City’s Corrupt, Incompetent, Autocratic, Dysfunctional: QUOTABLE

07/04/2024

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“Ottawa Council’s decision to seek yet another secret legal settlement with companies building the LRT violates the basic principle that taxpayers must be told how their money is spent. Without that, there can be no accountability.”

Randall Denley, Ottawa Citizen

Denley further on in his column calls the situation “outrageous.” And he’s right.

Ottawa City Hall is out of control. Government in a democracy is supposed to be open but Ottawa City Hall has become an organization unto itself. Staff holds the public’s representatives on city could in contempt which is not right but council’s performance is so poor that it’s not difficult to tell where that contempt originates.

In holding council in contempt, staff holds the people of this community in contempt. It covers up because, even from the information that the city doesn’t cover up or gets discovered, city staff is woefully incompetent and is overseen (not really because oversight on city council is noversight) by a council even more fallible.

Recently, Ottawans were witness to the interim head of planning publicly trying to justify the unjustifiable conflict of interest the city has put itself into with the Tewin project. The city has also partnered with developers at Lansdowne who the city will have to rule on in projects during this relationship. A gruesome conflict of interest.

Let’s not mince our words on the situation at Ottawa City Hall. It is corrupt, lacking in ethics, covers up, incompetent and dysfunctional. Those aren’t the conclusions of this publication, though we agree with them. That’s what came out of the provincial light-rail inquiry whose conclusions were addressed at city hall by saying the right things but it’s business-as-usual on Laurier Avenue.

This is wrong. Dead wrong.

Again, we ask the provincial government to oversee the City of Ottawa with a board to run the major affairs of the city and root out the terrible conduct of council and staff. They should bring with them a team of auditors, preferably with bad attitudes.

Other than votes every four years and outreach to the public which is ignored, Ottawa City Hall has ceased to be a democracy.

The province must take control of the municipality, end the corruption and incompetence and restore democracy to the municipality that runs the capital of Canada’s democratic government.

At present, city government in Ottawa is a disgrace and, as Denley says, an outrage.

Ken Gray