Deachman: In search of Mark Carney's constituency office
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Alas, Van de Brook couldn't locate Carney's office because, well, there isn't one.
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'I was disappointed,' Van de Brook said. 'He should have one.'
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He's not the only Nepean resident with that view. 'As a senior, there aren't a lot of places where we can go to talk to someone in person,' said a woman, Elaine, who asked that her surname be withheld. 'Doing everything online is so impersonal.
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'Carney's here, he's acting on our behalf. He should definitely have an office here.'
Another, Lyndsay, who lives a couple of blocks from Arya's former office on Kennevale Drive at Strandherd, agreed.
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'I have family members who needed immigration services, and this was during COVID. So we reached out to Chandra. He put a person on the file, and every month there would be a touchpoint and we would talk about what was happening. It was helpful.
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'But now, you might see something on Facebook telling you to contact your MP. When I see that, my first thought is that technically, we have an MP, but we have nowhere to contact an MP. And because of the role of our MP, it doesn't feel like there's someone representing our riding.'
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Meanwhile, two other newly elected MPs in the area, Prescott-Russell-Cumberland's Giovanna Mingarelli and Carleton's Bruce Fanjoy, have their local offices set up — Fanjoy's in June. More than 3 months after Nepean residents elected Carney to represent them in the House of Commons, one thing the PM hasn't gotten around to is opening a riding office.
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And if someone were to search online for Carney's riding office, they'd be pointed to Arya's now-empty quarters.
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I get that he's the prime minister and has more important things to worry about than the passport someone in Barrhaven absentmindedly allowed to expire or the veteran's benefits paperwork another Nepeanite is having difficulty filling out. But the absence of a physical place where constituents can go and actually talk to a human about their concerns can't help but rankle the citizenry and remind many of the perils of electing a politician wearing a parachute, including the risk that he might never actually land there.
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