It was the anguished cry of a troubled man, apparently trapped in a career choice gone bad. Lee Morrison, a southwest Saskatchewan Reform MP, said recently that he is all but ashamed of what he does for a living.
Election night, 1993, was a different, proud night. Morrison was going to Ottawa to change the country. A year and a half later, the pride has gone.
“When people on airplanes ask me the inevitable question, ‘what do you do?’, I usually tell them, quite truthfully, that I am a farmer and a retired engineer,” he told the Commons. “I do not ordinarily mention this aspect of my life unless the conversation turns to politics.”
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Then, because the debate was about MP pensions, Morrison read a letter published in The Western Producer, complaining about the rich pensions for former MPs. But he was making a much broader statement than mere opposition to MP pensions, from which he has opted out.
He was arguing that Parliament and MPs are largely irrelevant, showing up to ask questions that do not get answered, giving speeches no one reads or hears, performing for empty galleries. Decisions are made by the cabinet and merely rubber-stamped by government MPs.
“Whenever I hear an articulate and well-researched speech in this place, I think,’my God, what a waste’. If the argument had been presented at a rural municipal council meeting where the participants … actually made decisions, the speech would have had great value.”
Complaints about MPs being powerless are a dime a dozen, usually originating with those out of power.
Morrison’s was different.
It was an inside analysis based not on party politics but on deeply-felt disgust with the system in which he works. There was no claim it would be different under a Reform government.
It had a ring of authenticity. Morrison has established a reputation as a straight shooter, a deeply conservative man who works hard on issues like fighting gun control legislation.
He comes across as a citizen politician, rather than an aspiring member of the political class. It was a moving lament.
There are, of course, more flattering and possibly more accurate ways to assess the importance of an MP.
Many MPs see Parliament as a small part of their job. They represent their constituents and work hard to advance ideas in which they believe.
Others, quite properly, take a broader view of the political process.
Every MP does not make policy but a well functioning political party, in government or in opposition, can change the political culture and move society toward goals. The Reform party in opposition has helped make the Canadian political discourse much more conservative.
Morrison, in his lament, took an episodic view of politics. He goes to work and nothing seems to change.
By contrast, on the farm, he plants a crop and months later, he harvests it.
In politics, harvests usually take much, much longer.
It doesn’t mean that the seeds Morrison and his colleagues are planting will not someday sprout. He should cheer up.
