1) Jim Karygiannis has one of the worst attendance records of Canadian MPs
Attendance records have recently been brought into the public spotlight when Jack Layton referred to stats showing Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff as the MP that had missed the most votes. howdtheyvote.ca is a very helpful website, not only showing the absences of each MP, but also the numbers of words they have each spoken and how'd they vote on each issue. In the most recent session of Parliament, Jim Karygiannis ranked 5th out of 305 MPs (there are three vacancies), missing or abstaining 93 votes. His poor record is consistent, ranking 8th in the previous, session of parliament, with 52 absences. The first session only had one vote, and he was present for that one, but looking back at the 39th Parliament, he ranked 15th and 30th in the two sessions in the number of absences.
The obvious question here is, where was Jim Karygiannis? He explains in an article by the Globe and Mail that "family obligations are first and foremost and paramount". He also says that his constituents are his "bread and butter", meaning that he likes to spend time in the riding instead of in Ottawa. He also goes abroad a lot, and tops the list of visiting countries on trips sponsored by foreign countries or special interest groups, justifying these trips with the fact that Scarborough-Agincourt is very diverse. This is not necessarily appropriate justification for his very high absence rate - it is still disappointing, and a big enough concern for constituents to feel that they are not represented in Parliament. So let's look at what he actually does...
2) He doesn't say much in Parliament for Scarborough Agincourt
Besides missing several cotes, he also ranks 25th out of 305 MPs in terms of "Words Spoken", with 3475 words, compared to the average of around 26 000. (side note: what does Conservative MP Greg Thomson and NDP MP Jim Maloway do in Parliament? The former hasn't said a word all session, and the latter has spewed out 365 000, three times more than the second most talkative MP, nearly ten times more than Harper, and enough for a thousand words a day in a year... and they don't even work all year!)
For Jim, this subpar number shouldn't be much of a surprise - he does miss a lot of votes after all. Glancing at what those words were, his main focus in Parliament was on foreign crises. Of 15 quotes provided by how'd they vote, several were about emergency and disaster relief, including Japan, Egypt, and Libya (4 of them on Libya alone). Other quotes involved condemning the government of Bahrain for its crackdown in March, 2011, condemning attacks on Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan, and asking Parliament to acknowledge the attack by Saddam Hussein on the Kurdish people in Iraq. Not that these are bad causes, of course, but these do not help to strengthen his image of representing Scarborough-Agincourt at a federal level.
He introduced one bill in the most recent session of Parliament, slightly below the average of 1.56 bills/MP, though this number is largely because there's only a small handful of MPs that introduce most of the bills. The bill was C-319, on speed-limiters, which is set to come into effect "when it receives Royal Assent", according to the Government of Canada website. I can't vouch whether or not this is a local concern, but its purpose is to reduce the number and scale of highway disasters, and his MP site shows several comments, both for and against speed-limiters.
Lastly, he does have a page on his campaign website titled, "Issues that affect Scarborough-Agincourt". Here, he goes into many concerns he has addressed, linking to specific pages and articles on his MP website (yes, he has two sites). While I am pleased that he does address these issues specifically on his site, these links do not provide any information after 2009, which leads me to two conclusions: 1) no one has bothered or had the time to update his site, which is disappointing and shows a lack of communication with his constituents, or 2) he hasn't done anything for a year and a half. Both options aren't great.
3) Poor website design
This, like the typo/mistake issue with harrytsai.ca, is a relatively minor issue, but I have a pet peeve with poor website content and design, and since I brought it up with Harry Tsai's website, I'll bring it here as well. I won't go into page-by-page details since there are so many more of them, but here are a few things I noticed that I would have expected to see fixed on a campaign site, casting doubt over the time and effort that is placed into communicating with constituents:
- The text on this comment page is disordered and very messy
- Edit needed: "Under Construction Additional Languages are being added"
- Fonts throughout the site are inconsistent, giving the impression that its content is cut and pasted from various sources
- White text on the side bar make certain words very difficult to see.
- It is too difficult to find "other languages" - people who many not necessarily read English must navigate through the site, click "Different Languages", and then find their language. Usually, these other languages are provided directly on the landing page, in case the reader cannot read English
- The first "health care" link of this page links to a word document for no apparent reason. The document looks a bit like a snapshot of a webpage, but there are no actual links, so it's rather useless.
- The campaign site is not very user friendly - the huge banner with the blurry picture is more of an annoyance than anything else.
But petty issues aside, I will say that there is a lot of content on his website, much of it relevant to both local issues and topics addressed on the Federal Liberal agenda.
Something to look into, Karygiannis has been accused of threatening to call the police if a veterinarian were to take down Karygiannis signs on the force bordering the campaign area and the vet's office. Just released a few hours before writing this, on April 20th, on the Toronto Sun.
5) Another strategic voting issue
I'll end this post on the same note as I did with Harry Tsai. If this riding is a strong Liberal stronghold, then your vote comes down to the party you support the most. So take a look at their platforms and decide which party you'd like to donate your $2 dollar vote subsidy to.
UPDATE: Here's a nice interview of three main candidates, and what they each stand for.
If you have any comments, corrections, or suggestions you want to offer, feel free to contact me. There's a comment box below, an anonymous form on the left side bar, and you can always throw me an email at ay.savethetigers@gmail.com.
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