There is no shortage of blame to go around in the sexual harassment drama that has overtaken Parliament Hill these past weeks.

Tourism potential ignored in Tories’ rushed plan

The House of Commons requires a set of practices, a process, that ensures complaints are dealt with thoroughly, and in a way that is fair to both the complainant and accused. That should be managed by an outside party with expertise. Michael Den Tandt

A couple of summers ago, I took my then twoyear-old son on a trip to Montreal on a whim because he’d always been fascinated by trains and Via Rail was having a big sale. Beyond buying tickets and booking a last-minute room, I planned precisely nothing. After dumping our suitcases, we took a short walk to the nearest Metro station, where I bought a three-day pass for less than $20. With it, I got a subway map that conveniently listed almost every tourist trap you’d want to visit, all within steps of a station.

It turned out that my son really just wanted to ride the subway all day long, and he later told me that the highlight of his trip was playing with Hot Wheels at the hotel. Regardless, I was impressed with how many big-city attractions there were right downtown, and how close the rest felt due to the reliable, indoor transportation. So what if the Biodome wasn’t within walking distance and we didn’t have a car? One of those trains passing by every five minutes could get us there momentarily.

With no subway or really useful light rail (right now anyway), Ottawa’s options for easy-to-reach tourism areas are severely limited, so attractions should therefore be clustered and easily accessible. And that’s what makes the federal government’s decision to double-down on a mouldy, old, asbestos-ridden bread factory in a dumpy part of town as the location to showcase all of the advances we’ve made as a society so disappointing.

It’s perfectly understandable why the Conservatives, and in particular why local Conservatives, would say that it is, in fact, a really good idea to simply renovate the Canada Science and Technology Museum at a cost of $80.5 million. The Tories have built their brand on showering the land with exceptionally expensive tax cuts, not ponying up the kind of money it would take to provide a gem of a national institution in a prime location.

Unfortunately, you don’t build a great city or a great national capital — especially one that appeals to potential visitors — on a shoestring.

The Conservative member of Parliament for the area, Royal Galipeau, might have been right when he pointed out in an impassioned letter to the Citizen that the museum is actually less than nine kilometres away from downtown, but for someone just visiting the city for the first time, it may as well be in Stittsville.

Who wants to trudge through snow or rain in an unfamiliar place, wait around for a bus that may or may not show up, take a long ride past the central bus depot, some bars, fast food restaurants and a sex toy shop, and then hike some more to get to a museum? It’s a bit amusing that one of the key arguments in favour of the plan is that it’ll be ready in time for the Confederation anniversary celebrations in 2017. With everything that will undoubtedly be going on downtown, who would bother to travel to St. Laurent Boulevard? Why not take the time to produce something that would wow people for generations instead of surrendering to this rush job?

Great cities are the result of not only the amenities they provide, but the ease of movement between them. When you’re building something as important as a national museum — or something that should be important, anyway — you want tourists to be able to say, as often as possible, “Oh yeah, that’s right near the ...” You don’t want them saying: “Where the hell is that?”

Meanwhile, the NCC is looking for a nationallevel institution to build at the LeBreton Flats, and the mould growing in the museum’s walls conspired to give it the perfect option. Instead, we’re settling for a mediocre museum that is, many tourists would probably argue, in the middle of nowhere. What a shame.