Deciding to Run: Making sense of the paradox
This outsider sentiment is particularly striking when it is contrasted with each MP’s involvement in his or her own community. Notwithstanding their professed outsider status, most future Parliamentarians had in common the fact that they had each spent years taking an active interest in the proverbial “public square.” Whether through their profession, their volunteer commitments or a combination of both, they had opportunities to interact, often extensively, with a cross-section of their community. It was often these experiences –both positive and negative – that ultimately let them to channel their energies into public life.
Some had this experience as a result of jobs in the broader public sphere, such as journalists, teachers or social workers. Others served as provincial politicians, or supplemented their day jobs with positions on school boards or on municipal councils. Many volunteered in community or professional associations and some were active in their unions.
These experiences led many to discover that they had the power to successfully create change, however modest or grand its form. They liked the taste of those accomplishments.
One MP recalled serving as the president of the local Chamber of Commerce when the major employer in the region announced widespread cuts. “It was a really difficult time for the community,” the MP said. “You had young men who were mostly hard-rock miners in their 20s and 30s [whose well-paying jobs] just disappeared overnight.” The future MP became heavily involved with the community’s response to the job crisis and realized that this involvement could influence change. It was also a lesson in how government mattered. “The policy the provincial and federal governments were going to pursue in response was going to make a difference in individual people’s lives. That rekindled an earlier interest and my involvement in politics has been pretty consistent since then.”
For others, they became sensitive to a system that excluded people or a community that was struggling. One MP worked for a retailer, and the job involved visiting women in rural communities who wanted to work for the company. This provided unique insight into the poverty affecting those living on the Prairies. “I don’t know how many women I saw there that were trying to get enough money just to survive,” the MP said. “The social infrastructure [in agricultural communities]... is still a problem.”
Occasionally, the MPs’ community work exposed them to what government could do, and motivated them to action when they learned that it wasn’t up to the task. One MP, who worked with abused children, recalled receiving the news that a child, for whom they couldn’t secure adequate support, had committed a murder. “The child was really abused. We tried to get him out of the area he was in. Government wouldn’t listen and we couldn’t get anything done for this child. When he went into the school system he became very aggressive. His mother, when he was six, said, ‘Is he going to have to kill somebody to get help?’ Well, at the age of 21 he did. So [my spouse said], ‘You have to go to Ottawa. Somebody’s got to go. They’ve got to understand.’”
Despite a limited interaction with federal politics and their feeling of being outside national civic life, almost all Parliamentarians demonstrated a willingness to take the step, however tentatively, toward becoming an Ottawa insider. In some cases, it was in opposition: taking aim at the perceived inside. In others, it was a strong sense of identification elsewhere, such as a geographic, ethnic or cultural community they felt was ill-represented in national life. Whatever their reasons, each MP found the status quo lacking, but had enough experience and respect for the public sphere to see serving in Parliament as a worthwhile endeavour.
In essence, from this narrative a clear paradox emerges. It is ironic that those who consistently describe themselves as outsiders have, in fact, been intimately involved in the lives of their communities. More than anything, this is perhaps best viewed as an observation on our political culture. Perhaps our politics attract the underdogs or people from outside the mainstream, or maybe it’s more that we, as citizens, feel more comfortable defining ourselves that way.
This paradox may also highlight the fact that politics has become something for which it’s inappropriate and even uncouth to acknowledge interest or ambition, even after the fact. If that is, in fact, the case, it’s no wonder that people don’t consider public life, or claim to stumble into it so accidentally.
So notwithstanding their wide variety of backgrounds, interests and perspectives, these future MPs all answered yes, and agreed to stand for the nomination.