Now I should admit a perceived conflict of interest here: I am a card-carrying member of Night Owls International (Motto: "We do more after 2am than most people do all day"). However, this post isn't about circadian rhythms, it's about math.
When the legislature is in session, it sits from 1:30 to 6:00 p.m. and again from 6:45 p.m. until as late as midnight Monday through Thursdays, with the only morning sessions at 10 a.m. Thursdays for two hours of private members' business.
Bryant said sitting from 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. would expand the number of hours for debate each week by as much as 50 per cent and make life a little easier for members with family demands.
So let's calculate this. First, the number of hours a week under the current system:
1:30 to 6 = 4.5 hours
6:45 to midnight = 5.25 hours
= 9.75 hours a day * 4 days a week = 39 hours a week.
+ 2 hours on Thursday mornings = 41 hours a week
Now under the new system:
9:30 to 6 = 8.5 hours
8.5 * 4 days a week = 34 hours a week
So under the new system they'd actually be sitting for fewer hours a week! That in no way expands the number of hours of debate by 50%!
Now if the MPPs decide they want to sit earlier for work-life balance purposes, that's perfectly fine. A lot of people get to flex their work hours, and I don't think anyone will begrudge them that except for the subset of people who will begrudge them anything and everything on the basis that they're politicians. But don't go around saying it increases the number of hours of work when it doesn't! Frankly, I expected better from Michael Bryant, he's always struck me as rather sensible.
2 comments:
Hi - just a little note having worked in the legislature once myself. Assuming their still doing things the old way, the Legislature *sometimes* sits to midnight. It doesn't happen every day but once every few weeks, so it would be hard to make the calculations, but I'm sure if you do enough research you can find out how long they sit for the average week. By the way, another Star article quotes John Tory on the fact that they plan to introduce friday sittings, so I guess that would also alter your calculations.
I'm not sure what the math works out to, but because evening sittings are sometimes not even scheduled I suppose it's possible that the hours could be increased.
It all really depends on the legislative agenda, and whether the oppositon holds it up or not. If everything is unanimous (and strangly sometimes it is) then everything goes by quickly and people leave early.
I personally don't care how long they sit there, as long as they get things done.
Yeah, I found the "as late as midnight" thing strange too, but they simply didn't provide any other numbers (and the ontla website doesn't have a schedule that I can find when the legislature isn't actually in session) so I worked with what I was given.
It occurred to me that they might mean Fridays too, but I couldn't find anything to confirm it at the time when I posted that entry. Today I did see the article you're talking about, where John Tory mentioned it in passing.
So math:
If it's 5 days a week, 8.5 * 5 = 42.5, which is marginally more but it will probably be evened out because they will need lunch breaks.
Given that under a 9:30-6 schedule they'll probably still continue to leave early if they've finished all the business on the day's agenda (which makes sense given all the people involved in preparing briefings and drafting bills and other stuff I don't know about, plus the fact that citizens and the media will want issues they want to follow to be debated when scheduled), I don't see room for a 50% increase in hours. Not that I care how many hours people work as long as the job gets done (I have a job where I have to attend during set hours even though what matters is getting the work done by deadline and I wouldn't wish that on anyone else), I just found it strange that they made such a big deal about having more hours to work when it really looks like exactly the same number of hours.
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