Bow River Member of Parliament Martin Shields has been hosting a series of round table discussions to gauge the concerns of the community.
“It’s really important for me to be out in the communities listening to what the people are thinking,” said Shields who held a round table at the Chestermere Public Library April 25.
While Shields will try to answer any questions to the best of his knowledge, for him the really important part of these discussions is what his constituents are saying about the issues.
“That’s why I do it, to get out into the communities,” he said.
These roundtables are held with the expectation that the people who attend will direct the focus towards the issues that are of most concern to them.
Shields did give a general topic of the recent federal budget and how it effects his riding as a starting point for the discussion.
“Other things came up here,” said Shields, “if that’s important to other people, that’s important to me.”
With the planned topic of the budget, Shields focused his invitations for the roundtable on groups that traditionally have an interest in this topic.
The discussion was open to the public but local businesses, the chamber of commerce, and elected officials in the region were all invited.
Nine people attended the round table discussion, which, with the focused topic, was about what Shields expected.
“When we had just general round table, I sat in this room with two people,” he said.
While the discussion started out about the budget, it quickly changed focus to the Liberal plan to legalize cannabis and the lack of details currently available.
Concerns raised by the people in attendance included questions about enforcement of the limits on number of plants that can be grown, the amount that one can be in possession of, enforcement of driving while high laws, minimum ages, regulation and distribution and the costs of the program to provinces and municipalities.
As a former municipal politician, Shields has an-insiders understanding of many of the concerns raised at the round table.
“On a particular issue, like the marijuana one, there’s a lot of synergy,” he said.
Discussions like these, where he hears what his constituents are saying, validates what Shields brings to the table when he goes to Ottawa.
“It really validates to me when I stand up in the House, when I’m in caucus, when I’m in committee I can say I have…heard this from these people,” he said.
As an opposition MP, Shields doesn’t have any direct influence on the drafting of government legislation.
What he can do is bring up the concerns raised by constituents to the ministers and government MPs as he works with them on committees in Ottawa.
“If you’re bringing something to the table of reference…if you can reference it back to communities it makes it much more viable when I talk about it,” said Shields.
In addition to working with government MPs on committee, Shields likes to use something known as the Late Show to question Liberal MPs and raise concerns from his constituents.
“Most people don’t use or don’t even know about it,” said Shields.
Unlike in Question Period where opposition MPs have 30 seconds to ask a question of the government, who respond in the same amount of time, the Late Show gives significantly more time to each question and answer.
“If I ask a question, I sign a form and say I want to go to the late show…sometime down the road they have to go into the Late Show with me,” said Shields.
“I get five minutes to talk to him,” he said.
The government representative has five minutes to respond and both MPs have a rebuttal of 60 seconds.
“That, to me, is valuable time to really talk about it,” he said.
As the title suggest, as a member of the opposition, Shields spends a lot of his time shining the spot light on areas he feels the government can do better in.
He does admit that there is good work being done by the government though.
“I know there’s some things that I would agree with that they have done,” he said.
One of the areas of agreement involves the work of the environment committee that Shields is a member of.
They recently completed a report that has the unanimous support of the committee which is comprised of MPs from the Liberal, NDP and Conservative caucuses.
