CIVIC UNREST
Egan on hospital hostility
In Ottawa Centre, something sharp and bright materialized in Wednesday morning's drizzle: a defining local issue in an aimless national election campaign.
There was NDP candidate Angella MacEwen, in pink running shoes tucked beneath an instant podium, at Queen Juliana Park on the eastern end of the Central Experimental Farm, backdrop sumacs wearing their September reds.
MacEwen, a labour economist, is calling for a public inquiry into how this rolling green land near Dow's Lake was chosen as the site of the new Civic campus of The Ottawa Hospital.
“Why was this decision made and how did we get here?” she asked, mostly addressing a Facebook audience at a “press” conference. (There was one reporter present, one television camera operator, a few civilians literally running by, the odd dog.)
What to do about the future Civic, however, is the kind of instant referendum every riding needs at election time — a yes-orno question that cuts through the campaign fog.
First of all, it matters, obviously, where we put this $2.8-billion showpiece of health care. Secondly, the issue is easy for people to understand, unlike a binder of fairy-tale policies dropped from on high. Thirdly, the timing is fairly urgent.
And now we have two main candidates with different positions.
MacEwen briefly referenced the process by which the National Capital Commission evaluated more than a dozen sites in 2016, settling on the western side of Tunney's Pasture, the 120-acre federal complex along the Ottawa River.
The hospital, among many, took one look and said “no way,” and the Dow's Lake site was taken as a compromise.
Fighting to regain the seat once held by Paul Dewar, MacEwen said there has been no proper consultation with Indigenous Peoples and no justification as to why 50 or so acres of green space, perhaps 600 trees, need to be bulldozed for a complex of concrete buildings.
“The best time to preserve our green space, as the saying goes, was 100 years ago. The second-best time is now.”
Both she and MPP Joel Harden questioned why the plan does not have better transit integration and why it requires a 2,500-car parking garage — a “relic,” he called it — that would rise four storeys.
“I continue to hear from hundreds of residents, on the phone, on email, who are asking why would we do this in the middle of a climate emergency,” said Harden, who arrived on scene on his trademark cargo bike.
Harden said it is not too late to pause the process. He said there are three elections (federal, municipal, provincial) scheduled before the main construction starts in 2024.
“That is straight-up fearmongering,” he said of the “can't-afford-to-delay” arguments.
Nor does he get very far at Queen's Park or with federal colleagues, he added. “I hear the sound of one hand clapping when I raise this with decision-makers at all levels, and it's unacceptable.”
MacEwen's position to urgently apply the brakes (the start of the parking garage construction is roughly six months away) is in contrast to that of her main opponent, Liberal Yasir Naqvi.
He is calling for better consultation and public input on design, protection for the remainder of the farm and reinstatement of lost green space, but doesn't support a review of the current location.
(Realistically, how could he? He was part of the establishment that allowed TOH to reach this point: almost halfway through a five-stage process to have the campus completed by 2028.)
“No downtown site is perfect,” he writes, “and we cannot afford to relaunch a review process that will result in a decade of delays before we get this new hospital to serve the people of Ottawa.”
Neither has the Conservative candidate, Carol Clemenhagen, signalled that she would try to derail the current plan.
Ottawa Centre voters can choose a candidate who wants to pause and explore other locations or from a couple who want to proceed, but build better.
The location, and why not be real for a moment, probably isn't changing. The point, though, is that voters now have choices about something important in their own backyard.
The writing, in big letters, is right there: the process has been horribly political since it started. First the Tories handed the Civic an empty farm field, then the Liberals took it away, then a neutral process gave us Tunney's, then it was swapped for the Farm-east, minus the crops.
So there's your “public inquiry,” with a side-dish of “smite your enemies.” And, on a rainwashed morning when almost no one is listening, the hopeful sound of the old refrain: politicians are the problem, politicians the only answer.