On deadwood

I'd figured that yesterday's post on Ray Boughen's Harper Holiday would make for only the tip of the iceberg of Con laziness - and not surprisingly the national numbers have already been crunched. But let's take a slightly more detailed look at the numbers close to home among Saskatchewan's 13 Con MPs - a listless and uninspiring lot at the best of times which looks to have been particularly useless as a result of prorogation.

To start off with, Ray Boughen was far from being alone in accomplishing absolutely nothing of note to his party during the course of the Harper Holiday.

It may not come as much surprise that Garry Breitkreuz, Brad Trost and Maurice Vellacott did zilch, nada and nil respectively according to the Cons' own account. But one might have expected at least some activity from the Cons' former Saskatchewan caucus chair Tom Lukiwski, relative neophyte Rob Clarke, or veteran MPs David Anderson or Ed Komarnicki. And they too put up a big fat goose egg during their Harper-approved vacation.

So of the Cons' 13 Saskatchewan MPs, a grand total of 8 turned their time away from Ottawa into absolutely nothing worth noting - even by the low standards of Con self-promotion.

Meanwhile, even the Cons who showed up at least once have exceedingly little to brag about in terms of accomplishments. Randy Hoback, apparently needing to atone for having called from a California vacation to deny he was on holiday, put in a grand total of one event's worth of work. Kelly Block also showed up exactly once, and Andrew Scheer twice.

That covers all of the Cons' Saskatchewan backbenchers. In the wake of the cancellation of 22 days' of work each, these 11 elected members of Parliament managed to summon up a grand total of...half a day's work between them. And that's generously allowing an hour of work for photo-ops such as "attend(ing) opening of housing for seniors".

Of course, the Cons' two Saskatchewan cabinet ministers put in slightly more time. Gerry Ritz showed up for 7 events spanning 5 days of work, and even fit in a couple of meetings rather than having all of his "activity" consist of announcing funding. And Lynne Yelich attended 9 events over 6 days, including a few "roundtable" events.

But even counting the cabinet ministers, the Cons' Saskatchewan MPs combined put in 15 documented days of work over the prorogation - less than each one was supposed to put in before Stephen Harper told them to take a break.

It's never particularly been news that the Cons' Saskatchewan contingent consists of a weak assortment of lukewarm Reform leftovers, socon clowns, party hacks and substance-free ciphers. But now Stephen Harper's own attempt to brag about keeping busy in the time he shut down Parliament has given us some particularly striking evidence as to just how unmotivated and ineffective his Saskatchewan MPs actually are.

Needless to say, that should provide a compelling reason for Saskatchewan voters to throw the lazy bums out. And with any luck, we'll soon be represented by some of the hardest-working MPs in Parliament - rather than having a majority of our province's MPs unable to summon up any interest in doing noticeable work for a month at a time.

Edit: fixed wording.