Gallery are troubling, several members of Parliament said after iPolitics published an analysis of data Thursday which showed the gallery is the smallest it’s been in two decades.

“To see the parliamentary press gallery shrinking means that the knowledge Canadians have of what’s going on in Parliament will definitely shrink … (and) is shrinking,” Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said. “That’s worrying, not only for the health of the media. That’s worrying for the health of democracy.”

The press gallery is the group of reporters, editors, producers, camera operators and technical staff accredited to cover Parliament Hill. iPolitics analyzed lists of parliamentary press gallery memberships provided by the gallery and found that the gallery is roughly the same size now as it was in 1994.

Long-time journalists said the reduction in gallery members is not surprising, given structural and financial shifts in the Canadian media industry. The data shows significant cuts to parliamentary bureaus — particularly those of newspapers, both regional and national — and the disappearance of representation from several broadcast and newspaper outlets.

Several MPs said the findings are in line with the struggles they know the industry is facing, but they still consider them troubling. Nathan Cullen, the NDP critic for democratic reform, called the shrinking press gallery “deeply concerning.”

“The fewer reporters we have on the Hill, the fewer insights we have to what’s actually going on with government, the fewer people we have helping the opposition and others hold the government to account,” Cullen said. “You require a hardworking and hopefully intelligently sceptical press gallery.”

May said the quality of national coverage, despite being produced by a smaller number of people, is still strong — but she thinks the declining presence of regional outlets in particular is a big problem.

“I’m not jumping on reporters by any means. There’s very, very good journalists,” May said. “But you don’t feel like you’ve got a great newspaper when you’ve got a cookie-cutter version and no one in the parliamentary press gallery looking at the specifics of an issue and how it affects you in your life.”

For Cullen, the decline in the number of journalists representing the different regions of Canada is also a “serious concern.”

“I know as an MP from Western Canada that even going back 10, 12 years when I started, the number of western journalists here asking questions about Western Canada has dropped off dramatically,” he said. “That’s true for many of the regions in Canada.

“Ontario will always have a presence in Ottawa, Quebec probably as well, but the further away you get from the Hill … from Ottawa, the fewer Canadians are going to know about issues that are mattering in those regions. So not only the depth, but a diversity of coverage suffers when we lose more and more members of the gallery.”

May and Liberal MP Hedy Fry, who chairs the parliamentary heritage committee, also emphasized the importance of journalism to the democratic process.

“If you don’t have people across the country coming into Ottawa to make sure that they cover (Parliament), how are you going to serve democracy? How are you going to inform people so when they go out to vote, they are making informed judgments?” said Fry, whose committee is knee-deep in a study of media and local communities. “This is part of a trend that is troubling.”

In addition, May said the Special Committee on Electoral Reform, of which she is a member, discussed the connection between political coverage and voter interest and turnout as it worked to put together a report on electoral reform for the government.

“Even 20 years ago, far more Canadians could name their premier … or name their MP,” she said. “And the numbers of people who can now do that has dropped precipitously. I think that’s due to more newspapers that provide the same national news.

“If the press gallery becomes a smaller and smaller group, basically unable to cover the breadth of what’s going on, you get a greater numbers of subjects covered superficially and that leads to a decline in voter interest.”

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, who has served as an MP continuously since 1993, offered a different, more optimistic take on the situation, instead emphasizing how the gallery’s diversity has expanded in other ways.

“Over the decades, the most remarkable change in the press gallery has been how much better it has come to reflect the country that it serves,” Goodale wrote in an email. “With more women, more ethnic diversity and evermore specialized outlets, coverage on the Hill has never had as much breadth of perspective as it does today.

“That can only be a good thing for Canadians — and it certainly makes the lives of Parliamentarians more interesting.”