The NDP brings some 'civility and decency' to Canada's Parliament

OTTAWA :

Canada's New Democratic Party has said it will absent one of its members from the vote to cancel out Darrel Stinson's absence in next week's vote of non confidence in the Canadian Parliament.

It's a parliamentary tradition known as "pairing."

Darrel Stinson is a Conservative Member of Parliament who is suffering with cancer and has surgery scheduled for this coming Wednesday, May 18th.

"What we're proposing is to try and help any individual parliamentarian, for example, if someone is facing surgery," said NDP Leader Jack Layton.

"That's why pairing was invented. It was to allow these humanitarian concerns to come into play."

NDP MP Ed Broadbent, a former NDP leader, has offered to stay away when the vote is called.
Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper Harper called it a "very generous and honourable offer."

"I do appreciate it," Harper said after telling reporters he called Stinson and told him to stay home "for the sake of his health."

Another former NDP leader, Halifax MP Alexa McDonough, also volunteered to give up her vote.

She made a similar gesture to a Conservative member of the legislature in Nova Scotia in the 1990s, when the provincial Tory minority faced a possible non-confidence motion.

"If members of Parliament can't set partisanship aside to address this kind of situation, then there really is no civility left in politics," she said.

COMMENTS by Michael McCafferty

The last ten days there has been some very heavy duty partisan politics taking place on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. For three days Parliament has been shut down and come to a stand still. The Canadian people are looking for our political leaders to show some good old fashioned good will, fair play and decency.

Well today that happened.

Canada's New Democratic Party has set aside petty politics and for that they are to be admired and respected for putting 'civility and decency' back into Canadian politics.