Today's letters: Sports arenas in Ottawa's urban areas are crumbling

Saturday, Sept. 21: The demise of the Belltown Dome is but one example of urban neglect, a reader says. You can write to us too, at [email protected]

Published Sep 21, 2024  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  9 minute read

The Belltown Dome hockey rink in Bay Ward. Does it portend what will happen to other urban rinks? Photo by Tony Caldwell /POSTMEDIA

Inner city is rapidly losing its ice pads

Re: Demise of the Belltown Dome — Is this what awaits Ottawa’s other urban rinks? Sept. 18.

Thanks to Bruce Deachman for bringing this to your readership.

We are longtime residents inside the greenbelt and the continual theme I see as a taxpayer is the loss of services in our area. Meanwhile, builders outside the greenbelt build new sports facilities in the suburbs, leaving us with mismanaged, decaying facilities.

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In the last number of years we have lost six ice pads inside the greenbelt and more are soon to follow, I’m sure.

What we really need is a multiplex facility, similar to what exists in Half Moon Bay, with a pool, gym and multiple ice pads to provide the taxpayers inside the greenbelt services that they have lost.

Ironically, both the Ottawa Senators and Ottawa 67’s are looking like they will get new facilities. However as it stands today, they are only single-pad setups. How Ottawa to mess this up.

Richard Pinsonneault, Ottawa

A bigger example of spending waste

Re: Ridiculous, wasteful spending batters Ottawa finances, Sept. 18.

The author of this opinion article suggests that a few small omissions to street (and other) maintenance would save the city significant money. While some of his ideas merit consideration, those small upgrades and repairs amount to a tiny fraction of the city budget.

He fails to mention much larger “wasteful spending” in the form of huge subsidies to developers (Exhibit A: millions to OSEG for a new arena and north-side stadium at Lansdowne, when relatively minor repairs would extend the life of the current ones up to 30 years.)

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Putting that kind of money into our transit system could really make a difference.

Bessa Whitmore, Ottawa

Police are languishing at construction sites

One of the most obvious waste of taxpayer funds is the use of police at construction sites. In 99 per cent of cases I have observed, there are one or two officers simply sitting in parked police vehicles doing nothing.

Brian Vachon, Greely

Hiking Transpo fares won’t help rescue public transit

Re: ‘It’s not fair at all’: City facing tough choices to shore up transit budget, Sept. 11.

Perhaps I am lacking in imagination as compared to Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, but I cannot think of any way in which increasing OC Transpo fare prices by up to 75 per cent will be productive. The revenue gain from increased prices will pale in comparison to the revenue drop from decreased ridership, and the already low ridership that Sutcliffe laments may drop to almost nothing.

Nor will a budget cut of up to $120 million do any favours to a system that is already famously unreliable. Ottawa simply cannot afford fewer bus routes and longer wait times. If people feel they cannot count on the transit system to take them where they need to go quickly and reliably, they will turn to alternatives. OC Transpo will lose more fare money than it saves through service cuts, and the streets will be cluttered with cars and unyielding traffic.

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At best, Sutcliffe’s proposed plans are a poorly thought out attempt to salvage a decaying transit system, or a threat to higher levels of government to procure additional funding. At worst, it’s a deliberate plan to deliver the death blow to an already doomed project.

Whatever the case, I can only hope that Sutcliffe’s persuasive powers get OC Transpo its federal and provincial funding; knowing the council’s fierce aversion to raising the transit levy, it looks like this situation will not be resolved in any other way.

F. A. Amer, Ottawa

Poor service can’t build ridership

The city has once again failed OC Transpo users by not providing a decent schedule interval of service to non-peak LRT users.

What the city fails to realize is that when it comes to transit to get you to school or work, you are only willing to put up with poor service for so long before something gives and ridership is lost.

In my case, my Presto card stays in my pocket as I am lucky enough to be able to walk downtown in the time it would take to walk to the station, try my luck on either catching a train fairly quickly or finding one with space. This is both a revenue loss for OC Transpo and a loss of trust in OC Transpo and the city.

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Why is it there are hundreds of millions of dollars for Landsdowne and nothing for non-peak LRT users?

Jeff Sutton, Ottawa

City rules are often hypocritical

Re: Ottawa city committees pass strict one-minute idling limit, Sept. 19.

This is yet another sign of city council’s hypocrisy. Here’s a short list:

— Limits on garbage pickup for residents while Ottawa City Housing (OCH) has large commercial dumpsters for their residents to toss anything they choose, as much and as often as they can. My councillor says OCH is working on this.

— All city arenas and community buildings have large commercial dumpsters and those dumpsters are what has created the “Carp mountain” landfill. That property used to be level with Carp Road. So excess garbage is fine, as long as it’s landfilled somewhere else. “Lead by example” doesn’t seem to apply here.

— Paramedic cars and vans idle while on break, on calls and any time they are stopped. The same is true of police and OC Transpo transit police. OC Transpo buses and Para Transpo vans can also be added to the list.

— The tailpipe emissions winner is OC Transpo’s running of empty buses all over the city because, well, it’s public transit so it has to always be good … right?

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— The city claims to really care about the health of the Ottawa and Rideau Rivers but spreads 188,000 tons of road salt (170,600,000 kg) yearly, much of it on roads already devoid of snow/ice. That salt filters into our watershed, as the latest Riverkeeper report shows. Another contaminant is sewer discharge.

