You must be this tall to run for office.
The qualifications for our members of parliament and members of the legislative assembly are pretty thin. All they have to do is convince people to vote for them or belong to a perennial party winner in certain constituencies.
Let's face it, if I took over for Doreen Eagles or Ed Komarnicki, I would have a pretty good chance of becoming an overnight career politician thanks to the voters. That is a position that I am unequivocally not qualified for, but thanks to a bunch of voters who really dig the Saskatchewan Party and Conservative Party, I would have a spectacular new salary.
I don't mean to suggest only Conservative people vote for their party either. Were I to run in a Liberal or NDP stronghold wearing a red or orange tie, respectively, I would probably be chumming it up with the country's political elite the very next day.
We hold some of our MPs like our finance minister and certainly our prime minister up to higher standards than others. Some MPs who are along for the ride, which is exactly what I would be along for, can get away with some pretty sub-par interest in politics.
In school, I recall a professor telling a story about covering a provincial election. A woman won the seat and was completely dumbstruck that she was expected to set up a residence in Toronto, giving her easy access to Queen's Park. She obviously didn't read some fine print in her application to run for office. She may not have realized this job meant lots of hours spent in Toronto.
There was some brief debate recently among some people in the office as to whether we should be expecting more from our politicians before they entered a race. Should a degree be necessary? Military service? Grade 10 completed with at least a 60 per cent average?
The benchmark could be placed anywhere, but there's really no good answer. In some ways, a minimum requirement could alienate voters.
One person I spoke to was not the happiest about the idea of a 19-year-old college dropout sitting in the House of Commons, voting on policy. Our representatives in government should be representative of us all and some of us are 19-year-old dropouts. Maybe that dropout 19-year-old can speak to issues that affect young people like post-secondary education or struggles by young people to find a job in their field.
Maybe that dropout is very qualified to speak to those issues, and maybe a 65-year-old guy is more qualified to deal with those issues. I don't know who is better at representing all of the populace, but however representative they are, I hope they more closely represent the best we have than the worst.
Unfortunately none of our MPs need to be intelligent. According to the Parliament of Canada website, anybody who can vote can run for office, unless they are currently serving a penal sentence of more than two years or are senators. It seems appropriate that we treat senators the same way we treat serious criminals.
We may end up with a few clueless duds in charge of the country, but it would be unacceptably unfair if we excluded members of our community from serving their country. We just have to hope that future generations consider member of Parliament to be an attractive enough job title in order to attract some leaders we don't have to hide in the back bench.
