Tag: expressing opinions

Public Engagement Goes Off the Rails, My Rant for the Day

April 23, 2022

Four City Councillors, four staff members, and two councillor staff held a zoom meeting last night where eight people hooked up to discuss the preparation of the City of Ottawa’s Solid Waste Master Plan for the next thirty years. I was one of the eight people. I am sure that all the Councillors informed their voters of the upcoming consultation in their recent newsletters; that is how I learned about the meeting.

We spent a couple of hours listening to a presentation by city staff followed by an open discussion, but only eight people were interested enough to hook up in a city of a million people! That is a shame.

One reason for the lack of interest may be that the city has a habit of consulting but not listening. That is what most people think. Public reviews for proposed high-rise buildings in settled residential neighborhoods often trigger huge local opposition by area residents, but they have very limited success with their objections. The developers usually get what they want in terms of height limits and other requirements beyond what the zoning code allows. People had gotten frustrated and lost faith in the city’s consultation process.

Another reason could be the subject. You know people get riled up and show up in huge numbers to oppose a highway going thru their neighborhood arguing that it will destroy their property values and the cohesiveness of the neighborhood. Perhaps planning for solid waste management is not a subject people are concerned about. So was this high-level zoom meeting with councillors necessary?

Was city staff aware of the scant interest the public has in preparing the Solid Waste Master Plan? They had organized half a dozen zoom meetings (and planned for special target group meetings as well) about various aspects of the plan, such as technology, changing behavior to reduce solid waste, and so on.

I had signed up for some of these zoom meetings and had found participation low, with only dozens of people attending. City officials had reported on the status of the plan at these sessions. The public attendees asked for clarifications and often the response was that “it is a good question” or “working on this and get back to you”.

In response to my question at one of these meetings, the program manager said that the cost per family for solid waste removal is $150 in Ottawa while in other Canadian municipalities, the cost ranges up to hundreds of dollars. But she did not explain how the delivery of the services compares to having such a wide divergence in cost.

One consultation subject was to make high-rise buildings separate organic from other waste; there is typically one chute for high-rise residents to dump waste. I asked how come the City Council just considered that exact policy for approval when we are supposed to be debating the subject? The answer was that some elements of the plan that enjoy wide consensus will be approved during this consultation process. I asked myself: why are we here then?

Then I signed up for one of the focus group sessions to which immigrants and BIPOC people (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) were invited. City officials planned two zoom sessions, one for immigrants and another one for BIPOC people, only to merge the two groups the day before the planned date. Obviously, they did not generate enough interest from those target groups to have two sessions. And, as it turned out, I was the only one who signed on.

The coordinator addressed me when the meeting started via the zoom audio channel, asking if I wanted to carry on alone since I had heard the standard presentation a few times. I was interested in listening to what other people had to say about the plan and with me as the only participant; I declined to carry on with the meeting.

Maybe it is the wrong time to engage people at this early stage of the planning process. At a more advanced stage, there may be issues that impact people directly. Such as the cost of acquiring new technology. Or buying land to expand the Trail Road dumpsite. Such initiatives could call for additional debt to the city that the city would pass on to the residents. That would hit people’s pockets books and they might show up to express their displeasure or support such additional expenditures.

I think some people are tired of consultations, some are complacent and some may not be interested in solid waste management. For now, though, I would recommend the City save money on their professional public engagement bureaucracy, pay overtime for night work, and fancy presentations and fix potholes on our major roads. Just my opinion.

Head-Scratchers, or How to Get a Balanced View of World News

April 20

What paper or journal do you read and watch to make sure you get a balanced view of what is going on in this world? A friend posed this question to me: he said he was trying to advise his son on what to read/watch. By balanced, he meant views not only on the right but also on the left – he looked for views and opinions describing facts and behavior from the far right to the left liberal woke community, and all others in between.

I told him I get my information on current events from many sources: newspapers, online and paid subscriptions, as well as the internet and television, and radio. I read many newspapers across the political spectrum and could not single out one that is the best or that would provide a balanced viewpoint. But subscription cost is a factor, and I gave up on many first-rate Canadian newspapers charging up to forty dollars a month.

