Last week his colleauges in Parliament elected Conservative MP Andrew Scheer as the Speaker of the House of Commons. As LifeSiteNews.com reported today, Scheer is rated pro-life and pro-family by Campaign Life Coalition. In 2009, we had a profile of Scheer in our paper. At the time he said he was unsure if he would run for Speaker, but expressed a strong interest in procedure. However, the most interesting thing from that interview is how he tried to balance his professional and personal life:
Since first being elected, Andrew and Jill have had three children, a son, Thomas, and two daughters, Grace and Madeline. Asked about the downside of his job, Scheer said it is the difficult balancing of his own family life with the demands of representing constituents and work in Ottawa. “Fortunately, Jill is very understanding,” he says.
But Scheer goes to great lengths to earn that understanding. The family visits him in Ottawa and, when he is in Regina, he tries not to book events for Sundays and usually ends his public engagements throughout the week early enough to be home to help tuck the kids into bed.
The family goes to Mass together on Sundays at either Canadian Martyrs or Good Samaritan parishes and, if events cannot be avoided for the rest of the day, he tries to make up for that lost time on Saturday by booking a lighter schedule. When told by The Interim that many politicians privately say it is nearly impossible to schedule around other events to make time for family, Scheer said, “It isn’t impossible if you really try.”
MPs have demanding jobs that take them away from their families. I hope that as Speaker Andrew Scheer can do something so that MPs can spend more time with their families, or at the very least be an example of how to set the right priorities.
