Tragedy in the Commons (11 page)

The majority of Conservative MPs, in contrast, approached their roles as delegates. Loyola Hearn describes the job in terms very similar to the word’s definition. “[Voters] select you to be their representative in Ottawa, to speak for them, to vote on legislation and, in some cases, to develop legislation that they feel is wanted. Basically, to work [for their interests] and to deliver for them whatever benefits might flow,” Hearn said. “All of [the constituents] can’t be up there, so you’re the messenger. That’s the job you have.… You are the representative for the people in Ottawa, not Ottawa’s representative to the people.”

Some Liberals shared this view. Take, for example, the Waterloo-area MP Andrew Telegdi, who described his job this way: “MPs should be in Ottawa to represent their constituents.… Actually I found that quite attractive in the Reform
Party when they first got elected, and that was the message that they came through with. That’s how they saw the role of a Member of Parliament.”

Other MPs admitted that their sense of the job changed with time. “Well, certainly in the early days [of Reform] we made quite a show of saying that we were there to represent the constituency in Ottawa, not the other way around,” said Conservative B.C. MP Chuck Strahl. “In the early days it was certainly aggressively constituency-based. You represent your constituency views to Ottawa, and even in the party you subsumed your own ideas.” But in time he warmed to the value of the trustee approach. “It’s not about getting goodies for the riding, it’s about doing the right thing, and ‘you know we expect you to go back there and do the right thing, not the party thing and not the expedient thing and not the politically correct thing, but tell it like it is on behalf of all of us.’ ”

A more nuanced view was to interpret an MP’s purpose as neither trustee nor delegate, but as seeking to balance the two. Several described the tension between reflecting constituents’ views and leading the way toward or developing a broader view. “I knew I had to represent the voices of my constituents whether I agreed or not,” said NDP Penny Priddy. “[But] it didn’t mean I championed those causes.”

At times, our former MPs expressed resentment toward colleagues who viewed the role differently. One MP suggested that those who viewed themselves solely as delegates didn’t fully appreciate their job. “You’re not running for councillor. You’re not the alderman here. You are the ambassador to Ottawa,” said Liberal MP John Godfrey. “I am not there as some kind of thoughtless representation of local views. They
have chosen me and I have got to apply my best judgment to the situation and it may not always be popular with the constituents; but after all, if they wanted to have a popularity contest or they wanted to poll, they wouldn’t need an MP. I mean you’re actually voting for a person who is going to have to give it their best judgment.”

When constituents’ views on an issue are divided, or when the views of a particular riding run counter to the prevailing interests or opinions across the country, an MP faces the thorny problem of which viewpoint to represent. As an MP, are you representing the people in your riding who voted for you? Are you representing
all
the people in your riding, including those who didn’t vote for you? Are you representing people across the country? And how, in a modern, diverse society, is one to ascertain their views in any realistic way, or purport that their constituents share one view on any topic? “[It’s a challenge] to find a balance,” said Liberal MP Andy Mitchell. “You serve a national interest if you are sitting in Parliament, but you also serve local interests, which is the whole beauty in our system of having constituencies. You are accountable to the country as a whole, but also very specifically to the electors that put you in that office. [MPs] are driven by both those things.”

This was particularly the case for MPs in Cabinet and party leadership positions, roles that forced them to adapt their initial conceptions of where an MP’s focus should be. Some enjoyed the challenge in this, but for others leadership exacerbated the tensions already inherent in the role of an MP. “I believe to the core that the principal purpose of an MP is to represent [constituents].… It was more difficult when I became
the [party] leader because I occupied two roles simultaneously, one of which took you away from your constituents a lot,” said Nova Scotian Alexa McDonough, a former NDP party leader.

For some leaders, this challenge was invigorating. “Part of your job is to try and build the threads that hold the country together,” said former Liberal Cabinet minister and Edmonton MP Anne McLellan. “You’ve got to try and encourage people to be bigger than they think they can be in terms of spirit and vision.”

