Ottawa Wants Real City Hall Leadership

It’s nice to see Orleans West-Innes Councillor Laura Dudas taking a public policy issue seriously.

The security gate issue at Ottawa City Hall matters. It’s about open, caring and inclusive government. Security gates fly in the face of democracy. We think Dudas is wrong but we respect her opinion and look forward to more debate. That is democracy. The cut and thrust of debate (almost absent at city hall) is what makes sound government. If your policy can’t stand up to scrutiny, it should not be in place.

So we disagree with Dudas on the issue but at least she is taking public policy with the important regard it deserves.

This is a big step up from declaring Ottawa the Shawarma Capital of Canada or naming snow plows with cute names or running to the media with the mock outrage of road lineage wearing out. All three are crass publicity grabs and unbecoming of serious governance. If councillors want city hall to be taken seriously, they and Mayor Mark Sutcliffe should be serious about it.

Residents would be much more respectful of city hall if it discussed the important issues like the woeful problems surrounding light rail, the massive budget overrun at the new central library and the ridiculousness of spending half a billion dollars on a Lansdowne project that offers less than we have today.

But our councillors and our mayor don’t want the bad publicity about the big issues so they don’t discuss them.

Good questioning of city staff would expedite the repairs necessary to fix the trains. And soon this term of council will be complete with no solution to the LRT. So council’s current methods simply don’t work. Continuing to conduct the same failing strategy is a worthless exercise and that’s what council and the mayor are doing. And to be perfectly clear, that strategy is to not discuss an important issue until it goes away due to public and media apathy.

Serious councillors take public policy seriously. Public policy does not include naming snow plows.

We do have some serious people on city council. They include councillors David Hill, Wilson Lo and Shawn Menard. We don’t necessarily agree with them all the time but they do address important public policy issues. And that’s the most important thing.

Let’s leave shawarma and snow plow naming and grandstanding over road white lines to the petty on city council.

Ottawans want real leadership during a confused and troubling time in municipal affairs.

Ken Gray

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