For a second group of MPs, the role was described principally in terms of a balance or choice between advancing local or national interests.
Some MPs felt a Parliamentarian’s emphasis should be on the entire country. “[The job is] coming up with rules that govern our society. Primarily we need to look at it from a Canada-wide perspective. I know it is important to represent your constituents and your province, but I think you have to think about what is happening throughout the whole country,” said one MP.
Another MP was even more forceful on this point. “I think what I’m really doing is calling upon voters to… rise above the merely self-interested and local, and think more broadly about what they want for their families, their provinces and the values they want their country to represent,” she said.
Other MPs argued that their attention should be on representing local perspectives. “MPs should be in Ottawa to represent their constituents,” one MP said. “I think it’s our job—and I always said this—it’s my job to bring the voice of the people to Ottawa and stand up for what we have here,” explained another MP.
Others articulated it as a balance, although one that was often difficult to find. “[It’s a challenge] to find a balance... 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 it 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,” one political party leader explained.
A cabinet minister expressed a similar sentiment. “The purpose of the MP is to represent, to the best of their ability, the interests of their constituents,” the minister said, before adding that this definition did not accord with her cabinet experience. “[There] the focus was on [the country].”
For some, this was an invigorating challenge. “Part of the job is to try and build the threads that hold the country together... you’ve got to try and encourage people to be bigger than they think they can be in terms of spirit and vision,” the MP said.
For others, the balance was so difficult as to be nearly impossible. “The purpose of an MP is—and our slogan was—to be [our riding’s] voice in Ottawa, not Ottawa’s voice in [our riding]. That’s what an MP is. And that’s in direct conflict with the role of cabinet,” the MP said.