Ottawa Sun
Published: Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Mother's bean a meanie

It’s time for my periodic look at who’s been naughty and who’s been nice since it can never be too early to get a jump on Santa season which, watch the calendar, is now less than six months away.

While I’m no fan of some of the activism the Ottawa & District Labour Council carries out on behalf of 90 local unions comprising 45,000 workers, an initiative (in concert with a CAW local) to set up a fund for recently wounded taxi drivers is laudable and worthwhile.

As I’ve written in this space before, the overwhelming majority of this city’s cabbies work hard, provide great service and deserve our respect for the long hours they put in and the sometimes dangerous conditions in which they work.

On the naughty side, let’s haul Mother Nature on the carpet for an abysmal summer to date regardless of yesterday’s oasis of sunshine and some sporadic teasing of summer weather over the weekend.

Enough is enough, it’s time for an extended dose of vitamin D courtesy of abundant sunshine. Perhaps the only upside to all this rain is the fact that I haven’t watered my lawn since May 2007, which was also the last time Dany Heatley apparently enjoyed playing for the Ottawa Senators.

And since we are on the naughty side of the ledger, Heatley’s silence on the whole ‘trade me since being a two-way player is not my thing’ has been a public relations disaster.

It’s even more perplexing when one considers the Senators organization and this city’s hockey fans embraced him and allowed him the opportunity to resurrect his career and image after the turmoil of Atlanta.

Getting back to the positive side of things, the culture of disclosure has finally taken hold at City Hall with respect to rapid reporting of storm inspired sewage dumps into the Ottawa River is a step forward. However, the fact this has been a, pun intended, stinky secret and practice that stretches back decades is disconcerting.

The funding delivered, promised and additional dollars needed must flow faster from all orders of government than the torrential rains we have experienced to finally stem the tide of stenchy stuff into our waterways.

Still with the city, someone over in bylaw services needs to be dunked into one of the sewage overflows (see above), OK that’s harsh, but at least the proverbial stuff should have hit the fan given the city’s recent treatment of the owner of Carisse Studio Cafe.

Asking this establishment to remove their picturesque one table and a few chairs from the street outside their Byward Market location is sheer lunacy; the triumph of bureaucratic bungling over reason and common sense.

Not to dump (oops, pun again) all over the city, their communications efforts during the recent downpours as they relate to the use of city fields were exemplary. Sending out PSAs by fax, e-mail and posting on the web and Twitter was very fast, as was their follow-up with local media outlets.

Yes, this seems like Communications 101, but I can recall from previous years when this didn’t occur with the same rigour. And community sports organizations also deserve a big thank you for their patience and co-operation in delaying and rescheduling dozens of soccer, football, and baseball games.