Good Law Or Bad Law: Council Will Choose Bad

Published 05/28/2025 · Updated 05/28/2025

Ottawa City Hall might not be able to run a railroad or create a new central library on budget but the folks there can sure spot a sucker from a long way off.

City staff, always helpful, says it can’t create a bubble-zone-protest bylaw while producing a ride-hiring bylaw at the same time. So council will have to make a choice as to which one it will address this term. The other follows shortly after the municipal election … the best time to make controversial choices because it is so far from the next election.

This is one easy choice and smacks of staff providing an excuse for the mayor and councillors to avoid a highly controversial issue and big protest by taxi drivers (who, in case you didn’t guess, don’t like ride-sharing).

The bubble law is popular among the affected, especially among groups who are likely to vote for councillors who support it. Oh does it matter that it duplicates almost law in this field that exists? Nah. People like it. Does it matter that the Supreme Court of Canada will throw out a similar law on charter grounds so far that it will land with a clunk on Wellington Street. No matter. It get votes and the supporting councillors can say: “Well we tried to help you but the bad boys and girls on the Supreme Court of Canada who don’t know any better threw it out.”

The average intelligence ratio of councillors to Supreme Court justice is about three councillors to one justice. Rough estimate but bet it’s close. Integrity of justice to politician … off the scale.

Now let’s switch to the ride-for-hire bylaw review.

These sorts of bylaws have resulted lines of taxis parked around the block at Ottawa City Hall. Protesters pounding on the glass wall of the council chambers so hard that our elected representatives had to abandon the room. Note to security … that wall is incredibly strong. You can rock it back-and-forth as a crowd of taxi drivers many years ago pushed on it and it doesn’t break. Kind of like hockey boards. Think about that as you add more security to city hall.

So dwell on this for a second. Would you rather have before the next election a worthless, but popular, bubble bylaw that duplicates existing laws and the Supreme Court will throw out or three hundred taxi drivers holding up traffic around downtown and pounding on the walls of city hall. Easy choice.

But let’s take this line of thought a step farther. Throwing the unpopular bylaw into next term means a lot of incumbents (including the mayor, perchance?) are running again and don’t need the ride-for-hire mess as an anchor.

So there … another victory for political expediency and another loss for good governance.

Ken Gray

Ken Gray is an award-winning journalist who worked at five major Canadian newspapers. He is an educator, broadcaster and at present is the editor and founder of the 16-year-old pioneering internet publication, The Bulldog.