Wilkinson won’t lose transportation voice

Kanata North Councillor Marianne Wilkinson said she doesn’t mind giving up the chair of council’s powerful transportation committee to take over the city-owned Ottawa Community Housing Corp.

“I’ve been involved in housing for a long time,” she said, promoting social housing in Kanata and helping to found co-ops. That’s why she’s a natural for the job, which Gloucester-South Nepean Councillor Steve Desroches is giving up because it’s too time-consuming.

Wilkinson, who’s 74 and has been in politics since the 1960s, will stay a member of the transportation committee, which oversees everything from long-term transit planning (such as how the light-rail system will head west from Tunney’s Pasture) to snow clearing. She insisted on that, she said.

“I can do just as much as chair or not as chair,” she said.