Sprung Structures: City Squanders Opportunity
The City of Ottawa certainly knows how to turn an opportunity into a disaster.
Bringing refugees into the city is something Ottawans would normally volunteer to do. Right-thinking Ottawans want to help people in trouble.
And Ottawa will get new Canadians … boatloads of them.
Latin Americans from the United States if president-elect Donald Trump carries out his deportation promises. Immigrants that would normally go to the U.S. will choose to go somewhere similar … like Canada.
There are likely to be refugees from Ukraine if Trump pulls the plug on funding that embattled country war effort. And, of course, the Middle East where chaos has been a staple for centuries.
They will come to Ottawa but the municipality has so botched the issue that normally welcoming Ottawans see refugees as a tent spoiling their community.
Hard to come back from that.
The late Marion Dewar as mayor knew how to mobilize a community.
Her Project 4,000 brought 4,000 boat people to Ottawa much to the chagrin of the federal government which settled 4,000 people across the country.
What Dewar did was get together all the religious and community groups and mobilize them to find places for the boat people. Then individuals came on board. Sprung structures, had Dewar had her way, would be described as luxury homes for new Canadians so they would be accepted by the populace.
Instead during today’s refugee problems, the city imposed a decision (as it too often does) on the people of the city, making very little attempt to get the public on board. When Barrhaven and Kanata exploded in protest at the glorified tents, the city went into panic mode at the last second to convince residents to support the structures.
That just further alienated the public. It was too late to convince residents that an impending refugee crisis was in store. Sprung structures were seen as a blight on the community, rather than a way to find homes for the displaced.
The city got the issue and the message backward in its usual way of imposing measures rather than mobilizing the community for a good cause.
People simply don’t trust this city hall. They drive their cars often beside the slash that is the late, dysfunctional $6-billion light rail project which has become the epicentre of dissent in the community.
People don’t trust city hall and city hall does not trust the public. Had trust and real consultation been there, the sprung structures or some other option would have been accepted.
What the surprisingly strong backlash against the tents has done is cost Mayor Mark Sutcliffe votes in Barrhaven and Kanata, not exactly neighbourhoods of the left. Those are where Sutcliffe getst his votes.
A lot of those were lost in the sprung structure debate.
It might just cost Sutcliffe the mayor’s post in the next municipal election.
And who will suffer from all this? Residents? No. City hall? No.
Refugees? Yes.
Ken Gray
For You:
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City Explains Newcomer Centres To Ottawans
Sprung Structure Fight Moves To Kanata
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Marion Dewar inspired people to want to solve a problem. She engaged them in developing a solution. An approach that minimizes resistance.
Today’s city hall dictates solutions, forcing them on communities. Then wonders why they get so much resistance.
The problem you describe goes beyond Ottawa city hall, it goes right up the ladder to the Prime Minister’s office which, by chance, is located in Ottawa. In the days when 4,000 boat people needed homes the country was not accepting 500,000 immigrants into the country annually. Canadians are still accepting people and let’s face it, unless we’re of native heritage, we’re all immigrants. But there is a red line above which people tend get frustrated and we’ve passed that line. An overly-aggressive immigration policy by the Liberal government is the root cause of the apathy you have identified in this column.