Bring on the Lions!

Here we are.  Hours before the election and I am in a place that is both familiar and otherworldly.  The familiar is that I am sitting in the ramshackle office in my apartment that has seen a serious cleaning in weeks.  The otherworldly is the closeness to the campaign trail and the political geography of Ottawa’s municipal election; I honestly had little intention early on to be this active.  A few years ago I would have likely explained it as simply a state of liminality.  In less than 20  hours we will all know who the mayor of Ottawa is and soon after that I do not know what the future holds for me.  I started volunteering in the midst of looking for employment and wanted to feel useful only to land into something that has been truly life changing.  Otherwise, this thread is less about me and more about the challenge of electing a candidate some would have called unlikely who has made a push into the top two.

So, why do I want you to vote for Clive Doucet?  I honestly had typed a tome, but I know that tomorrow’s frantic pace most will only glance.  So here is why I voted for Clive during the advanced polling.

1) He has not only an immediate plan to fix transit issues, but one that pulls Ottawa into the 21st century.  It will connect the city, pay for itself and should generate income for the city of Ottawa if other examples prove to stand true for here.  Short of is that a tunnel and LRT 20 years from now will not resolve congestion both downtown and on the 417/174.  It might take buses off the streets, but in 20 years, they’ll be replaced by many more cars.  Give commuters real options to leave the car at home for the 9-5 and take a train to and from downtown efficiently, quickly and use the money from it to expand and/or drive other initiatives.

2) He believes in community connectedness.  I moved here 14 years ago after living in the village of Wellington Ontario (1200 people).  I noticed right away that getting to know my neighbours was not common and I never really had any place nearby to go and meet with them.  A farmer’s market nearby would be an excellent start!

3) He does not like that local farmers need to ship their food to major food terminals in Montreal and Toronto before the goods are purchased and shipped back to Ottawa’s supermarkets.  As such, he wants to build a food terminal here.  This will help bring down cost overheads, provide Ottawa with fresher ingredients and can help the restaurant industry flourish.

4) His City that Knows Value plank is not only honest about spending in Ottawa, but achievable.  No 0 means 0 hear boondoggle.  Combined with his transit plan costing a fraction of the tunnel (savings) with his idea of the City of Ottawa act that united larger municipalities to petition for a reasonable share of provincial taxes (more savings), potential to growth increases with taxes plateauing.  However, he also wants the city to live within its means and to never spend over the cost of living whenever possible.  That’s money from LRT, money from province and then work tax rates to cost of living? I can get behind that despite I am a little more socialist on tax spending that Clive is.

5) He wants to start changing how Ottawa lives in social housing space.  Units suited for families and family size, geared to the right income and not just a Band-Aid for a sucking chest wound.  How many social housing projects can go into the cost of a tunnel under downtown that will not fix our city congestion?

That is it.  There are more planks to Clive’s campaign that you can look at here, but these are the main ones for me as a voter.  These are the ones I and my wife care about most and that we have kicked around for months.

So, tomorrow, polls open at 10am and close at 8pm.  Find your local polling station here.  Also, if you are not sure if you are registered that does not matter.  If you reside in Ottawa, you will need ID, but check here for the details as well.

Hopefully tomorrow you choose the same mayor I did and on Tuesday we all wake up in a new era for the City of Ottawa.  Oh, you are likely wondering about the title of the blog.  Here’s the reference.  Pardon my poor video quality, I forgot to flip my iPhone to its side to take it.

W.

Ottawa Citizen misses on Transit

From day one this mayoral campaign, the Ottawa Citizen has made it clear that they will only “focus on who they considered contenders for mayor in Jim Watson and Larry O’Brien.”  They wanted to do very little to appeal to alternative frames of mind away from the O’Watson campaigns and encourage the Jim and Larry show; well, that might have worked to an extent, but did they ever fire a missed shot on transit issues in Ottawa.

(You might ask yourself why I am saying O’Watson a lot.  Most of what Jim Watson is proposing is “stay the course” mentality.  He has the same transit plan as Larry O’Brien with absolutely no deviation.  None.)

Jennifer Green released a “news” piece on October 17th titled Transit tops voters issues, that boasts that transit issues needed to be found and then gushed over this proposed transit tunnel idea for downtown. My issue is with the poll finding anything about transit is only slightly insulting to the general public.  Of course transit is the number one issue; we are not far from the second year anniversary of a long and bitter transit strike – and the Amalgamated Transit Union still does not have a contract in hand.

So why am I incensed this time? 

That is what O’Watson and the editors of the Ottawa Citizen simply do not want people to see and/or comprehend.  This simple image put together by the Clive Doucet team explains how Light Rail Transit goes from vision to putting butts in seats within four years.  The cost of this will be less than 1/3 of the total cost of the mistake that is the O’Watson plan. 

Now, O’Watson, Haydon and even some public will say “but a tunnel downtown will help congestion!”  I do not buy it.  The tunnel downtown will take pressure off of Slater and Albert streets during rush hour, but very little else will change in the core.  The City of Ottawa, under the other three former mayors, will not give affordable, cost effective and reliable transit to their citizens until 2031 at the very earliest.  What we require in Ottawa is a viable transit option now.  We need something that can connect the major suburbs and offer solutions to driving downtown 365 days out of the year.  That is the only way to reduce congestion within the core of our city.

There will likely be someone who says “but if we cancel the tunnel plan now, the tax payer is on the hook for millions in penalties!”  No, the City of Ottawa is not on the hook for anything.  There is nothing done other than some talking and a couple of surveys to see if it is possible or not.  Even the findings from the geological surveys are not made public.  The only thing that we know for certain about this tunnel is that O’Watson thinks it is a good idea to spend billions for a long shot when we are all old and grey rather than millions on a sure bet now.

The Ottawa Citizen missed on this one.  Painting the election about transit and missing the only real contender and patron of transit solutions in the picture.  Sure, I am bias, but if anyone came to me with a transit plan that saw me sitting in a train across the city in four years with a young child of my own rather than having my adult child join me for the first ride many years from now, I would sign on with their campaign too.

W.

Edit: Borrowed this graphic from @alexlaq on Twitter: