Watson and Baird call truce in LRT dustup

The best thing to come out of the latest debacle over the western LRT expansion is the announcement that Mayor Jim Watson and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird are going to stop talking about it. Or, more accurately, stop talking about it in public for at least 100 days.

The long-standing squabbling between Watson and Baird reached foolish proportions last week, with the mayor taking pot shots at the federal government for not building a new science and technology museum, even though they are investing more than $80 million in the existing building. A few days later, the National Capital Commission’s politically-appointed board of directors held a hastily throwntogether news conference to demand the city consider an alternate route for the 1.2-kilometre portion of the western lightrail extension planned for the southern side of the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway — an option city council had considered and rejected as too expensive.

With city staff barred from attending, the meeting took on a political flavour. Rhetoric skyrocketed, underlined by a Watson suggestion that the western LRT route become an issue in next year’s federal election.

But somewhere along the line, cooler heads prevailed. The NCC officially apologized for barring city staff.

Baird’s people reached out to Watson over the weekend to try to de-escalate the situation. Watson couldn’t meet, but the two did sit down face-to-face, perhaps for the first time in months, for about an hour in Baird’s Parliament Hill office on Thursday morning.

Neither is giving interviews about the meeting, but insiders from both sides say the tone was constructive. The two issued a joint statement vowing that they are “committed to taking the next 100 days to continue to work constructively along with the NCC toward a solution on this transit issue,” which is the first official step they’ve taken together in a long time. They’re also promising to meet more regularly “on a range of regional issues, and maintain a positive dialogue as we work together for the betterment of our great capital.”

This should come as a huge relief to us all. Ottawa-the-City intersects with Ottawa-theCapital on so many levels that it’s just not on to have the two senior politicians from both those levels of government constantly bickering. From dealing with the Barrhaven railway crossings — an issue that is only just starting to heat up — to the huge infrastructure investments to prevent raw sewage from flowing into the Ottawa River, there are countless points where the city and the federal government’s duties overlap.

The NCC makes things more complicated, of course — it’s a federal body that takes its direction from an appointed board, with oversight from Baird, whose decisions often directly affect the operations of the municipality. (The NCC also

Different ideas spur discussion on how to build a better city. But there’s a way to do it constructively and we haven’t seen that lately.

oversees some of the city’s most beloved attractions, such as the Rideau Canal and Gatineau Park, funded by all Canadians but overwhelmingly enjoyed by us locals.) Still, despite it being a complex relationship, we have every right to expect that everyone involved act professionally and communicate clearly.

That does not mean everyone will agree. Or even that they should agree. No one expects Baird and Watson to put aside their partisan views, and why should they? Different ideas spur discussion on how to build a better city. But there’s a way to do it constructively and we haven’t seen that lately.

All that said, come March 7 — 100 days from Thursday — it is highly unlikely the NCC and the city will have come to a joyful agreement. Indeed, these next few months are all about city and federal officials putting their heads down to see what headway, if any, they can make on the issue of the LRT extension.

The NCC supports the city’s light-rail transit project, and has given the go-ahead to the planned route along the Pinecrest Creek corridor, but has made it pretty clear it isn’t thrilled over the section alongside the parkway. (Despite some news reports, the NCC has not outright rejected the city-preferred parkway route.) It’s certainly within the NCC’s right to disagree. Its mandate includes a direction to protect green space. We can disagree about the importance of the green space in question and on the larger question of what the best western LRT route is, but we can do it like grown-ups.