It is easy to take shots at MPs, especially about their workload and the CPAC broadcasts of a nearly empty house do not help. However, most of a MP's work is not in the house, playing a trained seal. If your MP is any good, and mine is, he or she is busy researching issues, working on committees and, most important, sorting out constituents' issues with the bureaucracy. On the weekends much of the time is attending everything from the opening of an envelope on up.
The average MP works a heck of a lot more than the standard 37.5 hour week, and is always on call. Still, politicians are not conscripted. For the life of me, I cannot understand how anybody would go into a line of work with few rewards and a permanent posting to the butt party of the political grenade range. My grandfather was the reeve of a Southern Ontario rural township (with a term as the county warden) with perks like ensuring the snow ploughs always did our road last. If not, there were lots of people to complain loud and long about how poorly they were treated compared to him, who was getting preferential treatment. I'm sure the other people who lived on our road appreciated being snowed in just as much as we did.