Another group of more partisan MPs sidestepped the trustee/delegate dichotomy to emphasize a different primary purpose: representing to the rest of Parliament the views of one’s political party. Some felt the party and the constituents were the primary groups to balance. “The purpose [of an MP] is to be a leader from your community in the national affairs of the country. On the one hand, you should be listening to the people you represent, and that means whoever is in the community and not just the people who voted for you,” said former NDP leader Ed Broadbent. “[On the other hand], you’ve campaigned on your party’s programs and issues and so you also have an obligation to that.”

As Liberal MP Russ Powers told us (as cited in this book’s introduction), his experience was that the party was at the centre of the MP’s role: to develop policy that best serves the party, not necessarily the country. Like Powers, who spoke of the gap between the “canned thing of why … we’re there” and “the truth,” Jeremy Harrison, a Saskatchewan Conservative who served from 2004 to 2006, acknowledged the dominance of the party in how he did his job. “I think probably the primary thing that an MP can do right now, the way the system is
developed, is to be kind of an ombudsman for your riding, and an advocate for your riding. That’s kind of what most MPs would see as being their primary job … but I was much more political, I think, than your average political member,” he said. “I was more involved in the party, more committed to the success of the leader.… I felt a real sense of, anything I could do to help Stephen [Harper] become PM I would do.”

Others described the priorities of representation differently. Liberal MP Eleni Bakapanos portrayed the job as part of hierarchy that involved obligations to one’s constituents, political party and party leader. Like many MPs, she recognized that she was elected under a political party banner, and owed some allegiance to that party. “[An MP’s] first purpose is to serve the constituents,” she said. “Second, whether you like it or not, you belong to a team. I think your loyalty to the values and principles of that political entity [are important]. Third, I think, is loyalty to the leader.”

JUST AS
Charles Hubbard remembers fondly helping his ailing former student navigate Service Canada, some MPs emphasized working in a service-oriented capacity for constituents not only as one of the job’s most gratifying elements but as one of its primary purposes. “You’re the ombudsman,” explained Conservative MP Jim Gouk. “When there’s a federal problem, you’re the go-to guy. You’re the one that they look to for help because if
you
can’t help them, who can? You either help or put them in touch with someone who can. You listen to their problem.” This can mean assisting constituents with the bureaucratic matters—immigration, employment insurance, passports or veterans’ support. It also includes helping
people benefit from federal programs or legislation, and fulfilling the role of a representative by attending social occasions or other commemorative events. In fact, about a quarter of the MPs we interviewed said this service to constituents, when they could operate freely from any party interference and the results were tangible and personal, was the best part of being an MP.

A few MPs, on the other hand, disagreed with what they saw as an over-demand for constituency service on the part of those they represented. Conservative MP for Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Brian Fitzpatrick referred disparagingly to the “chamber of commerce” philosophy held by some mayors in his riding, which had them badgering him about what he was doing for the riding as its MP. Was he bringing them grant money that would create jobs? Was he wooing industry? “I guess I never really was strong on that area,” Fitzpatrick said. “I didn’t think that was the role. We’re lawmakers—we’re there to make sure that we pass good laws and so on. It’s not like I’m a lobbyist, to bring industry and stuff to your riding.… It still bothers me, because philosophically I think the role of government is to create the proper environment so that enterprise and business operates in a free market, not with the government trying to give out grants and so on. So I always found it a bit distasteful to get involved with that stuff, but you’re forced into it whether you like it or not.”

Liberal MP Sue Barnes saw the importance of constituency work, but felt that most of it could—and should—be done by the staff at her local office. “I’m known for good constituency work, but I didn’t do most of it—my staff did it on my behalf,” she said. “I gave them the instructions, and they knew
they’d be in trouble if they didn’t do it.” At the same time, she added, “To me [constituency work is] a sidebar.” And she recognized that that her constituents would have preferred she work directly on providing service in the riding. “It’s something of a political truth that they don’t care what you do somewhere else.” However, Barnes saw the two as linked, and acknowledged that she chose her legislative priorities from among the issues that mattered to her constituents. She backed medical marijuana in 1999 and 2004, for example, because a constituent raised the issue with her. “A lot of things [were] sparked by individual constituent problems,” Barnes said. “My interest in same-sex marriage come from a constituent who worked for me in my first campaign, and later died of AIDS—a very intelligent young man.”

