‘Maybe you’ll handle the 200th better’
Canada Day ‘fiasco’ sparks fury, complaints
Soaked to the bone, barricaded in endless lines that turned out to go nowhere, visitors spent a miserable Canada Day on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
Some visitors suffered in silence. But many wrote to Canadian Heritage, the department they blame for the security snafus.
“Shame.” “Outrageous.” “Fiasco.” Letter writers used these and stronger words, pouring out their frustration, going so far as to express shame at being Canadian.
Postmedia has obtained copies of their complaints (with names removed) through an access-to-information request.
“You wanted us to come to Ottawa. We came. We spent over the top exorbitant prices for hotel rooms. We got up early in the rain to line up for what we thought might be two hours to get onto Parliament Hill. No! We waited five and a half hours in the rain. ... When we reached Kent St. it was barricaded ... You even acknowledged 450,000 were coming to Ottawa for Canada 150. Did you think we would be satisfied to sit in our hotel rooms watching the event on TV? Hell for $600 a night I don’t think so. Shame on you Ottawa. Shame on you Heritage Canada and the organizers. You failed us!”
The answer came a few days later: “Canadian Heritage and all of its security partners have worked diligently so that all Canadians could celebrate Canada Day in a very safe atmosphere and environment.”
From an Albertan: “Thousands lined up for hours and never got to set foot on Parliament Hill. Why were there lines going nowhere? Why were there no volunteers herding people? Why were there no washroom facilities for the thousands waiting to get in? Definitely not worth the outrageous hotel prices we paid ...”
The reply: “Canadian Heritage and all of its security partners have worked diligently ...”
A local woman titles her email “Shameful fiasco on many levels” and describes being stuck in a dense mass of people on Elgin Street near Albert Street, unable to see which way they should go.
The reply, “Canadian Heritage and all of its security partners have worked diligently ...”
A local visitor who invited a friend from London wrote to Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly: “After that absolutely embarrassing screwup on security on Canada Day, I am stunned that you have not stepped forward to at least acknowledge that the Parliamentary Security detail completely blew it … Please, I beg you to step out of your protective shell and acknowledge what a mess Canada Day was and take some responsibility for it.”
This went to Joly and to Mayor Jim Watson: “A half million people were forecasted to visit Ottawa this Canada Day. We are informed that the capacity of Parliament Square is 31 thousand … A simple math calculation says that only about six per cent of those visitors can actually be accommodated. There was therefore no reason for long lines of sad families to stand for hours waiting to be admitted when there was zero chance that they would ever make it.”
Meanwhile, Mounties didn’t know street names, and “uninformed” volunteers made up information, says a list of complaints from Canadian Heritage.
It identifies many problems that were already wellknown: “Fake lines” that led nowhere, “not enough bathrooms outside the (Parliament Hill) perimeter,” and a lack of buses.
But it also says there were unprepared RCMP officers and volunteers who couldn’t handle visitors’ questions, and who sometimes made things worse. Mounties were “unsure where exits were” and could not find their way around downtown Ottawa, the internal memo says.
“RCMP approached our (Heritage) staff asking where the perimeter were located,” the document says. But when staff told them names of intersections, the officers “were unfamiliar with street names immediately around Parliament Hill.
The volunteers working for the Parliamentary Protective Service had other problems, summed up as “not bilingual, uninformed, (and) made up information.”