Western Producer staff
Sitting in the combine on his Sexsmith, Alta., farm during the past 20 years, Charlie Penson figured he had few illusions about what those guys in Ottawa were doing with his tax money.
The Peace River region grain farmer had worked in Progressive Conservative back rooms in Alberta for years.
He knew politics was hard work and far from simple. “In that way, I had no illusions,” the Reform MP says now. “I was well aware governments are not going to solve problems overnight.”
Read Also
Topsy-turvy precipitation this year challenges crop predictions
Rainfall can vary dramatically over a short distance. Precipitation maps can’t catch all the deviations, but they do provide a broad perspective.
Still, he thought the national government should live within its means and do more to promote trade.
He found a home in the Reform party, was part of the 1993 uprising that sent 52 members of the fledgling party to Parliament and arrived in Ottawa to discover that things were not exactly as he had imagined them from outside.
They were bigger. “The physical size of the government is hard to imagine from outside,” he says. “The amount of money. The number of people.”
A year into his first term as an MP, 51-year-old Penson has reached another conclusion – he is working far harder now than he did during his two decades on the farm.
Long days in Ottawa, work in the constituency when he is home every second weekend, and long hours of travel more than fill his time.
“You are always on the job.” On Parliament Hill, he is the Reform trade critic, recently part of an exhaustive parliamentary review of foreign policy.
He is one of the MPs assigned the task of analyzing Canada’s trade obligations under new world trade rules.
Like other MPs, he has weekly caucus meetings, duty in the House of Commons and a steady flow of issues to deal with from the home constituency front.
“I knew there would be a heavy workload and I haven’t been disappointed.”
Penson considers it on-the-job training.
“I think it has been a good training ground and I consider this term is my time to learn how the system works,” he says. “This is when we prepare ourselves to govern.”
That preparation time is being used by many of the Reformers to figure out how to wrestle the government beast to the ground.
The Ottawa-based bureaucracy alone is the equivalent of a good-sized Alberta city.
Moose Jaw’s Allan Kerpan has been devising a plan to reform and shrink Agriculture Canada. Penson is looking at the trade bureaucracy.
Other members of caucus are dreaming of redesigning government in their own areas of responsibility. “It is unbelievable how big it is here,” says Penson. “It is our job to see how it can be changed.”
Meanwhile, it is the job of Canadians to give these new kids on the Parliamentary block some feedback.
Voters might begin by asking themselves if they share the apparent Reform zeal for dismantling much of the public policy structure that has been built up in Canada. Whatever the answer, our politicians should know about it. Reformers think they already know. Would they be surprised by your answer?
