Holder, Pearson offer a glimmer of light

By Paul Berton

Three cheers for Conservative MP Ed Holder and Liberal MP Glen Pearson. While their colleagues in Ottawa are entwined in a dangerous, destabilizing, partisan and ultimately unnecessary game of political brinkmanship, these two have come together at home for the benefit of London.

Isn't that what politicians everywhere are supposed to do? Isn't that why we elected them? Isn't that why we pay them our hard-earned cash?

There's a lot of talk in Ottawa (though not, regretfully, this week) about co-operation and bipartisanship, but never enough -- if any -- action. The recent shenanigans by the federal Conservative party have been mischievous and irresponsible. Ditto the Liberals and the New Democrats, at least until they united as a coalition for political expediency.

That's why, amid all the furor, it's so refreshing, inspiring even, to see Pearson and Holder come together to put their community first.

Holder, the newly elected Conservative member for London West, and Pearson, the relatively new Liberal from London-North-Centre, are working again on the Business Cares Food Drive, of which Holder has been a long-time co-chair.

Pearson has helped Holder with the project as the long-time director of the London Food Bank, a position he still holds.

Feeding people in need at Christmas time. What could be more basic than that? It sounds so simple, and according to Holder and Pearson, it is.

A national economic crisis is not so simple, but it is just as important, and it would be nice if the parties in Ottawa could take a page from Pearson and Holder's book.

What's more, the two MPs also plan to work together to promote the bid by the University of Western Ontario to build Canada's only AIDS vaccine manufacturing facility, as well as a number of other projects.

Do politicians have to get re-elected? Yes. Do they have to play politics sometimes in order to achieve that? Yes. Is British parliamentary democracy essentially combative? Yes. But all of that does not prevent MPs and other politicians from being decent, civil, caring human beings who were elected to put their community, whether it's London or Canada as a whole, before their own petty, personal, partisan tendencies.

At a time of shameful scheming in Ottawa, Holder and Pearson offer us all a ray of hope.