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Paul Martin wasn't going to take the bait. Having only just begun his tenure at the helm of a minority government, the Prime Minister wasted no time this fall in abandoning a three-year-old scheme designed to take the politics out of setting the salaries of members of Parliament. While Canadians might be prepared to pay good dollars for a first-class judiciary, the thought of MPs earning nearly three times the average wage - no matter how hard they work - is the definition of a non-starter.

More interesting, however, is a quiet and conciliatory proposal now working its way through the House of Commons management board to raise each MP's office budget by 10 per cent immediately, and again by 10 per cent in January. This would mean adding approximately $46,000 to the $238,000 most MPs receive each year to run both their Ottawa and local constituency offices. If you think $284,000 sounds like a lot of money - it is. Few MPs realize that their seat in Parliament comes with a small business attached - one with all of the budgeting, servicing and staffing headaches that entails.

But these increases aren't likely to rouse the ire of Canadians as do increases in MPs' salaries. The plan sounds reasonable and faintly bureaucratic. But it is interesting to ask what we get for the $73-million that collectively is being spent on these offices each year.

After all, only 30-odd years ago, Parliament was spending next to nothing. Constituency offices simply didn't exist until at least one enterprising MP opened one. First there was a young Ed Broadbent, in Oshawa, in the late 1960s; then Flora MacDonald's Kingston office, financed out-of-pocket and run by the labours of a part- time student, caught the attention of her colleagues in the early 1970s and, soon, the Speaker of the House. Following a quiet increase to MPs' Ottawa office budgets, the root system of Parliament began to spread.

Today, slightly less than $250,000 buys each MP about four employees, some local advertising, and a modest office. One or two staffers are stationed on Parliament Hill, and the remainder hold down the fort in the riding. But, as elsewhere in government, the problem isn't too much money. It's too little.

As I have travelled the country conducting a two-year study of constituency politics, I've visited several dozen of these offices, and I've concluded they may represent some of the best value in government.

Visit any constituency office and staff there will tell you about the steadily accelerating avalanche of casework. For Canadians frustrated with one branch of government, be it Revenue Canada or Immigration, constituency offices have existed as a bureau of last resort, part fixer, part ombudsman - the place you go to straighten things out. Increasingly, however, they're becoming bureaus of first resort, especially for those who would rather not navigate or are easily confused by the government's elaborate phone systems and websites.

I expect that data in the new year will demonstrate that an informal and unintended downloading is taking place. Frontline work typically performed by the public service is increasingly being taken up by constituency staff. MPs don't have the luxury of running waiting lists or getting backlogged. And, of course, they have a special reason to offer good and personable service. For many Canadians, there's the added comfort of dealing with someone directly and even meeting them in person. No longer does an MP's staff serve only the local representative; they're fast becoming the local face of the federal government.

In itself, this may justify the added investment soon to be made. I've seen too many offices with aging computers, too few phones and shabby furniture. A 20-per-cent increase won't produce a qualitative improvement. It will simply attend to many basic expenditures that are well past due.

And, since the 2003 redistricting that expanded the boundaries of many ridings, more MPs than ever are opening satellite offices across their constituencies to help share the load and maintain a presence. All of this costs money.

The question is, how much should we be spending? If we want constituency offices to shoulder an ever growing share of bureaucratic chores, the answer is: a lot. But it's an idea that has a lot of merit. Services delivered through a constituency office have the added benefit of bringing Canadians into closer reach of their representatives, demonstrating more palpably the relationship between government and government services.

On the other hand, directing too many chores to an MP's office could create small fiefdoms, raising the inevitable problem of political interference and again raising the bar to challengers in a system that could come to favour incumbents.

Another alternative would be to reduce service provision and shift the focus to civic engagement and political representation. Many constituency assistants lament that they don't have enough time to be proactive in their communities and seek out conversations with locals on the issues of the day.

Whatever the case, this latest behind-the-scenes budget negotiation serves as an occasion for MPs to pause and ask a question that's long overdue and that must be answered if we're to know what to spend. What exactly are constituency offices for? The answer, they'll find, is surprisingly complex.

Peter MacLeod, a doctoral candidate at the London School of Economics, is conducting a two-year study known as The Constituency Project, currently travelling Canada until Christmas. www.theconstituencyproject.ca