Giant-slayer finds House a humbling place
Marco Mendicino struggles not to slip on the learning curve
This time last summer, Marco Mendicino wasn’t even sure he would get to run for a seat in the Commons.
Mendicino, a well-respected Toronto lawyer, was in a tough nomination fight against Eve Adams — a former Conservative MP who had defected to Justin Trudeau’s team, apparently (and controversially) with the leader’s blessing.
On a hot summer evening in late July 2015, with rumours circulating of an imminent election call, Mendicino emerged as the winner, relegating Adams to a footnote in Liberal history.
And the surprise victories didn’t end there. Mendicino went on to defeat former finance minister Joe Oliver in the big election contest in Eglinton-Lawrence. Now, with an intense year behind him, the wonder hasn’t worn off for Mendicino.
“There’s nothing ordinary about this job,” he says. “Every day I walk up to Centre Block, I still have a pinch-me moment.”
Mendicino, 42, didn’t end up being one of the lucky rookies to score a seat in cabinet, but his profile has been steadily climbing, regularly appearing on TV to speak for his party — one of the many new faces in this Liberal government.
Like so many other past and present rookies in Parliament, Mendicino also has been struck by how much on-the-job learning he’s had to do, as well as the demands on his time. He’s not complaining — he says the job daily exceeds any expectation he had about it when he was sworn in as an MP last fall.
“The learning curve,” Mendicino replies when asked about what’s surprised him most in his new career. “The metaphor of drinking from a fire hose is a good one; the information comes at you fast and furious. The days can just fly by.”
But “in order to do your job effectively, you really have to manage your time with a lot of discipline and a lot of focus.”
The toughest and hardest part of the job so far, he said, was the debate over the legislation on medically assisted dying — C-14 — in which all MPs were free to vote their conscience. Mendicino, who voted in favour of the bill, said he was determined to keep an open mind as he consulted far and wide on the issue.
He estimates that he sat down with more than two dozen people in his constituency office, either individuals or representatives of advocacy organizations on one side or the other of the debate. The weekly caucus discussions were also illuminating, Mendicino says, as was a temporary stint he did on committee hearings into the issue.
“What made this so difficult was the fact that there were people who felt very passionately, pulling in different directions, so my vote was my best effort to balance all those competing interests.”
There’s a world of difference, Mendicino says, between asking voters for support, and then, as an MP, being faced with voters who need something from their elected representatives. It’s a story that all other MPs have learned, too; some of the hardest work they’ll do, but also the most rewarding, involves helping people with immigration applications or other troublesome dealings with government.
“I’ve got to know my constituents better even then I did during the course of the campaign,” he says. “I don’t just get to go to their doors now — now they come to mine.”
Mendicino has no trouble defining his most memorable moment to date as a rookie MP. It was at Pearson airport, when he took his 8-year-old daughter, Michaela, with him to help welcome an incoming flight of Syrian refugees.
Over the course of the evening they were learning, through a translator, of many harrowing stories of the refugees’ journey to Canada. One family, a father, mother and their three children, talked to Mendicino of their relief to finally find themselves somewhere safe. The father broke down when talking about the home he’d left behind.
“Then, he and his wife embraced my daughter,” he said, and Michaela, without hesitation, fell into the embrace. “I thought that this was very reflective of what Canada represented to this family. It was their first experience.”
He hopes the Syrian family carries this memory throughout the coming years, but he wants his daughter to remember that moment, too. Mendicino and his wife, Diana, have two daughters; Michaela and Gemma, who’s 4.
He’s getting a little more time to relax with the family this summer, compared to the political whirlwind of last July and August. He says he has no huge plans for when he returns to Parliament in the fall, except to keep his fitness regime (running and occasional basketball) and keep staying on top of that “fire hose” of reading and learning. House-trained is a summer series on rookie MPs. sdelacourt@bell.net