Since I could never drag explanations from anyone, from city councillor to street sweeper, I assumed that no one—even those employed in the Ottawa Community Sustainability Department—had the faintest idea what it is supposed to accomplish. In fact, on more than one occasion I got the distinct impression that most of those around City Hall didn’t even know that such a thing as the Community Sustainability Department exists.
Now, this is probably not that unusual. Mystery departments that serve no useful purpose other than to provide well-paid jobs and marvelous benefits to people who otherwise would have to really work for a living, or even go back to school to learn something useful at a community college, have sprung up like mushrooms in the musty dark corridors of government bureaucracies all across the country.
Thus it came as a great surprise to me when a rookie city councillor was not only able to track down the Community Sustainability Department deep in the bowels of Ottawa City Hall, but was able to get them to become “transparent” enough to explain to us great unwashed exactly what wonderful things its hard-working employees and managers are doing to justify their salaries.
As God is my witness here for the first time, word for word, is the official full and transparent explanation of what the Ottawa Community Sustainability Department does. The following is part of an email sent by Ottawa City Councillor Stephen Blais to one of my listeners:
The Community Sustainability Department, which works directly with our Infrastructure Services Department, is made up of a number of branches that perform a wide range of roles and responsibilities that benefit the residents of Cumberland and Ottawa.
The Environmental Sustainability Branch provides leadership and expertise in environmental policy research, data integration and performance measurement to aid in the implementation of policies, strategies and tools to achieve sustainable development from an environmental perspective—A Green and Environmentally Sensitive City.
The Sustainability Planning and Development Branch leads the development and implementation of the National Capital Region.
Planning Initiative which addresses and responds to the ongoing planning and development challenges of the City of Ottawa. Their task includes providing leadership, advice, facilitation, coordination, and integrated planning expertise to the development of a long-term vision for the sustainable community including strategic, business and neighbourhood planning.
Finally; the Sustainability Practice and Neighbourhood Livability Branch works to ensure that the sustainability practices are implemented across departments and communities.
These practices include providing leadership, support and guidance on the identification and development, monitoring and reporting, and benchmarking of key indicators at the neighbourhood and community level and report on progress in achieving long term development strategies.
There you have it. Pure transparency. And no, I swear on a stack of Gore/Suzuki gospels, I did not make this up. Could anyone, after having read this, not fully understand exactly what the Community Sustainability Department does and the wonderful benefits it provides us taxpayers? Could anything be clearer?
One thing is for certain. We conservatives across the country understand the various explanations perfectly. In fact we can explain it all with just one word—BULLSHIT!
Fortunately it cannot baffle conservative brains!
Chapter 5
The Pipe Dream Summit
The official title is the Sustainability Summit, held June 11, 2010, at Ottawa City Hall. The participant feedback summary, entitled What was said, Sustainability Summit, June 11, 2010, Choosing our Future, says:
“Over 200 community leaders, members of the business community, NGOs, academics, youth and representatives from all levels of government participated in the one-day event.
The purpose of the summit was to create the opportunity for community leaders to exchange views and identify strategies that would make the region more livable, resilient and sustainable.”
This whole livable, resilient and sustainable thing got off to a rousing start when keynote speaker, John Helliwell, Co-director of the Social Interactions, Identity and Well-Being program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research spoke on “happiness.” (Something achieved, apparently by fastening cute little leaf-shaped notes to trees!)
Since I could not possibility dream this kind of stuff up, allow me to continue quoting from the participant feedback summary.
“Throughout the day, local artists celebrated our vibrant community. The artists included slam poets, performers from the Ottawa School of Dance, and a Zumba dancer. Participants were also encouraged to write their ideas on paper leaves and post them on trees in the meeting area. (I swear on a stack of Gore/Suzukis I am not making this up!) During the small group discussions, participants also wrote their ideas on paper tablecloths set out for this purpose.” (No mention of plastic scissors here or crayons!)
So what kind of ideas did our little kindergarten class (masquerading as community leaders) write on those cute little cut out maple leaves and the brown paper tablecloths?
I know this will fill you with shock and awe, but according to the Zumba dancing fans at the Sustainability Summit all we have to do to guarantee Shangri-La is simply enforce every liberal/socialist wing nut pipe dream foisted on the suffering public since Karl Marx.
Here are just a few things we will look forward to when the Sustainability Summit nut job graduates take over. The comments in brackets are my translations.
•People need to get out of their cars! (Turning all streets into bike lanes should do it.)
•We’ve got to have sustainable employment that we really enjoy. (Happy, well paid government jobs for life.)
•People must be stopped from buying so many things. (That certainly worked well in the Soviet Union.)
•We must be happy. (Only a Liberal/NDP government can accomplish that.)
•Individual behaviour must be changed.(We’ve got to vote Liberal/NDP, bike to work, use the green bins and smile more. Less flatulence would be nice too.)
•We’ve got to do a better job educating our students about environmental issues. (Teach them to vote Liberal/NDP, save the polar bears, build windmills in our back yards, bike to work, join a union, demand free beer.)
•Suburbs are not sustainable in their current form. (Close down all fire stations in the burbs and allow fire to do the job. “Burn the Burbs” becomes the new motto!)
•Renovate existing housing and building stock. (Each home must be remodeled to accommodate at least one homeless person or serve as a “safe injection site.”)
•Limit development outside the greenbelt. (See, “Burn the Burbs.”)
•Generate alternate energy closer to home. (Backyards must now accommodate at least one windmill; every roof must be covered with solar panels. Hamster wheels must be hooked into the electrical grid.)
•Make bike streets. (I have no idea what this means. Do you?)
•Reduce our meat dependence. (They were able to accomplish this in the Soviet Union, North Korea and Cuba; why not Canada? A waiter who informed me, “Cuban cows have lifestyle issues” dissuaded me from ordering a steak in Cuba a couple years ago!)
•Plant indigenous plants on front yards instead of lawns. (Thanks to the ban on spraying, this policy is already well underway. Thistles and dandelions are wonderfully indigenous. So are the grubs and the skunks that plow them up.)
•Reduce waste. (The increased taxes to support all of these hare-brained ideas will ensure that no one has any money left over to buy anything to waste. We’ll be scraping the glue off our wallpaper for dinner.)
•Reduce parking