Focus on the Parliament

As far as I can tell this isn't getting any media coverage, and I can understand if there's a desire not to give any more attention to Focus on the Family than can be avoided. But surely it's a problem if MPs are unable to communicate with their own constituents.

Hon. Don Boudria (Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, Lib.):

Over the last 29 hours, my office has received no fewer than 828 faxes here on Parliament Hill...In the case of my office, whereby we normally receive 40 to 50 faxes from constituents in a day, we have been able to receive a grand total of five over the last two days. The rest of the time the equipment is completely blocked. A group calling itself Focus on the Family, which has the website www.marriagematters.ca, is making it such that our telephone systems have been rendered inoperative this way.

and...

(T)he letters are all identical. They are all generated from the same place in a systematic way. Some of them have been produced by way of someone clicking on a machine dozens and dozens of times. In other words in some cases there are dozens of identical letters coming out in sequence on the fax machine. No one legitimately contacts a member of Parliament by transmitting an identical message produced by someone else by way of a computer generated system in Vancouver to someone in Sarsfield, Ontario, which is where I live, or a member of Parliament from the other end of the country or anyone else.

Richard Marceau (Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, BQ):

I have received more than 1,000 faxes in 36 hours...We have also received more than 2,300 e-mails since Monday morning.

Of course, the propriety of this mass mailing wasn't entirely doubted in Parliament. Conservative MP Jason Kenney, ever defending efficiency in government, suggests that the answer is simply to add more phone, fax and e-mail capacity solely to deal with the influx of identical messages:

If there is a logistical need for additional means to contact us so that lines are not clogged, then perhaps the House administration should explore those logistical issues. However, the solution to receiving too much input from Canadians is not to find that democratic expression of opinion constitutes harassment, or an attack or a violation of the privileges of members of the House. If a logistical solution needs to be made in terms of additional or overflow fax lines or email accounts, I am sure that solution can be found.

Just in case you thought the Conservatives weren't standing up to James Dobson.