Get Humble, Leiper, Not Smug
If there is one person who should not be smug on Ottawa City Council, it’s Kitchissippi Councillor Jeff Leiper.
Leiper has been in office since 2014 during which he has approved the wrong route of the Confederation Line, the wrong trains on the line and was part of councils that conducted noversight on a project that is the largest in Ottawa municipal history and also the worst.
Frankly, I wouldn’t allow Leiper to plan a white-wine dinner for one in Westboro let alone run the planning committee. This is a man who couldn’t operate a paint shop let alone deal with one of the most important committees in the city.
If you want to see a councillor who typifies the brutal mistakes of the last 10 years on council, it would be Leiper. Ideology before practicality and now Ottawa taxpayers are suffering as a result. His railroading of ebuses for Ottawa before local testing was complete was reckless and now we find they have technical problems running on warm days let alone cold days that have caused havoc in Edmonton that has brutal winters like Ottawa’s.
People such as Leiper should not be put in important positions anywhere, let alone planning.
Leiper, of all people, is not in a position to be smug. He is one of the people who has given us the LRT fiasco, ebuses charged with natural gas, huge overruns on a new and unnecessary central library, a paralyzed traffic system overloaded with people who won’t gamble on light rail getting them to somewhere on time and Lansdowne (which speaks for itself).
Smugness is not something Leiper should be practising. Humility would be more apt. And the smugness he wears in the video below was the same attitude that he had when he approved unreliable ebuses that he overlooked (noversight again) would need gas-generated electricity because Hydro Ottawa didn’t have the capacity to handle them.
Despite the fact he has much to be humble for, there he is at the end of this video acting like the god-king-emperor of all that is smug.
Furthermore, Leiper shows an astounding lack of empathy on this issue. Intensify beside a home in which a family has worked their entire life to buy and they lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. Try to sell a home with an apartment beside it. Keep it and your privacy disappears. That’s nothing to joke about. No doubt Leiper is a critic of the powerful. Now that he has power he might as well say: “Let those people in bungalows eat cake.” Shameful.
He has no idea on so many levels. Leiper should just quit before he does billions of more dollars of mistakes.
His Smugness just doesn’t get it.
Ken Gray
This video is courtesy of the city-wide community group Your Applewood Acres (And Beyond) Neighbours
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Someone might want to inform Councillor Kits as to the meaning of the missing middle. It is a housing typology not a geographic area as per the OP and zoning bylaws she is approving. BUT she is right on the pain being caused and not acknowledged. There are no plans to mitigate the financial and social costs coming to people who own their own homes…..now considered “Privileged and Exclusive”. When you come at equity the way the City does: blame and shame and bull dozers and “don’t tell we are putting a shelter in your family crescent – YEP. They did that….: without any social or environmental plans to make this work, then expect an exodus, disharmony among those left behind. And families rushing to the suburbs.
I feel it strange how theses councillors can put up with the mayor’s continual whining, but if complaints come from constituents they are ignored and considered as Leiper did to be NIMBY whining . Seems that our councillors have no empathy for home owners or pride in home ownership.
Sorry, Ken, I can’t agree with you. I let this go by a few days ago without watching the video. Now that I have I simply agree that change will come to the bungalow belt. He’s saying it without emphasis and the little smile at the end is simply because he made a rhyme.
ymmv
Jake:
I think the response to the Leiper comment reflects a concern by good people who are concerned about the welfare of their much loved homes.
Jake, we’re all not meant to agree here. The Bulldog welcomes opinions from all sides on relevant issues.
If you think I’m wrong, say so. That’s what democracy is all about.
I have broad shoulders. I can take it.
cheers
kgray
Thanks, Ken, I think your read of Leiper’s attitude was wrong. There, I said it. That said, I agree with the Alta Vista resident’s ’open letter’ that AV, and most of the inside-the-greenbelt city, have been shafted by the amalgamated city politics.
Councillor Lieper’s problem is that he was not being a savvy politician when he said it, not that he has a bad attitude. Change will come – is coming now – to the whole city. He shouldn’t have commented.