Security Gates: San Quentin-On-The-Rideau

“City hall is public space, our most important community space, which should be open, accessible and welcoming. But under the guise of public safety, successive councils are gradually turning it into a veritable Fort Knox. Security is the bogeyman often waived in people’s faces to limit their rights.”

Mohammed Adam, Ottawa Citizen on new security scanners at city hall

Adam has crafted a wonderful column on a terrible thing … the municipality securing city hall with scanning gates which is supposed to be a people place.

In a city with few real gathering places, particularly indoors, this is a travesty.

“Looking at the new measures, you’d think city hall had turned into a den of rampant violence where councillors, mayor and staff are under constant threat and must be protected,” Adam says. “Why these extreme measures now? Where’s the danger? Well, it’s not because Ottawa residents have suddenly gone wild and are tearing up city hall, or because visitors are complaining about their safety. It is because other institutions and cities have done it. So, we must.”

Airport security at city council because our betters fear being hijacked by the public. Ottawa, a city of rules, feels it must have rules over democracy, which finishes a distant second to city hall in importance. City hall is so blind it can’t recognize its own incompetence.

But then it’s not about us. It’s about them.

Securing the building reflects its closed, almost scared, attitude bordering on paranoia about keep the public out of any issue that might be delicate. And perhaps that’s to be understood. If you were as bad as this appalling city government has become (surely we don’t need to repeat the ways), you’d want to cover-up, too. The problem is … city hall isn’t even very good at covering-up. Somehow or other, their cock-ups are revealed.

Demonstrations are being restricted by duplicating legislation known as bubble laws … even as the Supreme Court is likely about to rule against them because they fly in the face of the Charter. Is this arrogance or stupidity … an inept council telling our most important judges that they don’t know what they are talking about? The last people in this city to tell the court what to do are the court jesters on Laurier Avenue.

Increasingly, it looks as though city hall doesn’t like democracy. It won’t listen to the public on Lansdowne or light rail or the central library blown-budget or the law when it comes to leaving a hole in the budget. Far be it for city hall to be telling demonstrators that they aren’t behaving properly. “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” said Jesus, who would likely end up being arrested for protesting inside city hall. Some rule … wearing white after Labour Day, funny sandals, a wrong-sized placard or any minute thing. Anything to shut him up. Were Christ an important developer or bike lobbyist, things would be so much different.

This government is so bad that it doesn’t consult with the people over their people place, flies in the face of public opinion on security, and can’t even say how much this security costs because staff and council are sloppily overlooking the security operating charges at San Quentin-on-the-Rideau.

Why does The Bulldog as whole and in its writers as parts want a board to run the municipality until the next election? Read the above. City hall doesn’t know what it is doing.

Anyway, Adam’s column is a little masterpiece and required reading for those appalled by the state of our woeful city hall.

Ken Gray

For You:

Robertson Road Is Robertson Road

City Should Come Clean On Security: GRAY

Bubble Bylaw Is Necessary: BENN

New City Security Insults Taxpayers: CULLEN

City Can’t Produce Total New Security Gate Costs

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