Ottawa Sun
Published: Wednesday, February 25, 2009

High quality debate needed

With Obamamania in Ottawa wrapped up, we can again focus on some of the pressing issues at City Hall.

To start, City Hall columnist Susan Sherring was bang-on with the timing of her weekend column on term limits. November 2010 and the next municipal election may still be 21-plus months away, but aspiring local politicos have already begun to test the waters, gauge support levels and build campaign teams.

Personally, I agree with the sentiment expressed by most councillors that voters are the best judges of when your time in office is up, not some legislated deadline. And it does take time to ramp up and learn the intricacies of local government so a councillor's second term -- if re-elected -- is usually much more productive than the first.

That being said, a decade, give or take a few years, should be the self-imposed cutoff point for local politicians to get things done then consider other career options or another elected office.

Up next is the future of our transit system. Specifically, should we continue to run buses over to the Quebec side of the river? The theory behind this question is that if we abandon OC Transpo routes to Quebec, then our transit system could fall under provincial regulation and voila, back-to-work legislation in the event of future strikes could happen in 50 hours instead of 50 days.

Yet a future strike (heaven forbid!) could occur when the composition of the Ontario legislature is one of a minority government with the federal Parliament having a Conservative or Liberal majority. And where would that leave us? In the same position we were this time around, with a governing party reticent to legislate until it has all-party agreement from the opposition parties, which could take weeks (or longer) to broker.

And as transit committee chair Alex Cullen rightfully points out, the need to get across the river for many Ottawa commuters does not disappear, which would likely translate into more STO buses queuing and polluting on King Edward Ave., Rideau and Wellington streets, which is simply not an option for the local community.

Finally, we have the forthcoming decision on the future of an outdoor stadium. In defence of the recent report which evaluated 23 sites across the city, this analysis is useful to set the context of what constitutes an ideal location in terms of transit access, parking availability, spin-off development, etc., and what council should be asking the Hunt/Greenberg group and Eugene Melnyk's team in terms of concessions or add-ons to their development plans.

The key now is to move from the nirvana location of Bayview yards, where no one is proposing to build anything, to the Lansdowne Live vs. the Kanata option.

POT OF MONEY

Both require city investment along with other orders of government and it is important that the city determine with ironclad commitments from which infrastructure programs the money will actually flow. And with respect to those who believe the RInC (Recreational Infrastructure Canada) program announced in budget 2009 is a key source of funding, let's remember this pot of money is $500 million over two years and there are likely thousands of rinks, fields and pools in hundreds of communities that will no doubt apply for cash.

Council will need to do its homework and ensure the debate on these two proposals is of the highest quality. Their ultimate decision will set the tone to encourage or discourage innovative, private-sector led community development proposals for years to come.