These things are 100 per cent under the control of the city. Do as we say, not as we do, is very apt when the city is involved.

Ian Stewart, Ottawa

On child safety, speed matters

Re: Letter, Safe driving isn’t just about speed, Sept. 7.

I can understand a lot of what the letter-writer is saying but even the best of drivers have to be able to react in an emergency.

The Ottawa Safety Council teaches kids to be safe on the roads and one of the lessons is about the time it takes the brain to register the need to stop, then to actually stop the vehicle.

Ottawa Safety Council has data on stopping Distance and  braking safely at ottawasafetycouncil.ca. When there are kids around, the only way to keep them safe is to set lower speed limits.

And I do think red light and speed cameras have their place. Whether it is a good reminder to slow down or not try to get through a yellow light, or it’s fear of the fines, they do lower speeds and keep us all safer. 

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Moyra Lauzière, adult crossing guard, Ottawa Safety Council

I kept cellphones out of my classes

Re: Classroom cellphone restrictions, vaping bans kicking in this school year, Aug. 30.

I am a retired Ottawa-Carleton District School Board Grade 8 teacher. When I was still teaching, I made it clear at the beginning of the year that cellphones were to be left in lockers and not used during my class because they were a huge distraction.

I found that they tended to undermine discipline and concentration in the classroom. Students used to text each other, try to get answers on tests or make arrangements with students in other classes to meet in the washrooms and so on. If they are texting, they are not focused on the task at hand.

When I saw students using cellphones, I would confiscate them until the end of the day. No cellphones in class makes life so much easier.

Mary Kane, Nepean

A happy public service is a productive one

Re: Remote work is key to modernizing the public service, Sept. 19.

Finally, someone is writing sensible about the remote work situation for government workers. Treasury Board — in all its enthusiasm to bend to the public’s perception of lazy government workers wanting to continue to work from home — has charged ahead, forcing people back even though it didn’t bother to determine if the buildings were physically able to accommodate workers.

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And after the fact, it convened a working group to examine, among other things, whether this decision makes sense for productivity improvement. All Treasury Board had to do was review the productivity over the past few years to see that remote work improved results.

A happy workforce is a productive workforce. That’s Business 101.

Janet de Kergommeaux, MBA, retired government executive

Federal government shows little forethought

It is now well-known that the federal government’s lack of forethought on immigration for the last number of years has created a housing crisis. It allowed in a very large number of people and did not account for accommodations. No one apparently asked “Where are they going to live?”

Likewise, federal workers going back to their offices three days a week has become an issue, since space is hard to come by. Workers are jockeying for places to be able to work at in the office. The government hired 42 per cent more workers over the years and had no plans on where they were all going to work.

This government does not seem to be able to look down the road as it tries to handle crisis after crisis.

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Another example: EV policies versus the number of charging stations. The list goes on, and the longer they govern, the longer that list will get.

Robert Lamont, Ottawa

Poilievre should know better on carbon pricing

Re: Poilievre tells MPs carbon tax would cause a ‘nuclear winter’ for economy, Sept. 15.

I don’t get it. The world recognizes the need to decarbonize quickly. Millions are facing the devastating consequences of climate change. Most economists see carbon pricing as the most cost-effective way to cause change. Those who use less fossil fuel get a rebate that exceeds what they pay in carbon pricing, and everyone is rewarded for using less.

But Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre wants to axe the rebate, alienate those who care about the planet and now expects to defeat the government on this issue.

I may not like his lack of principle, but I thought he was smarter than that.

Michael Wiggin, Ottawa

Liberals have just raised the price of a home

Re: Freeland allowing more 30-year mortgages, higher values for insured mortgages, Sept. 16.

Thank you, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland for raising the price of a home.

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Anyone who has taken even one economics course would have learned about the law of supply and demand. So far, the supply has remained stubbornly  constant while the demand has greatly increased due, in large measure, to the unprecedented increase in the number of immigrants over the last few years.

By increasing the length of a mortgage and raising the cap on insured mortgages, the government has again upped the demand side of the equation. If enough buyers cannot afford to buy a home, then the sellers would have no choice but to decrease the asking price (which has already happened in many jurisdictions).

As many economists have said, the cure for high prices is high prices.

Les Shinder, Nepean

AI is singing the same old tune

Re: In today’s AI world, the human voice still matters, Sept. 14.

Back in 1976, I submitted a paper to my contemporary music class in the University of Ottawa’s music department on the subject of computer-generated music. Focused on work by composer Iannis Xenakis, my paper explored what happened when compositional rules of a particular composer, say Johanne Sebastien Bach, were fed into a computer which was then asked to write out a minuet or two-part invention on a given theme of that composer.

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Using what was called “stochastic principles,” the results were always universally boring, instantly forgettable music.

To my trained ear, at least, this is the case still with current AI-generated music and arranging. It is crafty, efficient — and instantly forgettable.

The very best film directors use the very best composers for their soundtracks. Perhaps the best and easily the most successful of these, John Williams, writes his music on paper with an HB pencil.

Talk amongst yourselves …

Thomas Brawn, B.mus.(Ed.), flutist,
Orléans

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