Ticketing visitors just isn’t sporting

This past weekend, hundreds of families converged on the soccer park off Bearbrook Road in Blackburn Hamlet to watch and cheer on teams of young women playing in an annual soccer tournament. Families travelled from all over Ontario and Quebec to support these amazing girls playing a sport they love. Over two days, supporting families pumped a significant amount of money back into the local community.

How does the City of Ottawa respond to this effort? Knowing that this tournament occurs every year in August in the same location, it deploys two parking enforcement officers and an Ottawa police cruiser to Bearbrook Road and tickets the cars of the families for two solid days.

The city knows this tournament is going to occur, and that there is not enough parking at the soccer park for the hundreds of families that will be there to support their daughters. The city knows that the families will be forced to park along Bearbrook Road if they want to watch and support their daughters. To purposefully and wilfully target these families in order to take advantage of a cash-grab opportunity is despicable.

I wonder if the revenue from the tickets, less the wages of the two parking officers and police officer for two days, was worth the black eye Ottawa receives for this behaviour?

Simon Parker, Orléans