The 2012 Parliamentarians of the Year

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - 0 Comments

And the POTY goes to ...

Members of Parliament voted. Ipsos Reid tallied the numbers. And 2012s’s best of the best emerged. Just like that, Maclean’s and L’actualité named seven parliamentarians who accomplished an outstanding feat—they got colleagues from across party lines to, yes, vote for them. Indeed, they couldn’t win without impressing some of their fiercest opponents in the House of Commons. Here are the winners. Continue…

And the winner is … Elizabeth May

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 at 7:40 PM - 0 Comments

CP/Sean Kilpatrick

One morning this session, at the start of parliamentary business, Elizabeth May and Liberal MP Frank Valeriote ran into each other in the House of Commons. They had both been there late the night before for a debate. Valeriote apparently assumed that May had had the misfortune to be assigned a morning shift in the House. “He looked at me and he was so tired he forgot that I didn’t have somebody ordering me around,” May recalls. “He said, ‘Oh jeez, did you get House duty again?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, my leader’s such a bitch.’ ”

The joke, of course, is that Elizabeth May is her own leader. And the truth is that Elizabeth May doesn’t have House duty. Because, rather than putting in periodic shifts in the House of Commons, May is rarely anywhere else. The House of Commons is her office. “By the time you look at all the things that it’s possible to do as a right as an individual MP, I think the question isn’t why do I spend so much time in the House,” she says, “it’s why don’t other MPs spend time in the House?” Continue…
The POTYs

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Tonight in Ottawa, Maclean’s presents the sixth annual Parliamentarian of the Year Awards. To prepare for the big night, Paul Wells sat down with some of the previous honourees.

Check back tonight at 6pm to follow our live coverage and find out who this year’s winners are.