Few Ethics, Incompetence Destroy City Government

12/05/2023

Ottawa has a transportation crisis.

Today was a prime example of it.

Highway 417 was clogged in both directions from about Riverside Drive to Parkdale Avenue around 2 p.m. Not rush-hour but 2 p.m. In the morning, the junction of Highways 416 and 417 is looking increasingly like the east-end split.

Also light-rail construction slowed or stopped traffic along Richmond Road. LRT there is scheduled to be completed in 2026 but looking at the progress made this summer, don’t hold your breath on that one.

In the morning, the Confederation light-rail line was down for 90 minutes. Explain your lateness to your boss.

This crisis was created by the last couple of city councils led by mayor Jim Watson. The councillors still at city hall who practised noversight on LRT should have excused themselves from office last term.

Today east-west traffic was strangled through the city. North-south traffic is usually strangled most days. The Trillium Line commuter rail project, north and south, is late by about three years.

City hall’s response to this? Create a night mayor, slow more traffic, build more fair-weather bike lanes and kill a vital audit of the LRT Trillium Line procurement … you know, the project that is three years late.

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It’s very difficult to see how city staff, the three mayors involved and council could have done a worse job, then and now, on transportation in this city.

Businesses like to locate in places with good transportation.

Ottawa no longer has this requirement of the incompetents at city hall. And rather to get to the bottom of the light-rail problem in Ottawa, staff and council spend time covering-up rather than correcting mistakes. The killed Trillium Line procurement audit is a case in point.

All that is to say that we need a provincial commissioner and a board to run city hall to the next election and get to the bottom of the gruesome ethical and competence crises on Laurier Avenue.

The current administration at city hall does not know how to ask the right questions let alone solve the problems. They refuse or fail to notice the things that need to be corrected. And when things go wrong, and oh brother things go wrong, the expend the effort that should be used to correct problems covering up.

This is a bankrupt municipal government and needs outside help in the form of the province to clean it up.

Premier Doug Ford move on this before the problem becomes so big that it cannot be remedied.

Ken Gray

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