But most newspapers give you ten free articles to read a month, such as the Guardian or the Toronto Star. By accident I noticed an ad for the Washington Post, a liberal newspaper, for an annual subscription for nineteen dollars US and subscribed, not believing that it was a genuine offer. But it was, and I have been receiving the digital copy of the paper ever since at the originally advertised price. In contrast, reading the New York-based “Epoch Times” provides a conservative angle.

The internet and television are other excellent sources of news. Fox News has the reputation of being a right-wing propaganda channel, while CNN has more of a left-wing bias. So between the two, you may get a “balanced” view.

An overarching theme over the past several years has been “climate change”. Whether you believe IPCC reports or follow Steve Koonan’s contrary arguments, it is your choice. Koonin’s name to fame is that he was a scientific advisor to Obama (his book published in 2021, entitled “Unsettled” explains his views). But many people follow their prejudices and if they believe that climate change is a hoax, then Koonin provides support for their beliefs. There are volumes written on this subject and you can read up on both sides of the story, although the bulk of evidence in my readings supports that ‘climate change” is real.

The other major story over the last two years, of course, has been the pandemic. One source of disagreement focused on whether the virus came from China: several studies concluded it did, while others did not. Another controversial subject was whether the World Health Organization announced the pandemic in time or was late, with dire consequences. President Trump’s approach to downplay the virus, in the beginning, was also a source of controversy. And then his continuing approach to downplay the virus-caused catastrophe was further debated. You could listen to Fox News or CNN, to hear conflicting arguments.

And now the major news item is the war in Ukraine. Depending on which newspapers you read or TV channels you listen to, you get various arguments on whether the US is doing the right things. Although most news stories characterize the war as “unprovoked”, the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman quoted George Kennan (expert on Russia in the US) who commented that the expansion of NATO was a mistake when Russia was not a threat and that it triggered Putin’s war in Ukraine. So, who or what do you believe?

I told my friend that besides listening to all the different news sources, my interest is in “head-scratchers”: stories that make you scratch your head and ponder if the news makes sense based on the information provided and my built-up knowledge.

For example, to defend the Odessa region in Ukraine, a consortium of Canadian industry executives wrote to the Canadian Defense Minister that Canada send twenty-four anti-ship Harpoon missile systems to Ukraine: The Royal Canadian Navy has two hundred of them in storage. This recommendation follows Canada’s promise to Ukraine to send lethal weapons. But the Defense Department has yet to respond. What is the holdup? Are Harpoons not functional? Would Canada ever need these weapons to defend its coasts? If there are legitimate reasons for not sending these weapons, then some explanations would be in order. So, I scratch my head.

Another example. While the US, major European countries, and the EU expelled Russian diplomats as a symbol of outrage against the unprovoked war in Ukraine, Canada refused to do so. The Prime Minister said such diplomatic expulsions would lead to retaliation by the Russians that would lead to Canada losing its “eyes and ears” in Moscow. Is that true? Do the other countries not lose their “eyes and ears” as well, but do not consider it important? But is intelligence gathered only by people on the ground? Do we not have cyber intelligence? And why do we think that while all the other major countries of the Western alliance can do without people on the ground in Moscow, Canada cannot? The scenario makes little sense to me. So, I scratch my head.

What is also incomprehensible to me is that the Deputy Prime Minister and who is also the Finance Minister of Canada has Ukrainian ancestry and has been vocal about assisting the Ukrainians. Words have been flowing freely about supporting fully the Ukrainians, and the recent budget had money allocated to helping Ukraine. But instead of words, action is required now and not in a few months that budgetary processes take. In a few months, the war may be over. Another headscratcher.

