Last month, I told you that I wrote my MP asking how I might follow his activities for his riding. I follow him on Twitter and his only tweets are about his Minister of Defence duties. I did get an answer a few days after I wrote that post. This post’s delay is completely my fault.

The Honourable Robert Nicholson, P.C., Q.C., M.P. for Niagara Falls, Ontario.

His office replied:

Dear Mr. Pali:

I am writing to acknowledge and thank you for your correspondence to Mr. Nicholson. For information about Mr. Nicholson’s activities as your MP please feel free to visit:

www.robnicholsonmp.ca

Please be assured that your comments will be passed along to Mr. Nicholson as her [sic] very much appreciates hearing from constituents.

Thank you again for writing.

Stewart Graham
Constituency Assistant for the
Hon. Rob Nicholson, M.P.

It’s both exactly what I expected, and entirely unexpected. I have visited robnicholsonmp.ca in pursuit of what my MP has been doing in support of my area of the country, and trust me, the web site to which I was directed doesn’t answer my question. I expected the answer I received because there’s a heading titled “Riding News” on the web site, and it makes sense that I’d find what I was looking for there. The unexpected part is what is under that heading, and this is verbatim:

September 10, 2014

Statement by Minister Nicholson on World Suicide Prevention Day

September 10, 2014

Minister Nicholson commemorates the 75th anniversary of Canada’s engagement in the Second World War

August 09, 2014

Minister Nicholson commemorates National Peacekeeping Day

August 01, 2014

Disclosure Period: August 1, 2014 to August 31, 2014

And that’s it. Each item has a link which gives more detail, but am I to expect that all he’s done this year is issue three statements (because the two commemorations seem to be limited to statements), and disclosed that he spend some $800 on a flight? Even if we’re generous and assume that this is an exhaustive list of his activities only since the first entry in the list, it sure seems like a light workload for ten weeks. I know that this list represents the whole year however, because the web site was updated since I wrote the letter. The items previous to August 1, which have disappeared, were all financial disclosures.

So really, what is this guy doing for me? I knew of absolutely nothing, and I didn’t want to assume that an absence of evidence was evidence of absence, so I asked. Little wonder that the three e‑mail messages I sent received no replies … my assumption seems to have been correct. I was directed to a list that can only be generously described as pitiful.

Read @HonRobNicholson however, and it’s all about ISIL, statements on various topics, retweets from his cronies, and check-ins from all the countries in which he’s visiting his foreign counterparts.

He’s clearly far to busy jet-setting about to bother serving the constituents who voted him into office. I am really looking forward to his re-election campaign, when he regales his constituents about all the things he’s done for us since the last election. It won’t take very long.

Weak tea, Mr. Nicholson. Weak tea, indeed.

Photo of Mr. Nicholson from robnicholsonmp.ca