Archive 1997-2016
Population: 106, 562
Average Household Income: $48,689
Language Breakdown: English, 85,495, French, 7,130
Industries: Government
Business
Health and Social Services
Source: Census Canada 1996
An Ottawa Centre MPP’s Who’s Who
Current: Richard Patten (Liberal)
By Damali Nabagereka
Some voters in Ottawa Centre say they feel they’re having a hard time getting answers from some of the candidates at all-candidates forums in this election.
“I received no direct response,” said Tracey Lauriault, who attented a child-care forum at the Bronson Centre. Lauriault is a full-time student at Carleton University and a mother of two children aged 4, and 8. She asked for a commitment from the candidates to increase child-care spaces.
By Nicholas Greenfield
If provincial elections were like wine, then this is one vintage worth forgetting. No body. No flavour. No panache.
The Ottawa Centre campaign is just like that old TV commercial for Partagé wine — the one with the sultry French woman who takes her wine very seriously — it is dry, and ow you zey?, wizout ze edge. It’s dry all right. And there hasn’t been much of an edge either. Without question, the biggest issue in Ottawa Centre is school closures and cuts to health care and the domino effect it will have on the community’s social programs. Why then have constituents been leaving all-candidate’s meetings with only more questions? Where’s the edge? Where’s that pinch in the tastebuds that says, now that’s a bottle worth investing in?