Just a Politician

I was renewing my truck insurance the other day when I got into a conversation with the young insurance broker about ICBC. We chatted about what kinds of issues people have getting claims processed and she made the comment that sometimes she was frustrated because she couldn’t always help people to their satisifaction.

At that point in the conversation I made her aware that my office has access to an ICBC liaison person who can help us with difficult cases, or assist us to help people who feel they are not being treated fairly. I remarked that we have similar direct access to get help with Worker’s Compensation, income assistance and disability claims and a host of other agencies and ministries.

The young woman’s reflection on this information was telling in what it says about our political system. She remarked that she didn’t realize we could actually help people. She thought I was “just a politician.”

Just a politician.

As in someone who’s just grubbing for votes all the time. As in someone who just wants to hold office for ego reasons. As in an unproductive member of society who simply “politicizes” everything.

This feeling permeates our society. It’s reflected in every invitation I get to speak at a community event or group function when the invitation comes with the caveat that I shouldn’t give a “political” speech.

It was reflect by the Liberal candidate in the last campaign who kept claiming that, unlike me, he hadn’t been “campaigning for four years.”

My family hosted one of the Korean high school students a couple of years ago. When we first tried to inform him about what I did we used the term politician. After checking his electronic translator and then his thesarus, the student came back to me and said that I was a “statesman” not a politician, because a being a politician was not a good thing.

How do we get our political system back to a place where we see it as productive and we are once again able to view our politicians as “statesmen”?

That’s your homework for the dog days of summer ahead — I look forward to reading your emails to my office and letters to the editor in response.