Politics-Ottawa

Crack Pipe Kits NOT Municipal Jurisdiction

Mulder

As Ottawa city council works through ways through the budget for 2007, the issue of spending money on free “crack pipe kits” has come up again. And, as expected, the Ottawa medical officer of health, David Salisbury, is defending the program.

However, the police chief is standing by his statements too.

Police Chief Vince Bevan has said that he opposes the program because it promotes illegal drug use.

“The chief’s position is clear on this,” said spokeswoman Isabelle Lemieux.

Am I wrong in assuming that a program designed to minimize the spread of HIV and Hep C should be left to the provincial government? I always thought health care was provincial jurisdiction.

In fact, last fall during the election run, I called in to a radio show hosting the candidates for Cumberland ward (not my ward) and asked how the candidates would vote if the idea of safe injection clinics was brought up. Rob Jellett, the incumbent, was the only one who stated clearly that this fell under provincial jurisdiction. Since safe injection clinics give free needles and are there to help prevent the spread of diseases, one would conclude the free crack pipe kit program is in the same boat.

I think we need more of city council to read Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species.

ADDENDUM

From CFRA:

Ottawa Police are responding to the scolding they received from the city’s Medical Officer of Health.

A frustrated Dr. David Salisbury says the police service has done everything in its power to interfere with the needle exchange and crack pipe programs by confiscating the kits. However, Ottawa Police Superintendent Gilles Larochelle isn’t offering any apologies.

He says in a criminal investigation, police will seize drug paraphenalia(sic) no matter where it came from. He adds they sometimes take away the pipes for “safety reasons”.

Ottawa Has A New Mayor But Returns Every Incumbent Councillor

Mulder

Tonight I had the privilege of attending the campaign party for Larry O’Brien, who just happens to be the new mayor of Ottawa.

Larry swept to an early lead taking just under 50% of the vote. The right leaning voters united behind his banner while the left leaning voters divvied themselves up between incumbent Bob Chiarelli and Alex Munter.

Funny, that’s just what I said would happen back in February. Albeit back then the right leaning candidate was to be Terry Kilrea and not Larry O’Brien.

I had the luxury of attending the event with ShamTheToryMan and Matt from A Step To The Right and below are a few pictures that I snapped with my cell phone.

BobConceding

Bob Chiarelli shows up to concede in a classy speech.

Larry1Small

Larry gets the crowd going with his victory speech. Plough those furrows straight Larry. Plough ’em straight.

LisaSmall

Provincial MPP Lisa MacLeod showed up to celebrate with Larry. I seem to run into her everywhere.

MattNLarry

Matt (A Step To The Right) with Larry.

ShamNMatt

ShamTheToryMan and Matt (A Step To The Right)

All in all a surprising evening. We now have a straight arrow businessman in charge but we have returned a left leaning council so it is going to be interesting to see how things develop.

Phew. Hopefully, tomorrow I can stop looking at the sign farms.
signssigns.jpg

Municipal Election Shenanigans Begin

Mulder

It was looking like a pretty clean municipal election campaign in Kanata South until this morning. I found the photo below in my mail box in what is a blatant attempt to tie the right leaning candidate, Allan Hubley, to the Liberal Party in an attempt to discredit him as a candidate. Well I hate to disappoint someone but people have photos taken with prominent politicians all the time and pulling one out of the hat from 7 years ago doesn’t hold much water. Especially when they can’t even spell Allan’s name properly.

Hubley-Martin

I can’t say which candidate’s supporters put this in my mail box but I just want to tell them that it will not be switching my vote. Our Ward needs a new face that won’t vote for Crack Pipe Kits, that won’t vote for North-South LRT, and who won’t flip flop like a fish.

Ottawa Light Rapid Taxpit … errr … I mean Transit

Mulder

A couple of weeks ago, I was down in San Jose for a couple of days for work and I managed to snap a couple of cell phone photos of the LRT system used. This is similar to the system that is planned for the city of Ottawa. It is based on electricity with train like street cars that get their juice from the overhanging wires. Like we had last century.
Let’s take a look at the San Jose LRT and see what we can expect from our system.

San Jose LRT 1

Notice the overhead wires?? How lovely for our city to have such nice wires strung across our view of the lovely blue sky.

Can’t see them? Look at the picture below. They are much nicer. Think of how many kites our city will be able to catch and resell at a profit!!
San Jose LRT 3

See how they contrast so nicely on the blue? It will give our eyes something joyful to focus on. Who would want to stare at that lovely blue sky all by its’ lonesome anyway.

Oh, and in case you just can’t get enough, check out this lovely rat’s nest that happens where routes split. We will have lots of these as spurs as the system grows. It’s such a nice pattern. It reminds me of a spider’s web. And our green environmentalista ridership will appreciate the natural artistry of a spiders web won’t they!! And if they can’t appreciate that, they can appreciate the system not using diesel electric trains. Instead they will run on juice provided by the power grid that supplies our homes. We all know how reliable that system is. It means our city of Ottawa will not get those noxious diesel fumes. Instead. we can now slough it off on the area surrounding the coal fired power plants in some other part of the province. How nice of us to have clean air at someone elses expense. Mayor Bob was a genius with regards to this aspect of the plan.
San Jose LRT 2

Below is a picture of one of the stations for posterity. It looks pretty harmless. I also noticed that much of the LRT route in San Jose had lovely trees lining it to try to hide it from the view of the public. But lucky for us in Ottawa, those overhead wires will not have the foliage to hide them with our long winters. Oh joy, oh bliss!! We get to look at the spider’s web of wires!!

