The National Capital Commission is promising an era of Glasnost, but Mike Spelay argues it may not warm the Cold War between the NCC and Ottawa residents
By Mike Spelay
It has been reported that the National Capital Commission may be letting the public in on its plans on how to make Ottawa a better place.
Rarely does a crown corporation take as much heat as the NCC, and it comes from all levels. Politicians such as Jim Watson and Somerset Ward councillor Elisabeth Arnold regularly take issue against the NCC on the pages of this newspaper. And if you ask most area residents what they think of the NCC, they’ll usually respond with an eyeroll or a mouthful.
That is, if they even know the NCC’s function. It’s a crown corporation that has been around since 1899. It is one of Ottawa’s major landowners, just like Public Works. Its objective is to fix up the land it owns and make it better.
The problem is that their brainstorms occur without public consultation and tend to include building demolitions, the re-routing of traffic and other initiatives that rub Centretown residents the wrong way.
Now, however, ordinary people may have greater input into the decisions of the corporation. The public will be invited to three of its five general meetings each year, and the other two meetings will open to the public for a brief period. The public will also have access to agendas before the meetings and minutes afterwards. A website will give the public further access. This is all scheduled for next year, although deadlines don’t always mean much at the NCC.
Some local politicians remain skeptical of the initiative.
“It’s a step in the right direction,” says Arnold. “It still remains to be seen what impact that will have on their process. We’ll see if it’s more community-friendly.”
The public may be equally hard to win over.
Some past NCC decisions have been questionable. Its plan to widen Metcalfe Street (which would have involved the demolition of some key buildings) was cancelled due to negative public reaction, Diane Dupuis, a spokesperson, told Centretown News last year. But if the public never had any interest in widening Metcalfe Street, why was time wasted in the first place developing this idea?
Another controversy rocked the NCC when news of its plan to develop the block of land north of Sparks Street, between Queen and O’Connor, was published in the Ottawa Citizen. The NCC used $9.2 million tax dollars to buy a building that was worth significantly less than the purchase price. That building was then scheduled to be demolished by the NCC.
All of these fiascoes came before the NCC’s promise to open itself to the public. Will anything change? Its board meetings will still be closed, and past plans have continued despite negative public reaction.
“I don’t think it will solve the problems at all,” says councillor Clive Doucet. “The problem with the federal level is that it’s not clear who the NCC reports to. The fundamental problem of accountability remains unchanged.”
This initiative comes at a time when the NCC is working towards the re-purposing of Lebreton Flats. This plan, like the Sparks Street and Metcalfe Street proposals, is another scheme that involves taking a prime piece of real estate and turning it into a haven for business, retail and landlords. It remains to be seen if the public will have more of a voice in this project than those of the past .
“I think it’s a very positive initiative they are undertaking,” says Liberal MP Mac Harb, of the reforms.
Let’s hope this optimism pays off, because Ottawa doesn’t need another secret society.