As our Prime Minister Trudeau said in the 2015 election victory, “Canada is back”. According to John Ivison in a recent column in the National Post, Canada is more “at the back” of the countries providing meaningful and timely help to Ukraine. Canada is the ninth of twelve countries, providing financial and military aid to Ukraine, after Estonia. Are we experiencing bureaucratic malaise? We do not want to antagonize Russia by sending powerful weaponry to Ukraine? And if so, why not? Does that make sense?

My advice to the friend’s son would be to listen and read widely and try to understand events from all points of view. And the understanding will deepen with events that do not seem to make sense.

Solid Waste Plan Focus Groups. Ottawa

Woke focus groups

April 1, 2022

Have you heard of the solid waste planning process in Ottawa? Probably not. But it is an extensive and expensive project to serve Ottawa for the next thirty years. It may cost upwards of a hundred million dollars and it will affect your daily activities. 

As a typical person, you want to get rid of your garbage at the least cost in an environmentally suitable manner (for example, do not throw your garbage onto the street).

Do you really care what technology the City uses? Is it aerobic or anaerobic? Do you know the difference?

Garbage collection and disposal are not like movies where you may like romantic, warlike, adventure, or science fiction movies. Your choices with garbage disposal shrink primarily to cost and the environment.

And the cost is a small part of your total living costs that includes property taxes, electricity, and utilities. I never thought much about garbage collection and disposal in my spare time. 

But the City is developing a long-range plan that will take three years to finish. A consultant did background work in identifying quantities of garbage the city accumulates annually by type: recyclable, organic, bulk garbage (construction materials), etc, and projected trends for thirty years.

To provide input for the plan, the city started a series of public consultations to find out what people think about the way garbage is collected and disposed of.

I took part in a zoom meeting organized by the city to discuss options for garbage reuse. There were thirty people in attendance, with five people from the city. If you broke the meeting down by time, city officials provided information most of the time, leaving precious little time for public input that was scant and needed prodding from the city officials. 

The city researched and developed the proposals, but the consultation process is difficult: if it is a highrise going up behind your house, it has a direct impact on you and you express your views strongly. Here, the consultation relates to something decades in the future, and people’s interest wanes. 

After the options were presented, they asked the audience to prioritize the various proposals. In one chart, “repair cafes”; “sharing libraries”; “community events” and “community strategies” were the options. These options propose venues exchanging or using goods surplus to you but usable to others.

Although the audience expressed their priorities in the ensuing discussion; I wondered if they had experience with them. I had never heard of “repair cafes” and “sharing libraries”. My surplus stuff that is still useful, ends up with charities or is sold. 

 I understood that the previous two zoom meetings had about fifteen people each in attendance. The population of the city is a million people. A few dozen people per consultation do not give you confidence that public opinion is fully collected.

The city arranged for seven zoom meetings on various aspects of the solid waste plan, and five focus groups for specific target populations. 

The focus groups are:

older people (not defined for age), young people (not defined for age), immigrants, BIPOC, and 2SLGBTQQIA+; do you know what the last two terms mean? I did not. I had to look them up on the internet.

Do young and old people have different ideas from middle-aged people regarding garbage? And immigrants? Could these people not join the other zoom meetings? By having focus groups concentrating on these people, do we assume their views on garbage collection and disposal differ from the rest of us? Is that likely? I have a sense of wokeness arranging these focus groups. 

I admire the amount of effort the city puts into the consultation process versus the payoff; the city’s intention to get public feedback and, ultimately, acceptance of its solid waste management plan is desirable. But the consultation should be more specific. For example, do not just ask if you would use the city depots for hazardous waste disposal but ask how far would you drive to drop off your paint cans. And do not separate special groups for the consultations. Just my opinion.

The Ukraine and Russia. My Memories of Hungary and Russia

February 25

As Russia is pounding Ukraine, I thought of my early childhood in Hungary. Hungary was under German occupation and the Russians pounded Budapest in 1944, advancing on the German army. I was four years old. We covered all the windows at night to avoid lights that the coming bombers could see. And we rushed down into the basement of the four-story apartment building for protection should the bombing destroy the apartment building where we lived.

