Plante Issue: Debate Don’t Attack: READER
Long-time Bulldog reader and commenter Jake Morrison demands more from councillors in the Stephanie Plante debate:
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Rah, rah, freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech is very important but debate of the issues is even more important. Anytime a debater attacks the person, they leave the issues behind and take the debate into irrelevancy.
Rideau-Vanier Councillor Stephanie Plante injected a denigrating image that stood in for a dismissible male point of view. Her opponent was justifiably offended – and sidetracked on the issue.
I have no opinion on whether this was worthy of an integrity commissioner’s time and report but I do know that Plante wasted her time, and many others’, by being cute. That’s not freedom of speech.
I think we should be able to demand of our councillors that they not attack the person in policy debates. Plante has a problem with avoiding that as seen in the two complaints to the integrity commissioner over the last year.
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Thank you Jake, for introducing to this tempest a different perspective.
Councillor Plante, having failed to convince opponents of the SPECIFIC solution presented, stepped into the morass by denigrating, by use of a (to borrow the term used by Alex Cullen) tasteless cartoon, the opinions expressed as ‘mansplaining’. How could she not think that was an insult to the man whose opinion she opposed?
Let’s re-examine the context. Plante has often been on the record that her ward of Rideau-Vanier hosts a disproportionate number of shelters directed at those who do not have permanent homes. A statement that I accept at face value. The Sprung Structure solution proposed by staff was not in her ward. A big check mark on her score card.
Did she focus on the relative merits of the proposed solution?
The merits of the type of structure:
– an insulated tent that one of her colleagues, Barrhaven West Councillor David Hill stated as being inappropriate based on his lived experience;
The merits of the specific location:
– using an existing sports field in a city that has acknowledged it lacks enough of;
– adjacent to a high traffic volume 80 kph truck route;
– nowhere near the support services required by the residents.
In summary, as Jake Morrison points out, Plante focused on the people who opposed the solution, not on the legitimate concerns they were expressing. That is a sad comment about the state of affairs that passes for debate coming from Plante, and many others on council.
Well said! She has a history of attacking the Delegate in front of her. In the Lansdowne 2.0 council meeting she attacked a delegate in an effort to denigrate her by asking off topic pointed questions. Off topic questions are not permitted in council meetings. Perhaps a complaint back then would have corrected her issue in following the city integrity policy.
Thank you Jake and Ron. Cooler heads are beginning to prevail. The cartoon in question had to be drawn by someone. I wonder where she found it. If she found it somewhere on the internet and used it without permission her problems may have just begun.