WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT?

WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT?

Do you think you might want to be an elected politician! Seems like it might be a nice job with a more than comfortable salary (The current annual salary for members of Parliament is $172,700, while cabinet ministers earn a total of $255,300), an expense account, a personal staff and the opportunity to access some of the privileges of elected office. Parliament sits for about 127 days a year and daily attendance is not mandatory. So it seems like a nice job, if you can get it!

On the other side of the coin, however, I just received a newsletter from my current MP and it helped to change my perspective a little bit. The following excerpt is from that document:

“Here is a list of issues I received correspondence on from the community in the past month.  Here goes …. hate & intolerance, freedom of religion, government ethics, medicinal cannabis taxation, Passenger Bill of Rights, pipeline construction, steel exports, carbon tax, Equalization, Middle-East politics, national debt, government waste, LGBTQ2 issues, tax evasion, pharmacare, climate change, gun control, tax filing deadlines, childcare costs, student loans, animal cruelty, support for seniors, carbon tax, school bus seatbelts, whale and dolphin protection, terrorism, homelessness, 5G networks, malaria, wifi health concerns, water fluoridation, Western alienation, wolf poisoning, access to clean water, border security, Monarch butterflies, media manipulation, Deferred Prosecution Agreements, mail home delivery, liquor tax, aircraft safety, blood donations, organ donation, Disability Tax Credit, and an internet tax.”

All I can say is, “Wow!” And this is only a list of correspondence for a single month. Obviously, all of the above issues are very important to at least one member of his constituency. As an elected representative he has the responsibility of providing a response to all of these concerns. Almost all of these issues are very complex and the amount of background knowledge that is required to deliver a comprehensive reply is staggering. I know for certain that I would hard pressed to respond intelligently on whale and dolphin protection and Monarch butterfly queries! I know that his staff would be actually researching and writing the responses but it is still quite a mind boggling breadth of topics.

The above personal correspondence is also quite peripheral to the main role of the MP i.e. representing his constituents in parliament, participating on working committees and studying the issues and topics on the agenda of each parliamentary session. 

Our knowledge into the actual work of an MP is often provided by snippets of coverage on TV newscasts. What they do from day to day is invisible to most of us and we simply conjure up an image of a man (or women) behind a desk, or sitting in the House of Commons, or possibly meeting with constituents in a hand shaking or fund raising venture. As with most jobs and professions, we really have little idea of what any job entails. 

From the little insight that I gained from my MP’s list of correspondence, I am a little more sympathetic to their role and their responsibilities. I don’t think it is quite as easy as I might have speculated! What do you think?