Ex-Citizen City Hall Type Blasts Watson With Tweet
Ex-Citizen city hall reporter David Reevely fires a well-targeted rocket at the Ottawa Community Housing Foundation Board for appointing former mayor Jim Watson as a member.
It will be a long, long time before Ottawans forget, if ever, how badly light-rail, the biggest project in Ottawa municipal history, was botched by Watson. Watson perhaps thinks that Ottawans will forget the fiasco after about eight or nine months. Not so.
If Watson is really serious about running for the Grits federally here in town, be assured that there will be people lined up to work against him from Lansdowne to Orleans.
Jim Watson’s On The Comeback Trail
Every day of the campaign, he will be reminded of the misdeeds on LRT. He is well-deserving of the criticism.
And not a small amount of it will come from The Bulldog:
Former Bay councillor Alex Cullen re-tweeted Reevely’s tweet. Expect Cullen and the active left wing of the city to be all over Watson. And probably the centre and the right, too.
Bringing pizza to this party won’t win many friends.
Ken Gray
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Hard to find ANY reason to place Watson on a board of directors, especially one in Ottawa and the housing board at that!
Appointment to a board is a tacit recognition of someone who has accomplished goals in their industry, are leaders or innovators. They normally have demonstrated good ethics, leadership qualities and a clear ability to work as a team. Does Watson have any of these traits?
What does he bring to this board? A pair of scissors to cut ribbons!
Who approves the appointment? Does he get paid for it? Do we get a vote? Silly question.
While my comment is not expressing support for this appointment, the Ottawa Community Housing Foundation is not the same as Ottawa Community Housing. It does not run Ottawa Community Housing nor is the Foundation part of the City of Ottawa. OCH Foundation is an independent charity registered with CRA. The role of the Foundation is to raise money and run programs to benefit the residents of OCH. This includes things like bursaries, summer camp, school support for residents, social events, etc. I suspect that Watson was brought on board for fund raising and their is nothing to suggest that board members of this Foundation are paid. No one can probably out-shmooze developers for purposes of raising money than Watson. And unlike political contribution rules, there are no pesky limits to what developers can donate to OCH Foundation. Given, however, OCH Foundation pays 33.5% of its revenue in salaries to its employees and raises virtually no donations for which charitable receipts are issued (i.e., it mainly gets money from other levels of government, the Ottawa Community Foundation, sponsorship or events) I can see why they want a board member with deep contacts in the business community and a history of raising funds. BTW, this data is based on their latest CRA filing.
Thank you for the clarification Lorne. As usual, very helpful.