Vanity, Thy Name Is Jeff Leiper

09/09/2023

It’s hard to know how you feel but I for one am extremely happy that Kitchissippi Councillor Jeff Leiper is happy (please see the tweet below). His happiness is always my first concern. And now your agent can rest easy.

In particular, Leiper is happy about light rail. The councillor is a minority of one.

Even his colleagues of the left of centre persuasion are organizing a rally at city hall protesting the current sad state of Ottawa transit. Expect him to be unhappy there. Happiness is such a fleeting thing.

OC Transpo Dumps Western Bus Shuttle

Leiper was part of a council that approved this mess of transit and provided absolutely no oversight (save some good work by councillors Rick Chiarelli and Diane Deans on the flawed Trillium Line procurement) of this fiasco. Leiper is in no position to be making pronouncements of happiness on light rail because many are unhappy with his role in bringing about one of the worst cases of municipal mistakes in Canadian history.

Beyond that, he’s doing fine.

He also speaks in his note that OC Transpo says it is cancelling the west shuttle from Tunney’s Pasture to downtown. This is the same shuttle than when the Confederation Line was down, OC Transpo said passengers were very happy about. Once again, happiness is just a fleeting thing. Were passengers happy about it then and then not happy about it now or were they never happy about it. Happiness, a will of the wisp.

This memo from OC Transpo was released at 3:46 p.m. on Friday when news goes to be buried and the cancelling of the shuttle was buried at the bottom of the release. Sort of like Transpo was trying to fly this under the radar. Not only that, but the memo was entitled “enhancements” in which cancelling the shuttle is a curious “enhancement.” The meaning of enhancement is such a fleeting thing … much like happiness.

And, my memory being such a fleeting thing, is not Tunney’s Pasture station in Leiper’s ward … in fact in his neighbourhood? That’s the same station he was at when he travelled down to the Market.

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But here’s something that escapes your agent’s happiness. And that’s the fact that one of the people who was supposed to watching over this $2.2-billion project for the people of Ottawa, failed in that role … badly.

And now he’s passing judgment on the actions of OC Transpo in an area that he and a number of his colleagues botched in a spectacular way. Knowledge, expertise, responsibility and blame … such fleeting things. Like noversight.

Leiper, with his superficial knowledge of affairs municipal, should have resigned with much of council over their unforgivable actions on light rail. That he is passing judgment on it now is the height of arrogance.

And he is part of a council that calls fixing light rail putting the same parts into it that failed previously. What could go wrong?

Vanity, thy name is Jeff Leiper.

His Highness’s tweet is below:

leiper.tweet .h