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Jim Watson’s baritone chuckle preceded him and Catherine McKenna out of his City Hall offices Friday morning. Already you could tell that this meeting between the mayor and Ottawa’s new senior federal minister had been different.
Joint appearances by Watson and McKenna’s Conservative predecessors — when they happened, usually for a specific announcement — were stiffly formal affairs, each man carefully avoiding giving offence to the other in public. Imagine a couple after a bitter divorce doing their best not to ruin their daughter’s wedding.
On Friday, Watson and McKenna were late, a half-hour meeting having stretched to almost double that before they came out to talk about what they’d talked about. They had no decisions, no promises. But they had good feelings.
“We had a very good discussion on a number of issues that affect both the federal government and the city government,” Watson said, beginning to flip through a sheaf of briefing papers. “Light rail transit and Phase 2, reform of the NCC, environmental issues, celebrating Canada’s 150th birthday, the cycling and pedestrian bridge at Clegg Avenue, Arts Court —” he grinned as the list began to get out of hand “— the King Edward tunnel study and the former U.S. embassy. I look forward to working with the minister and her caucus colleagues in the months and years ahead.”
He’d handed over notes on each subject. “I very much appreciate her open-mindedness on this approach to working collaboratively together,” he said.
“It’s obviously a great pleasure to be here,” McKenna replied. “We have a lot of issues in common that I’m looking forward to working with the city and the mayor on.”
Ordinary politicians’ words, but the smiling and the comfort the two plainly have with each other gave them a different cast. They traded spots easily in front of the microphone outside Watson’s office, the mayor even chiming in when McKenna took questions about her ministerial responsibilities for the environment and climate change. She’s off to Paris in a couple of weeks to try to make a multi-country deal on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions — and hey, he pointed out, we’ve got some ideas for ways to do it right here in McKenna’s riding.
“One of the examples that I mentioned to the minister is the investment in light-rail transit is going to be our biggest reduction in GHGs in our city’s history,” he said. “That’s why it’s important that we have a government that’s very activist when it comes to investing in infrastructure. It’s not just about commute times, it’s also about the environment.”
It’s no wonder they get along. McKenna’s a Liberal, Watson’s a Liberal, and the new MP with the abruptly hectic international schedule was elected partly on promises to fix things that have bugged Watson for years. That vacant embassy on Wellington Street that the federal government owns, for instance, that’s the blighted heart of the underactive federal street that every tourist in Ottawa visits.
Not to mention the archly aloof National Capital Commission, whose operations McKenna wants to make more transparent and whose board she believes should include people named specifically by the Ottawa and Gatineau councils. That’s not up to McKenna, since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave oversight of the commission to Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly of Montreal — but Thursday, before Joly met the commission’s chair Russell Mills and chief executive Mark Kristmanson, McKenna’s the one who gave the heritage minister a crash course in what the NCC does and why it drives so many people here crazy.
By the end of Thursday, Joly was out in public with lines McKenna could easily have written herself: Tory appointees Mills and Kristmanson have orders to beef up proposals for opening the NCC up further, and Joly will consult a little bit more before, it’s pretty clear, putting an end to plans for a big memorial by the Supreme Court to the victims of global communism. Whether this holds up after Trudeau’s first cabinet shuffle, we’ll see, but it seems unlikely Joly will do anything big with the commission before checking with McKenna first.
A week after the new government took over, everything is just talk. They’ll have to move beyond meetings and into action before long. But for now, the relationship between the mayor’s office and Parliament Hill is the warmest it’s been in a decade.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
Joint appearances by Watson and McKenna’s Conservative predecessors — when they happened, usually for a specific announcement — were stiffly formal affairs, each man carefully avoiding giving offence to the other in public. Imagine a couple after a bitter divorce doing their best not to ruin their daughter’s wedding.
On Friday, Watson and McKenna were late, a half-hour meeting having stretched to almost double that before they came out to talk about what they’d talked about. They had no decisions, no promises. But they had good feelings.
“We had a very good discussion on a number of issues that affect both the federal government and the city government,” Watson said, beginning to flip through a sheaf of briefing papers. “Light rail transit and Phase 2, reform of the NCC, environmental issues, celebrating Canada’s 150th birthday, the cycling and pedestrian bridge at Clegg Avenue, Arts Court —” he grinned as the list began to get out of hand “— the King Edward tunnel study and the former U.S. embassy. I look forward to working with the minister and her caucus colleagues in the months and years ahead.”
He’d handed over notes on each subject. “I very much appreciate her open-mindedness on this approach to working collaboratively together,” he said.
“It’s obviously a great pleasure to be here,” McKenna replied. “We have a lot of issues in common that I’m looking forward to working with the city and the mayor on.”
Ordinary politicians’ words, but the smiling and the comfort the two plainly have with each other gave them a different cast. They traded spots easily in front of the microphone outside Watson’s office, the mayor even chiming in when McKenna took questions about her ministerial responsibilities for the environment and climate change. She’s off to Paris in a couple of weeks to try to make a multi-country deal on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions — and hey, he pointed out, we’ve got some ideas for ways to do it right here in McKenna’s riding.
“One of the examples that I mentioned to the minister is the investment in light-rail transit is going to be our biggest reduction in GHGs in our city’s history,” he said. “That’s why it’s important that we have a government that’s very activist when it comes to investing in infrastructure. It’s not just about commute times, it’s also about the environment.”
It’s no wonder they get along. McKenna’s a Liberal, Watson’s a Liberal, and the new MP with the abruptly hectic international schedule was elected partly on promises to fix things that have bugged Watson for years. That vacant embassy on Wellington Street that the federal government owns, for instance, that’s the blighted heart of the underactive federal street that every tourist in Ottawa visits.
Not to mention the archly aloof National Capital Commission, whose operations McKenna wants to make more transparent and whose board she believes should include people named specifically by the Ottawa and Gatineau councils. That’s not up to McKenna, since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave oversight of the commission to Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly of Montreal — but Thursday, before Joly met the commission’s chair Russell Mills and chief executive Mark Kristmanson, McKenna’s the one who gave the heritage minister a crash course in what the NCC does and why it drives so many people here crazy.
By the end of Thursday, Joly was out in public with lines McKenna could easily have written herself: Tory appointees Mills and Kristmanson have orders to beef up proposals for opening the NCC up further, and Joly will consult a little bit more before, it’s pretty clear, putting an end to plans for a big memorial by the Supreme Court to the victims of global communism. Whether this holds up after Trudeau’s first cabinet shuffle, we’ll see, but it seems unlikely Joly will do anything big with the commission before checking with McKenna first.
A week after the new government took over, everything is just talk. They’ll have to move beyond meetings and into action before long. But for now, the relationship between the mayor’s office and Parliament Hill is the warmest it’s been in a decade.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
