SPRUNG STRUCTURES: Bullies With No Clue

03/14/2025

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City staff at Ottawa City Hall has moved on from the sprung structure fiasco and staffers think they’ve got the next round of public policy correct.

Staff has hired Elon Musk as the director of staff expansion and he’s riding a SpaceX rocket up here as we speak. God knows how he will pay the tariffs on himself. So stick that in your Tesla and drive it. Staff hopes to do better than sprung structures though it’s doubtful Musk will be able to top staff in authoritarian declarations.

Disagree? Take this for an example.

You see the sprung structure issue was plopped down in front of the citizens of Ottawa without any discussion, any consensus, any public input … any anything. Top that, Donald Trump.

And that’s just the first mistake in an issue that could serve as a textbook for how not to do things in a democracy.

First, the planning was done in secrecy and brewed in the minds of staff which has no experience in housing refugees. So let’s put them in a glorified tent.

We have experience in plastic domes in Ottawa. They fall down now and then. Snow and ice pile up on the top occasionally, piercing the roof thus collapsing the dome.

High winds can knock it down. Snow from the half-melts tumbles into a huge pile beside a heated dome. That freezes and becomes of wall of ice. Said wall might not meet city building codes and can topple over thus providing a unique greeting through the tent wall. Hello, welcome to Canada … land of ice and snow.

Well at least the refugees know what to expect.

There were issues of crowding, noise, privacy (we could go on) in the sprung structure Welcome Centres (note aforementioned “welcome to Canada”). Sprung structures are what you get when an isolated group of people, city staff, drink their own bath water.

So, off the top, there’s a lesson to be learned. You do not create refugee centres in a vacuum. You get Rwanda on the Rideau. The Middle East without the warm weather.

Then the process was all wrong. You don’t start with thrusting a done project on people. You get the people on-board early in the process like what happened when Ottawa punched above its weight on housing Boat People. You start with these people are in trouble and they need our help. How can we help? The best educated populace in Canada might have some ideas. Better ideas than the ivory-tower empire-builders on Laurier Avenue crippled by fear they will make a mistake and then commit big mistakes.

Often it looks like staff feels the public is obstructionist and stupid. Sprung Structures have been cancelled. Guess who looks stupid now.

You see, hundreds of smart people looking at a project in the cut and thrust of debate can find holes in a proposal. It is slow, messy and effective. Better than coming forth with a bad idea that gets started and then must be cancelled. What a waste of time and money and emotion.

And then staff sole-sources the contract. We have a bit of history with sole-sourcing in this community. What does it take to get through the thick heads of staff that sole-sourcing leaves a bit to be desired? Smelling salts. A time-out? (Ms. Stephanson, you’re going to have to go to your room until you learn about the benefits of competitive bidding).

And people in the community rose up because they knew a bad idea when they saw one. And suffered the ignominy of being dubbed racist or NIMBYs. Maybe they just wanted refugees to be housed better.

Then the public suffered the indignity of being told they could not ask questions or debate at a city-sponsored public meeting. Why are council and staff so scared of the residents of Ottawa?

All this from a government faintly reminiscent of the now-defunct Soviet Union. Top-down administration.

“We have five-year plan. We have wheat quota. Meet or wheat commissar disappears. Miss quota. New wheat commissar. Stalin with sense of humour, no? Da.”

Authoritarian administration top down, at times, from staffers who haven’t the faintest idea what they’re doing. No wonder the City of Ottawa can’t fill vacancies with good people. No one wants to go there.

Need proof? The sprung structure program was scrapped before it began.

Surely the City of Ottawa can do better. Or maybe it can’t. Little evidence to the contrary.

Ken Gray