Former Peterborough-Kawartha Member of Parliament Maryam Monsef told a roomful of County residents Oct. 7 they need to find their ‘why’ before running for political office.
The two-term Liberal MP joined former Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock MP Barry Devolin, who won four elections for the Conservatives between 2004 and 2015, at Lloyd Watson Community Centre in Wilberforce, offering a peek behind the curtain of what life is like for elected officials.
The event was hosted by the Haliburton Highlands Healthy Democracy Project as part of its ‘Voices and Votes’ speaker series, aimed at increasing public participation in next year’s municipal election.
Monsef was working in the public sector in Peterborough in 2013 when city council wanted to scale back municipal transit. A proposal was brought forward to eliminate all bus routes on Sundays.
“I was raised by a single mom, lived in the west end of the city, went to school in the north end and didn’t have a car,” Monsef said. “I grew up on the bus.”
She mobilized other transit users and successfully lobbied to have the changes shelved. In 2014, she ran for mayor – only because she didn’t want to see the incumbent run unopposed. While she didn’t win, her campaign served as a springboard for the 2015 federal election.
She sat for two terms and held ministerial positions in rural economic development, international development, democratic institutions, and women and gender equality.
Monsef said her six years in the federal political arena almost broke her, with daily threats and abuse taking a toll.
“At least a third of the people you represent can be angry with you, pretty much all the time. The not-so-great part is the political violence – seeing billboards say crappy things about you, having family read untruths about you because of decisions you made.
“It’s the hardest job you can ever do, it will become all-consuming, but as hard as it is, it’s also the best job ever… but if you don’t have a good enough ‘why’ then you’re going to have a really hard time staying grounded on your worst days,” Monsef said.
Devolin said his interest in politics began as a teenager. At 16, he went to the Netherlands as an exchange student and said the experience made him want to become a diplomat.
He got his start at 24, as campaign manager for Arthur Ward in the 1987 provincial election. He ran for the Reform Party in the 1993 federal election, finishing second in his home riding. Devolin then held several senior political staff positions in the Canadian and Ontario governments, before being elected in 2004.
At the provincial and federal level, Devolin said people are playing a team game, but, with one eye on next October’s municipal election, he said candidates have more freedom at the local level.
“If you’re a bucking bronco, municipal politics might be your thing. You can speak freely and don’t have to toe any party line.”
Devolin said his goal when getting into politics was to do good things for his community and ascend to become Speaker of the House. He achieved both, feeling his most significant contribution was securing $200 million in upgrades for the Trent Severn Waterway in 2008.
He always saw himself as a “turn the temperature down kind of guy” who wanted to find ways to work with people; though, he knew others who thrived in chaos and controversy.
“There’s no single way to do public life. If you’re committed to it and passionate, there are many different roads to success,” Devolin added. “It can be an overwhelming amount of work, but the good kind of work… where you can see the differences you’re making in your community.”
