When they play nice it works

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/06/2015 (3770 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s not so much peace in the valley as peace on the floor.

On Thursday before the Manitoba Legislative Assembly rose the house leaders of the two parties outlined the details of how the legislature will function going into the election campaign next spring. 

The words exchanged and the pleasantries that followed were almost inspiring.

Here’s a sound clip of NDP House Leader Dave Chomiak after he rose to speak on the house agreement:

 Progressive Conservative House Leader Kelvin Goertzen then spoke, and read into the record how the government and opposition deal will work.

The full agreement is posted here to read and download. 

I’ve also included a video of Goertzen speaking to the media about the agreement.

You may ask why this matters.

It matters because this is one of the few times the NDP, PCs and lone Liberal Jon Gerrard all agreed on something other than the odd resolution or apple-pie statement in the house, like racism is bad.

What they agreed to will guide how they and future MLAs do their jobs.

Too often politics gets bogged down in the banality of partisanship. It becomes so bad that all we hear from our elected officials is the sniping and blaming and name calling.

Some of what passes as debate in the house makes you want to slam your head in the wall just to remind yourself that it’s really happening, and that you’re actually alive and not trapped in some Kafkaesque purgatory.

It becomes just noise. We tune it out. We stop caring. We go on to other things that matter more in our lives and that hold our attention. 

And as a result more and more of us don’t vote, and we wonder why our politicians and our democracy has failed us so miserably. 

So what happened in the House when Chomiak and Goertzen stood up to speak is no small thing.

It demonstrated what we want our leaders to be — to work together for us and not themselves.

Let’s hope that this is the start and not the end.