A blog dedicated to those who would rather be at the cottage.

“The first thing we do,” said the character Dick the butcher in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part II, is “kill all the lawyers.”On the heels of the Canadian election, and a slim majority being granted to the tories, I wanted to post about something that’s been on my mind for awhile. It took a stand-up interview with a defeated Marc Garneau to bring it home.

The interview was conducted after he had clearly lost his bid for election in a Quebec riding. The final question was in the what’s-next-for-Marc-Garneau vein. He thought, and then announced that he had given up his job at the Space Agency in order to run, and now was unemployed and in the market for work. He needed to find a job, he explained, as he had “a young family”.

Here was a true Canadian hero, the first astronaut to carry our nation’s pride into space, admitting that he was job-hunting now to support his family after trying to win a seat in parliament to further serve the public.

And it occurred to me – why? Why can’t any individual who secures a registered party’s nomination be given the same status that we extend to expecting parents. Just like maternity leave, one should be able to leave their position temporarily to run for office and have it waiting for them if they lose the election.

Otherwise, we have a parliament stuffed full of lawyers, who can more easily be temporarily absent from their firms long enough to take a run at a seat.

So maybe – in the metaphorical sense – we should get rid of all the lawyers that run this country And make room for some of the bright and successful entrepreneurs, plumbers, teachers – and astronauts.

For what it’s worth, here’s a point-of-view on Shakespeare’s famous quotation. Worth a read.