And just like that, NCC is a problem once more
If the government won’t let it operate independently, it should be abolished
The Conservatives nearly saved the National Capital Commission from being this city’s bogeyman. It took years of hard work. And then they messed it up.
The next federal government, of whichever party, will have “do something about the NCC” on its list of Ottawa tasks. Again.
Nearly 10 years ago, I wrote a column calling for the NCC’s abolition, on the grounds that it was unnecessary and sometimes harmful. It saw this city not as the constantly evolving creation of the people who live here, but as an imperfect monument in need of a few hard blows with the chisel.
My view was in the minority even then, but even Ottawans who didn’t want to abolish the NCC had long been fed up with the way it operated.
The struggle to make the snooty, defensive NCC more transparent and accountable goes back decades. The argument, in the early 2000s, was that public board meetings would “politicize” the NCC’s work.
Its board chair and CEO were combined in one powerful person. Its land speculation was difficult to fathom. It occupied itself with cockamamie schemes for improving Ottawa whether Ottawa liked it or not, the most notorious of which was the plan to move Metcalfe Street (bulldozing as needed) to create a nice view. Meanwhile, LeBreton Flats sat empty in the heart of the city, the result of an NCC razing decades before. The Flats encapsulated the sterile NCC view: Better to have nothing at all in downtown Ottawa than a neighbourhood with poor people living in it.
The NCC’s reputation had nowhere to go but up when the Conservatives won in 2006. The fact that they didn’t get rid of the NCC was an early clue that these were establishment-friendly incrementalists dressed up as small-government radicals.
They started with a review of the NCC’s mandate.
In 2007, the government split the roles of chair and CEO. Later that year, the NCC announced that regular board meetings would be open to the public, with agendas posted online in advance. Revolution!
In 2011, John Baird became the minister responsible for the NCC. He once told the Citizen’s editorial board that was the only job in politics he ever wanted, and he was good at it.
The 2013 federal budget took responsibility for Winterlude and Canada Day away from the NCC, giving it to the Canadian Heritage department. That was one of the suggestions I’d made in my 2006 column, and indeed many in Ottawa saw it as a sign the NCC was on the way to oblivion. But the NCC refocused its mandate and found new life in 2014 under the creative and personable CEO, Mark Kristmanson.
No longer reviled and mistrusted, the NCC has done a great job lately at seeking ideas and input. The few political fights in recent years have been a symptom of the still-unresolved contradiction at the heart of the very idea of the NCC. It’s supposed to be a check on politicians (and the people who elect them). But there is a limit, or should be, to what an unelected body can do with any legitimacy.
That contradiction might have evolved into a healthy tension, steering the NCC into a role of wise, independent counsel.
Instead, as with another chamber of sober second thought, the Conservative government chose to manipulate the NCC into doing the government’s bidding. So we have the worst of both worlds: an unelected body doing the bidding of (certain) politicians.
An email from chairman Russell Mills to Kristmanson (released under access to information) shows the NCC felt it didn’t have a say in the new location of the memorial to the victims of communism, because two Tory ministers had already announced it. “There was really no choice but to approve what had already been announced,” Mills wrote.
There was really no choice but to approve what had already been announced. RUSSELL MILLS, NCC chairman, on the site of the communism memorial
This despite the fact that Mills acknowledged that opposition to the memorial’s location “likely reflects the view of most thinking people in our community.”
This news led my colleague, Kelly Egan, to wonder, “isn’t it wonderful to know we fly in these esteemed thinkers from across Canada so they can rubber-stamp stupid ideas, cooked up in a partisan kitchen?”
The mayors of Ottawa and Gatineau have asked for representation on the NCC board, which might help prevent future rubber-stamping.
The next minister responsible for the NCC will have a choice: To encourage and respect independent thought at the NCC, or not. If it’s the latter, let’s revisit that abolition idea.