Banff - Airdrie MP Blake Richards took time to look back at the spring sitting of the House of Commons which ended last week with the passing of the government's budget bill.

Richards said he's proud of some of the things he's taken part in, even if they haven't borne a lot of fruit so far.  

"I can think of two things and they both relate to the critical areas I have. The involvement I had with the Electoral Reform Committee. Obviously it didn't yield any change in terms of our electoral system but it seems that was something our constituents were quite content with. The bottom line is the message we were pushing was that there needs to be a referendum.  The government obviously wanted to make the change, which served it's own purpose, obviously wasn't going to pass through a referendum and therefore chose not to proceed with any other kinds of changes.  I think that message was an important one and we were able to punch it through."

The other area Richards takes pride in is his work with campgrounds and mini storages that have been affected by the small business tax.  

"Basically the Canada Revenue Agency was telling people 'well, you're too small to be a small business' and not going to be eligible for the small business tax rate and that was seeing huge tax bills being applied to some of these businesses. We still haven't been able to get a resolution to that but we're starting to feel that we're getting some momentum on that, even some Liberal government MP's have been expressing their concerns about that same problem. We're starting to get some multi-partisan support for a change in that regard.  To be able to show that we can build that support across all party lines, that's not easy to do and I'm proud of that as well."

Richards said the summer is always a busy time for politicians.  

"We'll spend some time at the Airdrie Rodeo then the Stampede time, some pancake breakfasts, we're looking forward to all those. It's nice to be out of Ottawa, it's obviously important to be there and be a part of the votes and debates that happen there, but it's always nice to be home."

 

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