Glebe Report - Volume 32 Number 6- June 14 2002

9 Glebe Report June 14, 2002 REPORT
City councillor's report
Boat
There was a boat
Which came to take me away
Across the green-blue sea.
To a place
That had the healing sounds of
joy,
Of wonder,
Of fragile immanence.
WHITTON AWARDS
It is a very great privilege to
have been elected by the folks of
Capital Ward, for all kinds of
reasons. I felt that privilege very
much at the Whitton Awards. It i s
the first time I have had the
chance to host them as your city
councillor where, joined by former
councillors Inez Berg, Brian
McGarry, Joan O'Neill and our
school trustee Lynn Graham, we
had a wonderful evening celebrating
the communities of Capital
Ward and some of the many
people who make the Glebe/Dow's
Lake, Old Ottawa South, Old Ottawa
East and Heron Park such
easy places to love.
Mentioning individuals is always
risky because for every one
person mentioned, there are others
left out. But to give you an
idea of the range of contributions
our neighbours make to and for
us, here are some of the award
winners: Gloria Williams who
keeps the children's play group
going in Heron Park; Marlin
McKale who for years has supported
local sports teams and
maintains a welcoming, skilled
By
Councillor
Clive
Doucet
business on the corner of Fifth
and Bank; Graham Long, an OAC
student at Glebe Collegiate who
has already coached hockey and
softball in the community for
many years; the three chairs of
the Glebe traffic planBrad
Christakos, Pat Steenberg, Wayne
Burgess; Blake Proudfoot, editor
of the Mainstreeter; and, posthumously
recognized for his work in
Old Ottawa South, Dale Shaw who,
among many other things, was a
crossing guard who protected
children from aggressive drivers
on a busy street.
The Whitton Awards celebrate
the community and are the time
we recognize just some of the
many people who make the cityvillages
of Capital Ward one of
the best places in the world to
live.
PAUL MARTIN AND
THE FEDERATION OF
CANADIAN MUNICIPALITIES
It's been an action-packed
week at City Hall. On the weekend,
I was in Hamilton attending
the Federation of Canadian Municipalities
annual general meet-
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ing and I was astonished to see
how much this rather academic
and social organization has become
politicized from every direction.
Finance Minister Paul
Martin's opening speech was a
bombshell both within the FCM
and evidently without, on the
Prime Minister's desk. Minister
Martin came out on the side of
city politicians who have been
saying for years now that they
have to receive a share of the
great ability to pay taxes like the
GST, the income tax and the gas
tax in order to run their cities.
Right now, if a Canadian city
hosts an international event like
the Francophone Games or the
Pan-American Games, we lose
money because we have no ability
to benefit from all the activities
these events generate. And we see
it in the growing inequity between
the three orders of government.
Federal tax revenues have
grown by 38 per cent, provincial
by 30 per cent and city by 14 per
cent. We are falling further and
further behind, and it is clear all
of our cities are suffering on
every levelin our social deficit
more and more homeless people,
in our environmental deficit,
more and more air-quality alerts,
and in our infrastructure deficit,
more and more crowded buses and
crowded roads.
Judy Sgro, the Prime Minister's
chair of urban issues, has
recently come out with a report,
but in it she recommends no new
tax powers for cities; instead, it's
back to where we've come from
and that is shared-cost programs.
One would assume this is the
Prime Minister's position as it
was his task force. It's a position
Mr. Martin does not seem to
share, nor do mayors and city
councillors from the 1,000 communities
that were represented at
the FCM. We are of one mind on
this. We don't want to go back to
the endless manipulations of the
shared-cost programs. We want
the independence to raise the
taxes to meet our needs. Clearly,
this must mean a new powersharing
agreement between the
cities and the federal government,
because we don't want more total
taxes; we just want a new split on
who gets what. But the Prime
Minister doesn't seem inclined to
share power with anyone. Hence,
it should be no surprise he found
Martin's speech offensive.
I participated in the first
meeting of a National Network of
City Councillors for Inclusive
Cities. This network of councillors
representing communities
from coast to coast is dedicated to
campaigning for political change,
which can return to the 80 per
cent of Canadians who live in
cities the powers that they need
to manage cities in a sustainable,
inclusive manner.
FIRST-EVER PUBLIC RALLY
FOR LIGHT RAIL AT CITY HALL
We had a great rally for Clean
Air, Healthy Communities and
Light Rail at City Hall. It featured
35 community groupseveryone
from the Sierra Club to the City
Centre Coalitionall under the
banner of Citizens for Healthy
Communities. Glebe Collegiate's
own Stomp Bank performed, along
with the Canterbury High Stage
Band, the Raging Grannies, rock
group Lister just returned from
L.A., and blues singer Maria
Hawkins. The sun was shining and
the day was perfect. And, amid
great music, speeches by Dr. Rob
Cushman, Wendy Lambert and
young Marie-Lyne Bergeron from
La Nouvelle Scène made the point
that electric light rail is good for
your health, roads are not.
The coalition released a sixpoint
public transit action plan
which calls for at least 50 per
cent of the city's new capacity
funding to be spent on transit,
extending the 0-train to Gatineau,
the airport and Leitrim,
and building an inner and outer
light rail ring service which will
put all residents of Ottawa within
a short hop of a fast, efficient,
light rail service.
In the evening, at Saint Paul
University on Main Street, John
Sewell, the former mayor of Toronto,
made the point to a packed
audience of more than 300 people
that Ottawa has been wedded to
traffic sewers like the 417, Merivale
Avenue, Hunt Club or the
brand-new Conroy Road since the
city abandoned the streetcars in
the '60s. He made the point in a
way bordering on poetry that
cities with soul, cities that are
sustainable have streets that
serve many purposes. They are
places you want to go to, not to get
to some other placestreets like
Bank Street which have a community
of stores, cafés, churches,
pedestrians, cyclists, buses and
cars. These are the kinds of
streets which are sustainable,
profitable, community and environmentally
friendly. But the
city of Ottawa doesn't seem to
want to build them. He didn't like
the idea of dedicated corridors.
"Use the streets," he said. "Why
would you want to build a corridor
whose only purpose is to get
you someplace else? This is how
you build provincial and national
highways. City streets need to be
more complex and serve more
purpose. Those purposes should
start with the entire community,
not how many vehicles you can
flush down the street in an hour."
BUDGET DIRECTIONS
CONSULTATION, JUNE 20,
COLONEL BY ROOM
Please note that June 20
is the correct date, s o
please amend from the i n -
formation found in th e
English section of the m i d -
term report.
I encourage you to come out to
the first ever Budget Directions
Consultations. This is your
chance to talk about the big
budget picture. How much money
should we put into greening our
city? How much into our playing
fields and community centres?
How much money into public
transit versus more roads? It will
be an important chance to help
form our 2003 budget. I hope to
see you there!
Trust you will be thinking
about beaches and sunrises this
summer, not traffic sewers.
Clive Doucet, 580-2487.
S0.441441
/14tia
1-877-513-5333