Ottawa in still life

 

The bus strike demonstrated that the people who live in the capital aren't really citizens -- their indifference has created our political malaise

 

By Andrew Cohen, Citizen Special
February 10, 2009

 

The priceless moment of this city's 53-day transit strike came shortly after its end, as the players surveyed the mess they had made.

Maria McRae, the chair of the transportation committee, said the strike was "not an amazing badge of honour to this G-8 capital." Her colleague, Peggy Feltmate, thought it "really shameful that as a national capital we allowed this to happen."

Mayor Larry O'Brien called upon "the citizens of Ottawa to welcome back the bus drivers," and to "let this injury to each of our lives heal."

The union president, André Cornellier, was unrepentant. "Right now I feel very content," he declared, before hopping into a limousine and driving away.

Here, then, is a portrait of Ottawa in still life -- where life is always still. In this triptych, councillors apologize, the mayor sings Kumbaya, and the unionist sneers.

And the people -- no, the citizens -- watch in ennui and incredulity.

But it is possible for the transit strike to be a tipping point for this dispossessed city. In fact, it may be Ottawa's Hurricane Katrina, laying bare the lassitude and ineptitude that makes this city the capital of lost opportunity. Sure, there was no loss of life or social disorder. But in their staggering mismanagement of labour relations, in their flawed tactics and misbegotten strategy, the politicians failed us badly.

It isn't that they were wrong to stand up to the union. It is that they should have been smarter about it. They should have shown the public why it was worth this massive dislocation in the dead of winter. In the end, what did it produce? A settlement that will give the union much of what it wants, which could have been had earlier, which is why the union won.

People get the government they deserve. Certainly Ottawa does. If you are prepared to take nearly two months without public transit, without a clear return, and few compensatory measures to soften the cost, that's what you'll get.

When Ottawans stoically and heroically organized car pools, walked to work, rearranged their lives, missed classes, lost income or stayed home, they gave politicians no incentive to act.

Astoundingly, the first protests came late in the strike. Until then, some real suffering -- particularly among the elderly, the sick, the disabled and others who have no voice -- was easily ignored. In Paris and other real cities, they would have been marching on city hall, if not burning it down.

Oh, the city made some concessions for an inconvenienced public. It said it would defer collecting taxes by a month! It eased parking restrictions! Lowered rates at meters by 50 cents an hour!

And yet, it could never introduce force majeure, such as letting motorists park anywhere, for nothing, so they could get downtown. No, here they handed out parking tickets.

At least, we thought there'd be savings. Now the Citizen reports there likely will be little savings at all. About lost tax revenues from lost business, who knows? My barber, the best in the city, says he lost 40 per cent of his business and fears half of that won't come back.

But the transit strike is symptomatic of Ottawa's larger problem, which lies in its contented people and its feckless politicians.

There are no citizens of Ottawa, as the mayor likes to say. Citizenship implies a sense of belonging. That notion, even if it had a legal standing, is foreign to this city. Ottawans aren't residents, either. Even those who own homes or are born here have a permanent impermanence. More likely, Ottawans are tenants.

The city is a hotel where people take a room. This may be for months or years or decades, but it implies little loyalty or commitment. This is true of Canada, yes, but the malaise reaches its apotheosis in Ottawa. This doesn't mean there aren't good people here who fill community associations or school committees, join Neighborhood Watch and flood skating rinks. But the dead hand of lethargy sits on Ottawa because our indifference allows it. After all, as they say, who ever washed a rented car?

So we put up with governments that ignore, dismiss or abandon us. Politically, it makes Ottawa an orphan. If we don't care, neither do our governments.

It is why we have third-rate federal office buildings downtown, we have embassies of authoritarian regimes on Sussex Drive, and we have a train station and a hockey arena outside downtown.

We refuse to imagine the city a grander place, enriching it with cultural and historic institutions that Canada deserves. We do nothing creative with the Rideau Canal or the banks and islands of the Ottawa River. It is heresy to raise it.

The disdain we tolerate is hilarious. The other day a puffed-up guard at one of the gates to the grounds of Rideau Hall offered visitors a gratuitous lecture on the privilege of using the vice-regal skating rink.

The next day another stopped an ambassador from joining friends at the rink because he wasn't carrying skates. Apparently he was more dangerous to Her Excellency without his blades than with them.

We accept this. Then again, this is a timid, insecure city where patrons leap to their feet at the most mediocre performance at the National Arts Centre. It makes Ottawa the standing ovation capital of the world.

We appreciate our city council so much that we're afraid to change it. These are the folks, or the descendants of the folks, who built a bus mall on Rideau Street, which now looks like a varicose vein, who built the Sparks Street Mall, a failure from the day it opened, and who allowed downtown Bank Street to become a tin-pan alley.

These are the folks who helped make King Edward Avenue into an expressway. They debate light rail decades after other cities build it. They cannot erect a central library or a concert hall, or put a roof over the ByWard Market, or encourage the private sector to do it. They accept expansion in the suburbs.

Then again, we, the citizens of Ottawa, allow it. Angry as we were over taxes, we elected a mayor who promised to freeze them -- and then raised them. At the same time, we re-elected city council.

Enough.

If Ottawa is to be a serious city, if Ottawa is to exploit its gifts of affluence, geography and history, if it is to capitalize on government, business, technology and academia that are here, it will have to act decisively.

What to do?

Create a civic movement. Recruit reformers of all stripes who will demand urban renewal. Run a slate of candidates from the community and stand in the next election on the values of density downtown, an end to sprawl, and a regime of green which would turn Ottawa into a cool exemplar of environmental progress.

Absorb and adopt some of the fine ideas in the city's official plan and other studies. All this could make Ottawa a seat of intelligence, innovation and conservation.

Sweep out this mayor and this council. Start over. This is what David Crombie and John Sewell did in Toronto in the 1970s, when they said enough to bad planning and bad development. They were inspired by Jane Jacobs and the reform movement in New York in the 1960s.

It won't happen right away, and it won't be easy or tidy. But it will represent an idea of Ottawa, and the beginning of its renewal.

Andrew Cohen is a professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University. Email: [e-mail]

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