Forgetting Their Purpose

There is little doubt that politicians' constituency work can be onerous, eroding personal/family time while home on the weekends and perhaps compromising the work they do in Ottawa. It is not a task I envy.

Nonetheless, there are those who, obstructed by overweening ego and ambition, refuse to acknowledge that serving their constituents is or should be their primary task. This might seem to be stating the obvious, but it is a truth some would-be Titans of the political universe seem to largely ignore, local scutt work apparently beneath their political dignity.

This is the tale of one such person.

I speak from personal experience here as I write about the consistent unresponsiveness of my Liberal MP, Liberal Filomena Tassi, to my phone calls and emails, and it stands in marked contrast to the relationship I had with my former MP (we had boundary changes in our area), Conservative MP David Sweet. Although he and I never saw eye-to-eye on any issues I raised with him or his office, the fact that Sweet would always respond to my emails, either by email or personal phone calls, earned my deep respect, and I like to think that we had some quite civilized exchanges.

Unfortunately, Ms. Tassi is an entirely different story. After a career helping others as a chaplain at a Catholic high school, her leap into politics looked like a good transition, one that would enable her to help even more people. Sadly, that has not turned out to be the case. Rising quickly within the government power structure, she is currently the Minister of Labour, a position she no doubt attained through both talent and party fealty.

And that fealty was obvious from the beginning, not only through the many photos of her with the movers and shakers of her government, but also what I regard as her strategic decision to refuse to acknowledge those who ask where she stands on an issue. That I am not alone in being ignored is attested to by a letter to the editor that appeared in The Hamilton Spectator back in 2017:

My MP ignored my voice

RE: Pensions in crisis
As a longtime resident of Ancaster, and a former Sears employee for over 30 years, I thought it was important to write my member of Parliament regarding my concerns about the financial future of thousands of fellow Sears pensioners locally and across Canada. It would have been nice to know that my elected representative from the Liberal government, shared my concern, and may have some input into its final conclusion.

This is the first time that I have contacted an MP on anything, and unfortunately, after an initial email over three weeks ago, a followup email and then a phone message to her Ottawa office a week ago, there has been no reply. I guess Ms. Filomena Tassi does not place a high priority on aging pensioners problems, but politeness and common courtesy should have resulted in some sort of followup!

I would like to thank MP Scott Duvall of the NDP for his efforts to bring this plight to the forefront and to The Hamilton Spectator for printing articles on pension shortfalls.

Ms. Tassi — is anyone manning the communications in your office — do you care?

Don Backman, Ancaster

Backman's letter prompted me to write one of my own, a truncated version of which follows:

Liberal MP Filomena Tassi must have missed the orientation given to all newly-elected federal representatives when she took office just over two years ago. Had she attended, she would have understood that one of the most important roles of parliamentarians is to represent and help their constituents on both big and small issues.

Her failure to even acknowledge Don Backman's emails and calls on the very important pension issue do not surprise me in the least. The emails I sent her on two separate occasions, one shortly after she was elected and another about six months later, netted me the same result. Her failure to respond to the first I attributed to the fact that she was new to office. The silence that met my second missive, regarding Canada's unconscionable sale of arms to the Saudis, was harder to explain away.

.......

Perhaps the current representative of Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas has reasons for her silence. Is it possible she is angling for a role higher than that of backbencher in the Trudeau government, her strategy being to avoid any contentious matters in order to demonstrate unflinching fealty to Justin Trudeau? Cabinet positions are often built on such absolute loyalties.

If that is the case, Ms. Tassi has a gross misunderstanding of where her first allegiance should lie: her constituents.

I might add that I recently wrote to her again, despite her communications embargo, expressing my opposition to the Teck Resources' Frontier Mine and asking where she stood on the issue. Again, no response.

So is this post simply an expression of egoistic frustration, an old guy angry that he is not being heard or acknowledged by his Member of Parliament? Not at all.

It has become increasingly apparent that our governments no longer feel responsible for representing and advancing the public interest, unless that public interest happens to coincide with economic and corporate health. The wants, needs and expectations of the general public are rarely regarded as imperatives except during election campaigns; such a cynical manipulation of the electorate, in my view, goes a long way toward explaining the alienation and disengagement far too many Canadians feel.

Whether or not MPs agree or disagree with their constituents' views and values is ultimately secondary here. It is their failure to even acknowledge them that betrays one of the basic tenets of democracy and the implicit covenant our elected representatives have with all of us.