This morning I spoke with Ottawa Centre MP Paul Dewar about his thoughts on the past session of Parliament, the prospects of a fall election, and a handful of bills that will be hot topics in the fall.
Today, we’ll be joined just after 8am by Ottawa Centre MP Paul Dewar. We’ll talk about his reflections on the spring session of Parliament and what we can look forward to in the fall. We’ll also touch on some of the following:
For those that are unaware, the Citizen is really good about posting the full audio of the discussions its editorial board has with various stakeholders. Yesterday they had a discussion with Councillors Alex Cullen, Peggy Feltmate, and Peter Hume. It’s available here (streaming MP3). Also of note is a conversation with the dissenting councillors from late June.
In any case, I’m working through it as we speak, but the general vibe seems to be that the councillors are understandably supportive of the plan (including the proposed tunnel), and meet some skepticism from the Board.
I really like that the Citizen shares these conversations, and during the election they were essential listening and pretty much determined how my vote would go. It’s also nice to see how these conversations develop, progress, and ultimately end up in various editorials and columns. What I really don’t like is that there doesn’t seem to be an RSS feed for when these go up, nor is there an obvious iTunes podcast option (I can’t check the directory from work; the words “itunes” and “podcast” certainly aren’t on the page).
Councillor Doucet’s office has just issued a media advisory about a press conference he is holding tomorrow as part of the ongoing saga of Ottawa’s transit planning. I’ve pasted it below.
Essentially, as I’ve lamented before, it looks like the the tunnel plan is going to be expensive and add lots of delays. Moreover, it seems that some of the rail moneys will instead be spent on busses. Meanwhile, monies dedicated from other levels of government continues to go unused, and continue to exist only at the good grace of other budgets.
Press Release
Deputy City Manager confirms no tunnel for a least 7 to 11 years – and special tax levy required. City’s matching funds are no longer on table for any rail project.
At 11 am. on Thursday, July 24, in the Richmond Room at Ottawa City Hall, Councillor Clive Doucet will share responses he received from city staff confirming timing and cost implications of Transit Option 4.
Concerned that the current transit plan will do nothing for the next decade but invest heavily in more buses, Doucet put a number of questions to city staff.
What some of the responses mean for Ottawa:
The old plan had no special levy for transit and built rail first. The new plan will require as special levy to implement and will be buses first. The city’s matching funds that were available under the old plan are no longer on the table. They have been re-appropriated to busways and other projects.
“The new plan will invest approximately $900 million for about 65 kilometres of exclusive busways and $600 kilometres for buses…”
This means more congestion in the city core, more diesel pollution, and no relief from rising fuel costs.
With the city poised to spend hundreds of millions on more buses and busways, our priorities have become reversed. Clive will point out that “people are right to want light rail first, it’s the smart choice but that’s not what is going to happen. The train Ottawa is expecting is a bus”.
Questions and answers, and backgrounders will be available at the press conference.
It’s Tuesday! Adam and I will be on from 7-9am on 93.1fm in Ottawa, www.ckcufm.com for everyone else. You should tune in: I promise a sufficient number of batman puns.
We’ll touch on some of the following:
Its Tuesday again. Bluesfest wrapped up on Sunday night, Mike and I are finished our marathon of concerts. We’ll talk about what we liked and didn’t like during the ten day festival. As usual we air on CKCU from 7 to 9am, 93.1fm for those in the Ottawa area, www.ckcufm.com for everyone else.
It’s Tuesday! Adam and I are both in the middle of the bluesfest marathon- I took last night off (despite the allure of former President James Taylor’s unique brand of bittersweet folk rock). To keep things bluesfesty, at 8:30 we’ll play an interview Adam did last week with Joel Plaskett about Canada Day, touring, and the move to producing.
Fellow Travellers 
