Productive Tension

Breaks during the winter parliamentary season are rare. Sequestered indoors in parliamentary committee rooms for endless meetings feels like something of a legislative bubble. The feeling is even more enhanced when you look out the windows to see nothing but the snow and ice of Ottawa. During such occasions most politicians feel a deep longing for their family and the need to be in more familiar surroundings. This is definitely true for me. With three young children at home, two recently adopted from Darfur, it's easy to feel the ache for London.

And so you're thankful to spend a week with your family and friends in the riding. You make the inevitable plans for taking the family out for dinners or to a movie, greeting your staff at the constituency office and greeting friends. But it never works out like that. The moment you arrive in your riding office there are numerous requests for meetings from advocacy groups, individuals needing assistance to access the large government machine, and an abundance of requests for people wanting you to speak at their event during the week you are home. By the end of the first day back you realize all your best-laid plans have floundered due to so many requests.

And yet these are the very people who elected you or who form vital aspects to your community and they deserve the attention. Fortunately for me, I have a family that understands. I'm also thankful that many of the groups who ask me to come to their important occasions are more than willing to accommodate my wife and children.

This is another side of parliamentary work that is hard for most people to comprehend. Some feel legislators have a pretty ease time of things - lots of perks, exotic travel and undertaking important assignments. This has not been my experience to date. I have worked at various jobs during my life but never one as hard as this. And that's the way it should be because we should sign on to the job of a parliamentarian unless you willing to see yourself as a public servant.

Then there are those other responsibilities - food bank volunteer director (this week is our big spring food drive) and overseeing, as director, our African charitable organization - which also whittle away at your time.

The end of the week is now upon me and I look at my children with a slight sense of guilt and at my wife with a deep sense of togetherness missed. Yet there is this abiding sense that in meeting with so many different people this week that government has an important place in the lives of so many individuals and families. A week so busy and away from family nevertheless had the fortunate result of me spending time with so many individuals and groups that make London North Centre such a remarkable community. It's a difficult trade-off but it's one I'll take. If I can make my own country and riding a better place, then I have also provided something that can enrich the quality of life for my own family.