San Jose LRT 4

I hope my sarcasm came through in the above info. I am very thankful that Minister Baird is putting conditions on the federal funding for this money pit. The city has apparently overhestimated ridership.

Check this out. The route runs North South. The bulk of traffic is East West and our East West highway is packed during rush hour and the city decides to implement a “no idling” law for people who sit in cars that are not moving. The irony is astounding.

I, for one, am glad that Minister Baird is holding this LRT up for our new city council to decide on. The whole plan was shrouded in secrecy and I have a feeling that cost overruns are going to cost us all a hefty tax increase to compensate for the lack of ridership.

Ottawa City Councillor Gets A Nice Plug At Taxpayer's Expense

Mulder

As of last week, the Runge newspaper called the Kanata Courier stopped printing its’ usual article by our Kanata Councillor Peggy Feltmate. Some feel it is the newspaper’s way of appearing non partisan. But others wonder if it isn’t a way for them to get some cash from potential candidates instead of providing space for free.

What’s the big deal you might ask?

Well this may seem like a small item in a small newspaper in a small part of Ottawa, but in last weeks Courier, it appears that the incumbent councillor has used city funds to pay for a quarter page ad which highlights her name, her position and her photo in the top half of the advertisement. Although I don’t think any law was broken, this is just an awful tactic that I (and many others) do not like because it is my tax dollars that paid for promotion of her name and photo in the lead up to the municipal elections. (click image to enlarge)

Councillor Feltmate may say that the Expo is what was being promoted, but you can look at the advertisement and judge for yourself.

I must point out that the contact info is Feltmate’s city email address so one can only assume it was tax dollars buying the space. Why should Feltmate use her own campaign funds when our tax dollars are far more effective until the election?

I did notice the councillor has her usual weekly column in the EMC, another local Kanata newspaper. The new edition of the Courier should be on my doorstep tomorrow. If there is another “special event” which the Councillor takes advantage of, I will be sure to add another post tomorrow evening.

Once again, the taxpayers get OfficiallyScrewed.

Ottawa Librarian Chooses Gay Pride Parade Over Clean Toilets

Mulder

Ottawa Chief Librarian Barbara Clubb has okayed the use of the Bookmobile as a float in this weeks Gay Pride Parade.

This is the same Chief Librarian Barbara Clubb who did nothing when a pile of steaming crap was left in the mens room of the downtown branch despite several complaints. At that time the Library’s story was “There isn’t enough money in the city budget for instant cleanup”.

Yet we have money to fill the gas tank of the bookmobile and drive it around the city in the Gay Pride parade.

So it is obvious to me that Barbara Clubb feels the Gay Pride Parade is a better way to spend our tax dollars than to have a steaming pile of shhhhhhhhhhaving cream cleaned up off the floor of our library.

I think it’s time the city of Ottawa find a new chief Librarian.

Once again, the tax payers get Officially Screwed.

Iran Declares War On Romanian Oil Rig

Mulder

I don’t even know what to make of this one. Iran did say they would have something big planned for the 22nd. I believe it is an important day to the Muslim religion and many speculated it would be the day of their nuclear testing. I guess they don’t have nuclear warheads yet, but they do have the massive cajones to take over a defenseless oil rig with a crew of 26.

I do know the commenters over at Dust My Broom are keeping me in stitches though. They are definately worth a gander.

H/T to Dust My Broom

Ottawa – We'll Crack (Pipe) You Up

Mulder

Back in 2005, Ottawa City Council introduced free “crack pipe kits” to be distributed to crack smokers in an effort to reduce the spread of Hep C.

At that time, many people such as myself and Police Chief Vince Bevan said that it was a bad idea. I had numerous email conversations with my councillor Peggy Feltmate and the Associate Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Dave A. Salisbury. The emails were flying furiously and in EVERY email I asked Councillor Feltmate and the other city councillors to show me the study that says this crack pipe kit would benefit society.

Not once did I get an email pointing me to any facts. I did get email after email with lines like “it is our feeling that” and “it would be obvious to most that” and “we think that this is” but never once did someone say “Here is the study Steve.” or “Here is the link to the study Steve.”

I surfed for about 2 hours a day three weekends in a row looking globally for information to make me feel better about these crack pipe kits and there was nothing.

And now we have the first study out.

The University of Ottawa study, funded by federal, provincial and city governments, says the crack-user program is radically reducing the sharing of drug paraphernalia, which is the main cause of disease, but is also increasing the amount of crack smoking.

“We definitely saw an increase in crack smoking,” said University of Ottawa epidemiologist Lynne Leonard, “and it looked like a negative outcome of the program.

After all was said and done the program’s negative was more crack smoking. So now the percentage with Hep C and HIV will go down but the absolute number of drug abusers will go up.

I don’t know about you, but to me this is a pretty shitty trade off.

Lowell Green And I – LRT Boondoggle and OPP Investigation By Ottawa Police

Mulder

Today while listening to CFRA online, I decided to give Lowell my weekly call. This often happens while I am driving on the road between sales calls, but today I happened to be at home so I taped the online broadcast of my call. NOTE: This was NOT recorded on my end, but the online delayed call. Unless I end up getting sued, I hope to record all my calls in the future.

My points today were on the ineptness of our City Council via their allowance of our already hurting police force being used to investigate the OPP situation in Caledonia and also the situation where our LRT now has First Nations land claims threatening to either stop it or, at minimum, drive up the cost via a buy out of crown land the Algonquins say they have the rights to.

Here is my call.