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The federal Conservatives only pretend to hate Ottawa, but it’s a pose that sometimes gets so awkward that they topple over sideways.
Yes, the party’s rhetoric is pretty firmly opposed to “Ottawa” as a concept, as the seat of a federal government they’ve run for a decade but remain unfond of. As a city with a million people and a noticeable number of federal seats, though, they don’t seem to think it’s so bad.
Ultimately, the Conservatives have come through. Not on everything but on a lot: $1.6 billion for rail, $65 million for the city’s Ottawa River cleanup plan, millions and millions for recession-era stimulus projects. They aren’t building a new science museum but the $80.5 million they’re spending to fix up the one we’ve got is real money. The National Capital Commission made a deal with the city on its western rail plans. Ottawa benefits from the same national policies, like transfers of federal gas-tax money, as every other city. Royal Galipeau will be happy to tell you.
The Tories deliver OK. They just like to create a lot of doubt first, to make their eventual decisions to co-operate seem all the more magnanimous. As if they’ve only barely allowed themselves to be persuaded, because their great big hearts have overpowered their minds.
But that reflex to say an initial no is so strong. It seems to have gotten the best of them on Tuesday morning when, foolishly, not one Conservative showed up for a meeting with Mayor Jim Watson.
He’d invited all the local candidates to party-by-party “briefings” on important city issues. Watson is a Liberal and you can imagine candidates from other parties worrying that he was setting them a trap. Part of the arrangement is a short public appearance afterward, at which reporters get to ask the candidates what they thought of what they heard and, inevitably, whether they’d support this or that city demand for money. It’s a bit of a trap, but not one any politician should be snared by.
Anyway, Liberal or not, Watson is the mayor of Ottawa. He’d arranged some anodyne staff presentations for candidates on city things the federal government has a big stake in, as a funder or a planning partner or both: economic development, transit and social housing.
It’s shocking how little would-be (and even sitting) federal and provincial legislators know about these things. I’ll never forget interviewing a candidate who didn’t know city council had aborted its first light-rail plan. This campaign isn’t a blitz; if you’re a federal candidate, you could do worse than to get some expert counsel on what the City of Ottawa does, or is planning to do, with well over $1 billion in federal money.
The invitations went out to all the parties to send candidates from the nine Ontario ridings that include or touch parts of Ottawa. Nine Liberals showed up. Twelve Greens came to their session, including three eager-beaver Outaouais candidates.
The New Democrats’ date with the mayor is Sept. 3. Seven candidates have agreed to attend and the mayor’s office is hoping for confirmations from two more (Ottawa West-Nepean’s Marlene Rivier and Ottawa-Vanier’s Emilie Taman) who were nominated only Tuesday night.
As they planned the session for Tories, Watson’s people had RSVPs from three Conservatives, though two got iffy in the days before the event. The mayor’s office struggled with what to do if only one came. In the event, none did.
I tried to talk to senior local Tory Pierre Poilievre about what happened. His campaign office told me he was out canvassing for 12 hours straight on Wednesday. I asked whether it might be possible to somehow get him a message asking him to call. They said, well, they’d try. Cellphones don’t work wherever he was in deepest Carleton, I guess.
When word got out Tuesday morning that all the local Conservatives had stood the mayor up, Poilievre got on the horn pretty quickly. The two talked within an hour, setting up a new date for a Tory briefing on Aug. 31. Nobody cared very much about the other parties’ sessions with Watson and the city staffers, but now this one is news because the Conservatives were such asses.
Scheduling didn’t work for today but look forward to meeting with @JimWatsonOttawa sometime in next two weeks.
— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) August 25, 2015
They didn’t learn from Tim Hudak’s failed provincial campaign last year. In Ottawa, apparently on autopilot, he said a Progressive Conservative government wouldn’t fund a rail expansion here because Queen’s Park is just too broke. He had to clean that mess up in a hurry, just the way Poilievre had to this week. Yet another foot-shooting that didn’t have to happen.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
Yes, the party’s rhetoric is pretty firmly opposed to “Ottawa” as a concept, as the seat of a federal government they’ve run for a decade but remain unfond of. As a city with a million people and a noticeable number of federal seats, though, they don’t seem to think it’s so bad.
Ultimately, the Conservatives have come through. Not on everything but on a lot: $1.6 billion for rail, $65 million for the city’s Ottawa River cleanup plan, millions and millions for recession-era stimulus projects. They aren’t building a new science museum but the $80.5 million they’re spending to fix up the one we’ve got is real money. The National Capital Commission made a deal with the city on its western rail plans. Ottawa benefits from the same national policies, like transfers of federal gas-tax money, as every other city. Royal Galipeau will be happy to tell you.
The Tories deliver OK. They just like to create a lot of doubt first, to make their eventual decisions to co-operate seem all the more magnanimous. As if they’ve only barely allowed themselves to be persuaded, because their great big hearts have overpowered their minds.
But that reflex to say an initial no is so strong. It seems to have gotten the best of them on Tuesday morning when, foolishly, not one Conservative showed up for a meeting with Mayor Jim Watson.
He’d invited all the local candidates to party-by-party “briefings” on important city issues. Watson is a Liberal and you can imagine candidates from other parties worrying that he was setting them a trap. Part of the arrangement is a short public appearance afterward, at which reporters get to ask the candidates what they thought of what they heard and, inevitably, whether they’d support this or that city demand for money. It’s a bit of a trap, but not one any politician should be snared by.
Anyway, Liberal or not, Watson is the mayor of Ottawa. He’d arranged some anodyne staff presentations for candidates on city things the federal government has a big stake in, as a funder or a planning partner or both: economic development, transit and social housing.
It’s shocking how little would-be (and even sitting) federal and provincial legislators know about these things. I’ll never forget interviewing a candidate who didn’t know city council had aborted its first light-rail plan. This campaign isn’t a blitz; if you’re a federal candidate, you could do worse than to get some expert counsel on what the City of Ottawa does, or is planning to do, with well over $1 billion in federal money.
The invitations went out to all the parties to send candidates from the nine Ontario ridings that include or touch parts of Ottawa. Nine Liberals showed up. Twelve Greens came to their session, including three eager-beaver Outaouais candidates.
The New Democrats’ date with the mayor is Sept. 3. Seven candidates have agreed to attend and the mayor’s office is hoping for confirmations from two more (Ottawa West-Nepean’s Marlene Rivier and Ottawa-Vanier’s Emilie Taman) who were nominated only Tuesday night.
As they planned the session for Tories, Watson’s people had RSVPs from three Conservatives, though two got iffy in the days before the event. The mayor’s office struggled with what to do if only one came. In the event, none did.
I tried to talk to senior local Tory Pierre Poilievre about what happened. His campaign office told me he was out canvassing for 12 hours straight on Wednesday. I asked whether it might be possible to somehow get him a message asking him to call. They said, well, they’d try. Cellphones don’t work wherever he was in deepest Carleton, I guess.
When word got out Tuesday morning that all the local Conservatives had stood the mayor up, Poilievre got on the horn pretty quickly. The two talked within an hour, setting up a new date for a Tory briefing on Aug. 31. Nobody cared very much about the other parties’ sessions with Watson and the city staffers, but now this one is news because the Conservatives were such asses.
Scheduling didn’t work for today but look forward to meeting with @JimWatsonOttawa sometime in next two weeks.
— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) August 25, 2015
They didn’t learn from Tim Hudak’s failed provincial campaign last year. In Ottawa, apparently on autopilot, he said a Progressive Conservative government wouldn’t fund a rail expansion here because Queen’s Park is just too broke. He had to clean that mess up in a hurry, just the way Poilievre had to this week. Yet another foot-shooting that didn’t have to happen.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
