Bill Kelly: Government MPs face the backlash

How would you like to be a government Member of Parliament these days?

We criticize them and vilify them and sometimes we mock them for their six-figure salaries and lucrative pensions and sketchy expense accounts and frankly, most of the time, it’s warranted.

But you have to have a little sympathy for backbench MPs who take the heat for government policy that they had no hand in creating.

Get daily National news

Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.

Sign up for daily National newsletter Sign Up

By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Case in point are the Liberal MPs who are getting lambasted in their ridings about the government’s proposed tax changes.

Local town halls and meetings with chambers of commerce are full of upset  and angry constituents who plead with their local MP to demand that their government abandon the tax plan.

But when those frazzled MPs deliver that message in Ottawa, the government brain trust tells them “too bad, so sad,” the tax plan will go ahead.

Those backbench MPs are the first casualties in the artillery barrage of public anger as they try to defend a policy that many voters feel is indefensible.

Before we get too teary-eyed about those MPs, let’s remember that they all knew the risks when they signed on for the job.

To paraphrase the Bard, hell hath no fury like that of an enraged voter!

Bill Kelly is the host of Bill Kelly Show on AM 900 CHML and a commentator for Global News.