Alison Loat has a go at this question of who exactly is representing us in Ottawa.
Alison Loat has a go at this question of who exactly is representing us in Ottawa.
For example, what kind of experiences, personal or professional, to do we want them to bring to Ottawa? Should they come from a wide set of backgrounds, generally in line with the Canadian population (which isn’t the case today), or would we prefer a different mix? Should they have deep community experience, or would we prefer a more national, or international perspective? Should they have a background in government? What about in local or provincial politics? And if so, how much is too much?
My sense is that we’d like our MPs to have some experience or appreciation of Parliament, a view endorsed in a recent Globe and Mail editorial, but we’d also like more than that. Maybe we’d ultimately like them to be more like an abstract sense of “us,” a motivation which, by the way, many MPs themselves cited as a reason for running in the first place. Who knows? It’s easy to throw stones, but answering these questions is a much more difficult task.