Reg Alcock, from Winnipeg South, approached his job in a similar way. “I had a riding in the south end. I had a railway running through it. The two railways are big in this town, less so now. Eight of the largest trucking firms are in this town. I had the University of Manitoba … in my riding. So what are the issues that I tend to take up? Transportation, post-secondary education. Not because anybody held a gun to my head, it’s just that you try to serve the people who live there,” he said. (At the age of sixty-three, Reg Alcock died in October 2011, a year and a half after we met with him.)

Barnes takes the point further: “I think that generally people don’t realize the skill set it takes to be an MP,” she explained. “It’s like running two businesses in two locations, managing supplies, staff, budgets, everything. I thought of my roles this way: In London, I’m dealing with the law as it now stands; in Ottawa the role was future-oriented: how things
could be changed, how things could be improved. I divided my expertise that way.”

REFLECTING AN ASPECT
of the outsider’s perspective we discussed earlier, some MPs described feeling an obligation to bring their own personal identities into Parliament. Liberal MP Paddy Torsney of Burlington, Ontario, elected less than a decade after she’d completed university, said that representing her demographic was an important aspect of her job as an MP. “[I have a responsibility] for broader representation and involvement with young people and women.… [I have] an obligation to speak up,” she said. Montreal-area Liberal MP Eleni Bakapanos felt similarly. “I was the first Greek-born woman elected to the House of Commons,” she said. “A lot of young women in the community [saw] me as a role model.”

Similarly, many MPs expressed a desire to bring their personal version of the outsider narrative to Parliament. “My biggest concern was [giving] people an opportunity to be part of our society,” said Liberal MP Charles Hubbard. And Paul Forseth, a Conservative originally elected in suburban Vancouver as a Reform MP, said, “I think there was a notion that somehow the average Canadian could take back Parliament and show that we can behave differently.” Several MPs described wanting to change the way politics was conducted, or how politicians acted. Sue Barnes put it this way: “To me, the whole point of Parliament was to create change, to create good change. It wasn’t to keep the status quo.”

Gary Merasty particularly felt the burden of representing his Cree community in northern Saskatchewan. “They don’t see you as a [party member], they see you as Gary, and
[say], ‘Screw the political party affiliations, you better do what is good for our people.’ ” Marcel Lussier, a Brossard—La Prairie Bloc MP, described his job as representing Quebec internationally, and interacting with ambassadors of other countries. “Bloc MPs in Ottawa have a very big role to play at the international level.… I met over seventy ambassadors during my three years in Ottawa.… I am a representative of Quebec.… We are there to represent and express our ideas. And one of the events that I was very proud of was when Gilles Duceppe invited all of the ambassadors to meet with us, saying, ‘I want to explain to foreign ambassadors the role and position of the Bloc concerning Quebec sovereignty.’ ”

Many of the MPs described their roles in language that did not fit neatly into any categories, using more colloquial descriptions that made little or no reference to conceptions of representation or to their political party. These descriptions included platitudes and personal observations, as well as statements that sought to embrace a wider sense of social good. “Your purpose is to advance the public interest, and that admittedly can be foggy to [define],” said Conservative MP Monte Solberg. “Ultimately, it boils down to working with your colleagues to advance the prosperity of people.”

Another set regarded the role as a call to service. “Being an MP is not a job, it’s a calling, a way of life. You are one of the lucky people to ever get there,” said Liberal MP Roger Galloway. David Anderson, a fellow Liberal, lamented that the role was too often seen only as a stepping stone to Cabinet, rather than the opportunity for able people to contribute to the country.