Leiper For Mayor? No … Please … No: GRAY

Kitchissippi Councillor Jeff Leiper is seriously exploring running for mayor.

This just in: The Bulldog is seriously exploring replacing the New York Times in the Big Apple.

In other words, contemplate all you want but until you formally file your papers, contemplating means nothing. And most certainly don’t count on winning.

Here are some of the strikes against the leftist councillor running for mayor:

• The conservative suburbs have the vast majority of the population of Ottawa and they are not to be confused with the Leiper’s residents of Westboro. In other words, he can’t win. Those are Mayor Mark Sutcliffe voters and he says he will run for office again … no contemplation there;
• Voters don’t want an idealogue. They want someone who can give them flat roads … not speed bumps. We already have enough speed bumps. They’re called potholes;
• Voters want low and predictable tax increases and Leiper, on the left, will be seen as someone who will markedly raise taxes. And that’s because he will markedly raise taxes;
• He has been part of a city council since 2014 that with fiascoes such as light rail, the bus system, a massively over-budget, late and unnecessary bricks-and-mortar central library in the internet age, and Lansdowne 1.0 seen both inside and outside the project as a failure;
• The roads, transit, sidewalks, aging infrastructure and decaying public buildings are a mess. Leiper says he will bring better services. He’s been on council since 2014. Where are those better services?
• Leiper has been part of a city council since 2014 that has been the most incompetent since mud roads and gaslights were in fashion in Bytowne. Light rail is the worst and most expensive disaster in municipal Ottawa history. Congratulations … we’re No. 1;
• Leiper has been championing climate change remediation at the City of Ottawa. How’s the weather been lately? The city can’t change the climate. That’s a federal and international responsibility. What the city has been doing is virtue signalling … acting as though it is doing something about the climate but can’t put the smallest of dents in the problem and spends huge amounts of money making politicians look good on the issue. Is there enough perfume in the world to cover the stench of this council since 2014;
• Leiper pushed through at breakneck speed the purchase of e-buses that the city didn’t have the electrical infrastructure to charge;
• The original plan for e-buses included two giant and polluting natural-gas generators that could light the city of Brockville. Haven’t heard much of those generators lately;
• Leiper is the chairman of the housing and planning committee. How do you like the look of your city since 2014? How will you like the look of the city under the new official plan? The housing crisis? How’s that working out? And planning? See what’s happened to Westboro since Leiper has been its councillor. High-rise hell. That’s the kind of Ottawa Leiper would bring to the rest of the city. Beautiful community to a high-rise beside your backyard;
• Bad planning will be magnified by the zoning changes of the new official plan.

We could go on.

Run all you want councillor, but you’re not about to win. The demographics, your virtue-signalling and your politics can’t bring victory in Ottawa.

Furthermore, the destruction of our transit system by this council is enough to stop cold the candidacy of Leiper, the approval of which he has been a prominent part. We need Leiper in charge of transit about as much we need more New Ways To Car. Leiper wears that, too.

Save your energy and don’t split the opposition to this appalling city council. Council needs change but not Leiper change. Leiper says he wants to bring change. We’ve seen Leiper change. Keep it.

Change by Jeff Leiper would redesign a thoroughbred into a cow. Or an e-bus into a polluting, gas-generated monster.

Only Jeff Leiper could pull off that kind of change.

Leiper was first elected in 2014. Is Ottawa better off now than it was 11 years ago?

Ken Gray is an award-winning journalist who worked at five major Canadian newspapers. He is an educator, broadcaster and at present is the editor and founder of the 16-year-old pioneering internet publication, The Bulldog.

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