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“Well, not quite. It’s still frustrating, much of the time. You’re still forced to endure hours of inane debate, or that clown show we call Question Period. But comparatively, yeah.” He means compared to what life was like when he was still a member of caucus, and subject to its “restrictions and disciplines and real or perceived threats.”

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“It’s much more enjoyable now. I can speak freely, I can blog freely” — his writings on Brent’s Blog used to regularly land him in hot water — “without the inevitable phone call from some 24-year-old in the PMO.”

“So yes, it’s been a liberating experience. I can promote causes that are important to me and my constituents, where I could not before.” For example, as a Conservative MP he was forbidden to speak out against changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker program — popular in his native Alberta even if controversial elsewhere — “because of the political sensitivities around it.”

All in all, “I believe I am providing better representation for my constituents now.” And not only them. Though no longer a Conservative, he has emerged as the lost fiscal and democratic conscience of the Conservative party, the only MP attacking them from the principled right — in Question Period, on his blog, and in his recent book, Irresponsible Government (with a foreword by an up-and-coming young national affairs columnist). Other MPs, he says, have privately told him how much they envy his freedom.

Is there a downside? What has he lost by giving up his Conservative membership card? “Nothing of importance.” He’s a bit of a “social pariah,” but he was never really involved in “the Ottawa scene” to begin with. He is ineligible for perqs like foreign junkets, but “those don’t mean a lot to me either.”