Life in Ottawa plays havoc with home lives of MPs

Liberal MP Frank Valeriote clearly remembers the day, one year ago, when his family life was upended by his political life.

Valeriote was back in his Guelph, Ont. riding after another long stretch in Ottawa for his MP duties, glad to be home to spend time with his wife and two children.

He was preparing to attend a constituency event that evening, when his wife of 12 years delivered news that hit harder than any headline in Ottawa: His time apart from the family had become too much and she wanted to separate.

“I wasn’t expecting it and was overwhelmed with it,” Valeriote, 60, recalls. Valeriote, a two-term MP first elected in 2008, said his life away from home as a politician led to his separation, and it’s the reason he announced earlier this month he won’t run in the next federal election.

He wants to spend more time with his son, now 10, and daughter, 11.

He is one of many current MPs — on both sides of the House of Commons — whose time away from home for months each year have taken an enormous toll on their personal lives, often ending in damaged relationships and broken marriages.

“What happens over time is your family acclimatizes themselves to your absence, begins their own routines. Sometimes, dropping in on a weekend, you feel like a visitor into what is a family routine that they have established. That’s what happens to some of us,” Valeriote said in an interview with the Citizen.

“Some relationships, some families are able to withstand that, and some aren’t. Clearly, mine wasn’t.”

The recent allegations of “serious personal misconduct” levelled against two Liberal MPs — Scott Andrews and Massimo Pacetti, both married and fathers — by two female NDP MPs, have shone a harsh spotlight on the potential strains a politician’s job on the Hill can inflict on the home front.

The distance from family, constant socializing and working in the Ottawa political bubble with MPs from all parties, parliamentary responsibilities back home in the constituency, and increasing pressure to always be “plugged in” can become a toxic cocktail for some members of Parliament.

For Valeriote’s family, his time away from home was simply too much to overcome, although he says he maintains a good relationship with his wife and chats with her daily.

A number of MPs have approached him since he announced he’s not running again who “quietly told me they sometimes wished they’d made the same choice,” he said.

The Liberal MP doesn’t regret his time as a parliamentarian, arguing it has provided enormous opportunities for his kids to meet people and have unique experiences. To those considering running to be a MP, he issues a caution about the strains the job will undoubtedly have on family life.

Ironically, he says he’ll see his kids much more as a separated parent staying in Guelph than he ever did as an MP when he and his wife were living in the same home.

“I can be easily replaced in Ottawa. My children can’t easily replace their father and my presence in their lives,” he said.

Kingston Liberal MP Ted Hsu came to a similar conclusion this past summer, announcing in August that he won’t seek re-election after one term in the House of Commons because he wants to spend more time with his family.

Hsu and Valeriote are good friends who’ve discussed the strains on family life over many dinners, but also the desire and sense of duty to represent their constituents well in Ottawa.

Watching what happened to his friend and hearing about the broken marriages of many MPs on both sides of the House of Commons was tough to ignore, Hsu says.

“I was worried about the potential for some sort of family breakdown, maybe not so dramatic, but something lost in the family,” Hsu, 50, said in an interview. “It’s a risk that I don’t want to take.”

Hsu and his wife, Tara Sharkey, married for 12 years, examined many options to allow the couple to spend more time at home together with their two daughters, ages four and 11.

He doesn’t socialize much in Ottawa, spending nights working at his office so he has more family time on weekends. He’s also very active on social media in an effort to communicate with constituents without always attending the countless number of events in the riding.

“Eventually we came to the point where we didn’t think we could make any more adjustments. It just wasn’t working out in terms of trying to do the jobs and live the life differently,” Hsu said.

However, he doesn’t want to discourage couples and parents from running for office, and said he might considering jumping back into politics when his kids are older. “Different families are different," he said.

Almost from the time they come to the Hill, members of Parliament receive cautionary warnings about the strains political life in Ottawa can have on their families. All new MPs participate in orientation sessions where they’ve often been told that more than half of those in the room, by the end of their political careers, will see their marriages end in divorce or be severely damaged.

“They are cautioned about a lot of things, and I think that’s good. Forewarned is forearmed,” said one longtime former MP who has regularly helped lead the orientation sessions for rookie MPs.

Alison Loat, executive director of Samara Canada, a non-partisan group “dedicated to reconnecting citizens to politics,” has conducted exit interviews with several outgoing MPs and repeatedly heard about the problems life as an MP can have on families and relationships.

Samara didn’t ask specifically about potential problems on the home front, but MPs would regularly bring up the “severe and often unanticipated strains in the family life” during their discussions, she said.

A couple of MPs said maintaining their family life and staying married was the thing they were most proud of during their time in Ottawa.

“The amount of times that family pressures and work/ life balance was referenced in the context of other questions suggests it was a major issue for MPs,” Loat said.

Based on Samara’s exit interviews, Loat co-authored a paper that examined the challenges MPs have in balancing family and work life, and offered a few solutions.

These included moving to shorter, more intense parliamentary sessions to allow MPs to go home for longer weekends or eliminating evening sittings to enable them to connect online with families; offering more reliable child care for MPs; and adjusting constituent expectations of their elected representatives.

Almost from the time they come to the Hill, members of Parliament receive cautionary warnings about the strains.