calls where somebody is frustrated with trying to approach the government,” said Hubbard. “When you think of somebody having trouble with his income tax or with his EI or trying to access the Canada Pension or an old age pension, and they get the proverbial runaround, they wind up calling your office.”
In fact, Hubbard’s office dealt with this type of matter so frequently that he assigned the equivalent of two and a half full-time people to handle the calls (most MPs have only half a dozen staff between their two offices). The staffers, Hubbard said, averaged more than a hundred such calls per day; in the fifteenyears that he served as an MP, Hubbard figures his staffers handled more than a hundred thousand calls that involved constituents seeking help in their dealings with federal government bureaucracies.
A high school principal before entering politics, Hubbard shared a story about a former student in desperate need of help. By then about thirty-five years old, the man had a wife and three kids, and was dying of cancer—and yet Service Canada was denying him his disability payments. When Hubbard heard about the situation he called the man’s doctor, who subsequently wrote a statement to support the man’s claim, which Hubbard then made sure was read by the proper person at Service Canada. A month before the former student’s death, Service Canada approved the man for the disability pension. The money would make an enormous difference in the lives of the man’s family—his kids would get the payments until they came of age, and his wife would get payments as long as she needed them. “So, you know, as a Member of Parliament, you have people in need who call you, and who can benefit from a bit of effort you put into it,” Hubbard said.
Hubbard came to regard dealing with these appeals for help with the Canadian federal bureaucracy as an important aspect of the MP’s job. When we asked which part of his work as a parliamentarian he enjoyed most, Hubbard mentioned these cases. “You probably get more satisfaction from helping people than you did from trying to wade through legislation,” Hubbard said. “And the struggles in Ottawa, in terms of trying to put forward your ideas, or to get changes done, it’s a very frustrating experience. And when you look at somebody who is in need of Canada Pension, who’s been denied it … bybureaucrats who’ve never seen them, and the person comes to [your] office and you see the condition he’s in, and he has five kids at home and is disabled and you can help that person, there’s probably more satisfaction from that.”
FEW WOULD EVER FAULT Charles Hubbard for doing what he could to help any individual, let alone a former student, facing such tragic circumstances. But we were struck by the number of MPs who had similar stories. Is this what voters send MPs to Ottawa to do? In our interviews, we also asked the MPs to describe their jobs. We wanted to know how they spent their time once they got settled in Ottawa, and what they learned about how to succeed as an MP. When we reviewed their descriptions of the MP’s role and what they believed they’d been sent to Ottawa to do, we were taken aback by the variety of their answers.
These wide divergences pointed to an absence of any formal job description or definition of an MP’s responsibilities. And the lack of any direction from parties, which typically exercise far more control over their members, made us wonder whether the higher-ups in the parties cared what the MPs were doing, as long as the they showed up for votes in the House of Commons. As long as they didn’t cause trouble, the MPs were largely left to fend for themselves. Many of them began doing something we referred to as “freelancing”—developing an expertise in a topic that interests constituents or the MP but not necessarily the party leadership. Without direction from the party that controlled many other aspects of their conduct, the
In fact, Hubbard’s office dealt with this type of matter so frequently that he assigned the equivalent of two and a half full-time people to handle the calls (most MPs have only half a dozen staff between their two offices). The staffers, Hubbard said, averaged more than a hundred such calls per day; in the fifteenyears that he served as an MP, Hubbard figures his staffers handled more than a hundred thousand calls that involved constituents seeking help in their dealings with federal government bureaucracies.
A high school principal before entering politics, Hubbard shared a story about a former student in desperate need of help. By then about thirty-five years old, the man had a wife and three kids, and was dying of cancer—and yet Service Canada was denying him his disability payments. When Hubbard heard about the situation he called the man’s doctor, who subsequently wrote a statement to support the man’s claim, which Hubbard then made sure was read by the proper person at Service Canada. A month before the former student’s death, Service Canada approved the man for the disability pension. The money would make an enormous difference in the lives of the man’s family—his kids would get the payments until they came of age, and his wife would get payments as long as she needed them. “So, you know, as a Member of Parliament, you have people in need who call you, and who can benefit from a bit of effort you put into it,” Hubbard said.
Hubbard came to regard dealing with these appeals for help with the Canadian federal bureaucracy as an important aspect of the MP’s job. When we asked which part of his work as a parliamentarian he enjoyed most, Hubbard mentioned these cases. “You probably get more satisfaction from helping people than you did from trying to wade through legislation,” Hubbard said. “And the struggles in Ottawa, in terms of trying to put forward your ideas, or to get changes done, it’s a very frustrating experience. And when you look at somebody who is in need of Canada Pension, who’s been denied it … bybureaucrats who’ve never seen them, and the person comes to [your] office and you see the condition he’s in, and he has five kids at home and is disabled and you can help that person, there’s probably more satisfaction from that.”
FEW WOULD EVER FAULT Charles Hubbard for doing what he could to help any individual, let alone a former student, facing such tragic circumstances. But we were struck by the number of MPs who had similar stories. Is this what voters send MPs to Ottawa to do? In our interviews, we also asked the MPs to describe their jobs. We wanted to know how they spent their time once they got settled in Ottawa, and what they learned about how to succeed as an MP. When we reviewed their descriptions of the MP’s role and what they believed they’d been sent to Ottawa to do, we were taken aback by the variety of their answers.
These wide divergences pointed to an absence of any formal job description or definition of an MP’s responsibilities. And the lack of any direction from parties, which typically exercise far more control over their members, made us wonder whether the higher-ups in the parties cared what the MPs were doing, as long as the they showed up for votes in the House of Commons. As long as they didn’t cause trouble, the MPs were largely left to fend for themselves. Many of them began doing something we referred to as “freelancing”—developing an expertise in a topic that interests constituents or the MP but not necessarily the party leadership. Without direction from the party that controlled many other aspects of their conduct, the
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