Sometimes I wish that Clive Doucet would take a walk in a snowstorm.

Clive Doucet, city councillor for the rich and the poor in centretown, champion of ultra-left and self-promoter extraordinaire, has been in municipal government since Col By founded this place and if were up to him nothing would have progressed since that time.  We would still have mud roads, horse and buggy and a Kresge store on every corner.  He takes a hold of every issue put before city council, washes through the morass of his own hundred years of experience and then announces that he has a better idea.

He is against roads in the suburbs.  He is against developing Landsdowne Park using plans put forward by local developers.   I am sure that he is also against people who have the audacity to not listen to him.  And that latter group, especially on council, is growing.

Come on Clive, get off your soap box and let's get this city moving.  Sometimes other people, including those stupid city staff, get things right.  Rather than just opposing everything... give an inch once in a while.

And finally, Clive, please announce that you will not run in the next election... for the sake of the citizens of all of Ottawa.

Cultural Ottawa?

I received an invite to a three-day symposium being held here in Ottawa beginning April 28, 2008. The Arts and Cultural symposium is being put on by Simon Fraser University in conjunction with the City of Ottawa. From the brochure:

"The international symposium includes keynote speakers, presentations, lectures, and various styles of workshops to examine the role and importance of cultural infrastructure in furthering culture and creativity in cities and communities. "

What I find unsettling is that of the invited speakers there are almost no arts or cultural folks representing Ottawa venues, like Arts Court or the Byward Market. There are speakers from Toronto's Artscape, Nova Scotia's Mermaid Theatre, a bunch from the US and Europe and other parts of Canada. The closest Ottawan, outside of federal political hacks and one city environmental sustainability rep, is the Manager of Manotick Mill Development Corporation.

What's wrong with this picture?

Man bites meter

On December 5th, I wrote about a transportation consultation/survey that I attended at Ottawa City Hall. In the entry I mentioned that answers given by the downtown core attendees seemed to be unanimous that the cure to Ottawa's transportation woes was to charge road tolls and higher parking fees to those gas guzzling, pollution spewing, grid-lock causing commuters that drove in from the (ugh) suburbs.

Guess what, the city is raising parking fees to $3/hour and eliminating free parking at meters for weekends and evenings. You would think that the centre town folks would be ecstatic including their generally left of centre politicians.

But no. Clive "I cycle to work" Doucet calls it a bone head move. "It's out of control," bellows he. He argues that parking meters were intended to keep traffic moving. His logic befuddles the best of us. I thought that Clive had always told us that we needed public transit to keep the traffic flowing.

"People are just not going to come downtown," cries Diane Holmes. George Bedard calls it "negative, bull-headed". He goes on to say, "If they want to kill downtown, they're certainly doing it."

I have a solution. Just eliminate those pesky polluting buses from the downtown core. They just impede traffic flow when I am looking for a parking spot. Plus those darn bus stops take up so much prime parking space on the roads. Finally, we subsidize the transit system to the tune of 50% of the cost to run it. Take the savings from the bus system and plough it into subsidized parking fees.

Hey, who says that the suburbanites can't come up with ideas for the urbanites?

Give me a call sometime, Clive... we'll do tofu!