20 hours of work that Patrick Brown won't be doing

January 25th, the day Parliament was originally scheduled to resume, has come and passed, and Barrie MP Patrick Brown has been doing his best to convince you that doing constituency work is an acceptable substitute for the work he ought to be doing in Ottawa:

busy day working in constituency office. lots of passports, immigration work and charity work 3:55 PM Jan 27th from mobile web

going back to my constit office for some evening meetings. constituency casework is certainly high volume in Barrie 2:08 PM Jan 26th from mobile web

working in my Barrie office all day serving constituents 6:14 AM Jan 25th from mobile web

Source: http://twitter.com/brownbarrie

Now let's take a look at what Mr. Brown had to say about his job before his boss, Stephen Harper, prorogued Parliament. Here is an excerpt from a December 4, 2009 article:

A couple of seats away and a row forward is Patrick Brown, 31, a Conservative who has represented Barrie, Ont., since 2006. A former two-term city councillor, Brown is a member of two committees, including the standing committee on health. He says committee work, in which groups of MPs study bills after they've passed second reading in the House, is what takes up a lot of his time.

“Legislation is introduced by a minister in the House, but the meat and potatoes of it, the study of it, is done in committee,” Brown says. He adds he usually spends about 10 hours a week on work for each committee.

Source: http://www.capitalnews.ca/index.php/news/whos-that-in-the-back

What happens to committees when Parliament is prorogued:

Committees, including special and legislative committees, cease to exist and all orders of reference lapse. Committee memberships, except the membership of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, are terminated and all Chairs and Vice-Chairs cease to hold office. The Panel of Chairs for legislative committees also ceases to exist.

Source: House of Commons Procedure and Practice

Prorogue: Suspending Accountability and Transparency

In yesterday's edition of The Barrie Examiner, MP Patrick Brown finally commented on his leader's decision to suspend Parliament, which was scheduled to resume on the 25th of January, until the 3rd of March:

"I would note that just because Parliament isn't siting in February, it doesn't mean we won't be very busy," said Barrie MPP Patrick Brown. "I already have a heavy schedule of events in Barrie that month supporting local causes."

Brown's main concern seems to be that he will be seen as continuing to collect his salary, without going to work, during his extended absence from Parliament. If Brown indeed has a "heavy schedule of events" in February, I haven't been able to find it. On his web site, a page listing "UPCOMING EVENTS" has not been updated since the summer of 2009. I then went to Brown's Facebook page and clicked on the Events tab and was greeted with the message "Patrick Brown does not have any upcoming events." A quick scan of his twitter messages failed to turn up any mention of events in February.

Then there is the question of whether attending events that are "supporting local causes" is an MP's job. In my opinion, a Member of Parliament's job can be summed up in two letters: MP. In case you've forgotten, Patrick, the 'P' stands for Parliament. If you're out of Parliament for 82 consecutive days, you're not doing your job. We don't pay MPs a salary of more than $150,000 per year to attend local charity events. Seeing how you went to all the trouble of becoming a lawyer, I'm rather surprised that you seem more interested in posing for pictures than working on legislation.

I can understand people being upset when highly paid public servants extend their own, already generous, winter break, but I don't think that's the main reason people are upset with Mr. Harper and the Conservatives. The Conservatives didn't promise us that the House of Commons would be in session for a certain number of days per year when they were elected. They did, however, promise us a government that would be accountable and transparent.

Mr. Harper didn't suspend Parliament to gives his MPs time off to watch the Olympics, he did it to avoid being held accountable by opposition MPs for his policy on the transfer of Afghan detainees. By continuing to ignore an order of Parliament to provide un-censored documents relating to that policy to a House of Commons committee, Mr. Harper and the Conservatives are showing us once again that their government is anything but transparent.