Make Money The Old-Fashioned Way. Earn It

“No amount of patronizing advice from the federal government or off-base criticism from people who think they know what they are talking about will change that.”

Ottawa Citizen columnist Randall Denley on criticism of Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s pleas for city debt relief

Temper, temper, temper.

Do you mean this, Randy?

“In fact, Stage 1 (the infamous Confederation Line) was to be funded with $600 million from the feds and $600 million from Queen’s Park. The city was responsible for everything else. That was the deal the city signed. There’s nothing to be gained by rewriting history except making brownie points with faulty facts.

“Denley knows (or he should know) what the original deal was.”

That was from your agent on Aug. 20 in the venerable Bulldog.

Denley in his column of Aug.13 said the original deal was one-third each from the three levels of government. Nope.

The line above was the crux of his argument that the feds and province hadn’t played fair with the municipal government on light rail. Sorry there Your Eminence, but the city signed the deal. Fair and square. You remember … your man former mayor Jim Watson. A lot like your new man, Mayor Mark Sutcliffe.

Now Denley is trying to blame the senior levels of government for encouraging cities to build more transit for giving them capital funding to spur bus-buying and LRT construction.

The city is responsible for its spending, not the federal and provincial governments. If it doesn’t have enough funds to run the gifted parts of transit, well then the city shouldn’t build it. Don’t spend capital that you can’t pay for with operating funds. Kind of simple but too complicated for the City of Ottawa.

Let’s put this in terms that even Denley can understand.

If mom and dad help you buy a new car but sonny doesn’t have the money to buy gas, pay insurance or replace batteries, brakes and tires, well then you don’t buy the car … unless you’re trying to impress your teenage friends that you have a car in your parents’ driveway. It doesn’t move (kind of like a lot of LRT) but it’s there.

The city has spent like a teenager and Denley is supporting it which is an odd position for a Progressive Conservative or your garden-variety small-C conservative. In fact that’s a real consistency problem for the political right. Spending is wrong, they say, but neglect to mention that it’s OK if that money goes to big business.

Now don’t get me wrong. God bless the private sector which makes the money that pays the taxes. I hate to tell you this, Randy, but I’m a capitalist. That said, I’m not such a capitalist that I think the city should be spending to support a wealthy private sector. The Bulldog is not getting hand-outs to survive from the federal government like the Ottawa Citizen does. We’re not asking for them either but a level playing field might be an improvement. Talk about fairness.

A good fiscal conservative says that teenagers and the municipal government should spend the money they have and rely on debt that is responsible and that they can afford.

Your agent is a fiscal conservative and, hopefully, still a social liberal.

Hard to say what PC and conservative Denley supports.

Ken Gray

Actor John Houseman on sound old-fashioned fiscal values.

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