Mr. Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on the bill I would like to split my remarks into two parts, the first part with respect to actual compensation and the second part with respect to the role and responsibilities of a member of parliament.
I will not spend a lot of time trying to compare apples to oranges to grapefruit. Am I worth more or less than a nurse or a teacher or a doctor? It is something of a hopeless case trying to compare the role and responsibilities of an MP with those of other professions. One can spend endless amounts of time saying that others are worth more than an MP or worth less or are more or less deserving. We live in a bit of a bizarre society when the entire budget of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team would more than pay for all 301 MPs.
I was elected four years ago. It was a little like getting married. I really did not realize what I was getting into. I practised law for 22 years and enjoyed it. I was successful enough to keep my family certainly at a scale of compensation quite a bit in excess of what I earn as a member of parliament. I did realize that as a member of parliament I would earn less than I did as a lawyer, but what I did not realize was that I would actually end up working harder.
I am continuously amazed at how critical the public is of our role while knowing little or nothing about what we actually do. It is almost an industry. To be fair, when I was elected I too did not know what was expected of me so I have sympathy for some who criticize our role because they only see our public role.
If I may take this opportunity, I would like to try to explain to Canadians what I do as an MP. I am sure others can in a similar fashion explain what they do as members of parliament. As I see it this is really three jobs in one. We have our work in our constituency, we have our work in Ottawa and we have our international work.
Last Thursday evening, for instance, I flew home. I dodged in on the Blue Jays game as a guest of Mr. Rogers and Mr. Godfrey and then left a bit early. No doubt they wanted to tell me about the declining fortunes of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball club. I slipped out early, went home and reintroduced myself to my kids. I said “Hi kids, I'm your dad. Remember me?”
Friday morning I was out at the constituency office and saw six rather unhappy constituents. Pretty well all had been turned down by the government for something. Each had a legitimate point to make, and in each instance I could say what I could or could not do for them.
I am quite proud of my constituency office. I would stack it up against any constituency office in the country. We speak eight languages and within our budgetary limitations provide a first class service.
The issues I dealt with that morning were in the range of a denial of a visitor's visa, why their relatives did not get so many points on the immigration scale and a deportation much like the one that has been in the papers recently.
It is not a lot of fun as a politician to have to say no. However we do have an opportunity from time to time to deal with situations which clearly are unfair and offend one's sense of fairness.
The following day, Saturday morning, I then went to four events in the riding. The first was in Highland Creek, which is one of the most degraded watersheds in all of the Great Lakes area. This was the fourth annual cleanup sponsored by me. Once we got that started, I ran off to do a parade in the Guildwood area of my riding. I frankly do not like doing parades but it is expected of us. One of the benefits however of a parade is that at the end we get to talk to people and they share with us whatever concerns they have.
I then left the parade, came back and did the Highland Creek cleanup with my volunteers, did a television interview, thanked the volunteers and then ran off to another event. The other event was at the Beare Road landfill site. With my colleague from Scarborough—Rouge River and my colleague from Scarborough Centre, we presented a cheque to the Friends of the Rouge River and the Rouge Alliance. They are involved in cleaning up the Beare Road landfill site, which is a colossal eyesore in the eastern part of Toronto. These folks are doing absolutely fabulous work.
From there I went home, said hello to my kids again, got dressed and went to downtown Toronto. The University of Toronto at Scarborough was having a reunion for the class of '71 and '76 and had asked me to be the guest speaker. The principal, Paul Thompson, was quite complimentary toward the federal government and its initiatives in the area of millennium scholarships and CFI, the Canada Foundation for Innovation. The university, particularly the university at Scarborough, has been a significant beneficiary of both of those initiatives.
I took the opportunity to lobby him with respect to the university's involvement in the community, particularly with respect to the degraded watershed of the Highland Creek which flows right through the university campus and the Morningside landfill site which sits right opposite the campus.
The second part of the job is what we do in Ottawa. Last week I spent a very productive evening with my colleagues on the justice committee arguing about Bill C-24, the anti-gang bill. This is a bill that enjoys large support among all colleagues in the House. We had a pretty animated discussion for four hours on Tuesday night with some rather bizarre happenings, at least bizarre according to this place, where government members were not supporting government amendments and opposition members were supporting government amendments.
Similarly, we had other initiatives where opposition amendments were being supported by government members and being voted against by other opposition members. I think at the end of the day after a vigorous debate, we had a better bill coming out of the committee than we had going in.
I like other members want to make sure that the police have the tools to do the job. The Canadian public also needs to know that we spend a great deal of time with lobbyists. These are people with a particular point of view, some are paid, some are not paid. I frankly like interacting with lobbyists because they fill up my informational void. I wonder sometimes however why if we are so marginal, such voting machines, so irrelevant, so useless or one can name the pejorative adjective applied to us by the press, these lobbyists spend so much time, effort and money on us trying to persuade us to their point of view.
The third part of the job is the international part. It is frankly not one that I appreciated when I was in the private sector. I thought parliamentary junkets were what the newspapers described them as, wonderful pool side parties with beautiful women and drinks. However, the reality is somewhat different.
I have been to China, Mongolia and Israel this year. I expect I will be leading a delegation to Taiwan in the summer. Strangely enough, when other countries' taxpayers are paying the bill, they have the strange idea we should actually work when there. The usual experience I had was that around 6.30 a.m. in the morning they expected us to start our working day and end it around 9 o'clock or 10 o'clock that night. They expected us to do that each and every day we were there.
On the Canada-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Group, of which I am the president, those will be fairly extensive discussions. We have no government to government direct relationships between Canada and Taiwan. As a consequence, our parliamentary friendship group gets to be used as a vehicle for a number of exchanges between those two countries.
I was in China on the day the American spy plane was shot down. Needless to say, that led to some rather animated conversations between ourselves and our Chinese hosts. It was also a useful occasion on which to subtly remind our hosts that we took a somewhat different view than our American friends.
On the break week I was in Israel, and while there several instances of terrorism occurred, including the M16 attack. Now I certainly read newspapers with a clearer insight into what is going on there. We arrived a week after the Minister of Foreign Affairs was there, who had upgraded himself from being burned in effigy to being a respected third party interlocutor.
In the very brief time I have left this is a summary of my life as a member of parliament. I find the job stimulating and intriguing. Unlike some I think it is one that Canadians can hope that their children think to be worthy. To be sure, it has its level of foolishness and frustrations, but may I end with a quote form an 18th century political leader, who said:
Politics is the most hazardous of all professions. There is not another in which a man can hope to do so much good for his fellow creatures; neither is there any in which by mere loss of nerve he may do such widespread harm; nor is there another in which he may so easily lose his own soul—With all the temptation and degradation that besets it, politics is still the noblest career man can choose.
I would urge all hon. members to support this initiative.