A fourth set of descriptions came from MPs who characterized the job as a combination of developing public policy—whether national or regional in its focus—and working in the more direct services to constituents. Direct service provision includes assisting constituents with a wide variety of casework, such as questions about immigration, employment insurance, passports and veterans’ support, helping constituents benefit from federal programs or legislation and fulfilling a representative role by attending social occasions or other commemorative events.
Most MPs recognized that both policy and constituent service work were important, but clearly articulated that one was more important than the other. “I was not motivated by constituency work,” said one MP, adding that most of it was handled by his riding office staff. Others described the riding-level work as the most important part of the job. “You’re the ombudsmen. 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,” another MP explained.
Whether one’s riding was urban or rural also influenced how MPs chose between local service and policy work. Many MPs from rural ridings, for example, emphasized that constituents expected them to be present in their riding, focusing on local concerns. “My first riding was 20 percent rural, and they were much more demanding. They want their MPs at everybody’s 40th birthday celebration… I didn’t miss it when they redistributed my riding and it became a totally urban riding. The demands from the rural constituents, socially, were as heavy as from the urban 80 percent,” one MP said.
Several MPs observed that, given the demands placed on rural MPs by their constituents, there was little in common between urban and rural MPs. One MP from a rural riding described them as two different jobs. “When we go to Ottawa we’re all the same, but in the riding, a rural MP has to be very people-oriented. In a big city riding, people [don’t] know their MP, and they often don’t even know which riding they’re in,” one MP said. He then recalled an urban colleague describing the difficulty of getting to several constituent events in one evening. “I said, ‘It’s hard getting around? For God’s sake, I can walk across your riding faster than I can fly across mine.’”
MPs were often quite forceful about where a Parliamentarian’s emphasis should be. One urban MP was sympathetic to the demands of his rural colleagues, but nonetheless stressed that the role in Ottawa was the most important. “To do your duty [in a rural riding], you can’t be an absentee MP. But the job is in Ottawa, ultimately, and that’s what they pay you for,” the MP said.
A few were hostile to the emphasis placed on constituency service. One called the work “distasteful.” Another felt it was “a sidebar… It’s repetitive problems. It takes less skill to actually operate the constituency office… a lot [of it] can be done by your staff — 80 to 85 percent,” the MP said.
Yet another MP was even more direct on this point. “People elect you to be in Parliament. They don’t elect you to schmooze with them in the constituency… This whole constituency thing becomes, I worry, a kind of substitute for real input and activity,” the MP said.
Some MPs were reluctant to place too strong an emphasis on policy. “I didn’t want to be a high-falutin’ MP,” one said, adding that his primary focus was on his constituency. “If you forget your roots, they’ll forget you.”
Others felt no such tension. “I thought of my role this way: [In the riding], 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,” she said.