During the days, the “Green Shirts”, the Hungarian Nazis, came visiting our apartment looking for Jews. But the Germans were losing the war to the Russians, who came at night and bombarded Budapest.

I was old enough to be scared, but not old enough to understand what was going on. Complicating our situation was mother being Jewish. Although she took on the Christian religion, the Nazis went after all of Jewish origin. And father, a Catholic, hid mother’s family members in the corner of our living room behind the china closet when the Germans came looking for Jews; I was told to shut up and say nothing to the Nazis searching our apartment.

Then my father was sent on a military train to Ukraine by the Hungarian Army to serve as a medic. He was an MD. The rest of us – my mother, my brother Peter and me – stayed at a military camp in Szatmarnemety (now it is Romania). We had a soldier assigned to guard the family, who played with Peter and me; when the sirens shrieked alerting us to the upcoming Russian bombing raids, the soldier threw us into a hole in the ground and covered us with a piece of plywood. Then we waited until the siren’s undulating sound indicated it was safe to come out and the soldier would lift us out. But sometimes we had to wait a long time because the Russian pilots often returned and strafed the camp at a low altitude. It was extremely noisy, dark, lonely, and terrifying in the hole with the strafing.

The Russians occupied Hungary in late 1944, after the Germans were defeated. Shortly after, my father was transferred to Sopron as director of the regional hospital and the family accompanied him by train from Budapest to Sopron. The Russians divided Hungary into zones; Sopron was in the border zone, accessible only for Hungarians working and living in the zone. We crossed into the border zone, close to the Austrian border; two soldiers armed with guns stood on the steps of the last coach of the train to make sure that nobody jumped on, going into the border zone. When trying to escape from Hungary, people tried to reach the border zone first, hoping to escape to the west.

A huge number of people tried to go west but were stopped on the way at Russian checkpoints at all major highways or perished trying to cross the “Iron Curtain” between Hungary and Austria (a strip of land half a kilometer wide, mined, fenced, and with watchtowers and guards with dogs patrolling).

We never talked about politics. The secret police, the AVH, kept tabs on everyone and one never knew who were the informers or moles. People kept disappearing at night never to be heard from again. A friend of my father’s lived in an apartment across from us and disappeared one night. We never talked about him.

My father sometimes was called at night to tend to people shot up trying to swim across lake Ferto into Austria. The lake straddles the Hungarian/Austrian border and a wire fence in the water stopped people from swimming across to Austria.

And there were long line-ups for meat and eggs and food because of rationing. The Russians took Hungary’s agricultural and industrial output. They also nationalized (confiscated) all property that our family had.  

I learned to fix electrical devices and discovered that I could make the “People’s” radio (the only legal radio in Hungary at that time) to receive foreign channels by changing the rheostat. The “people’s” radio brought in one channel only, the official voice of the Hungarian Communist Party. It was illegal to listen to foreign radio channels. I was in my teens and thought it was clever of me to make these radios into receiving “Radio Free Europe”, the “Voice of America” and the BBC. But since it was illegal to do so, I worked on it alone without letting my parents know what I was doing. And then I listened to “Radio Free Europe” at night, in my bed, pulling the covers over so nobody would know it.

I feel sorry for Ukraine and its people. The consequences of the Russian army’s occupation were something I had experienced. I hope they survive.

What is Community Engagement in Ottawa

February 24

What is Community Engagement in Ottawa?

We called it “citizen participation” in the late sixties in Norfolk, Virginia, where I worked for the City of Norfolk as a city planner. Urban renewal was in vogue and I had to liaise with community groups in the inner cities where urban renewal took place. The program replaced dilapidated homes with public housing.

To help to identify what the residents of the inner city wanted in their neighborhood – in their homes and open space surrounding them–we played interactive games. We had paper cutout benches, models for housing types and asked for their preferences. We tried to develop a plan from their input. That was called “citizen participation”. To get federal program funding, we had to show and describe how we worked collaboratively with the inner-city people (mostly African Americans) in Norfolk, Virginia.

I have often wondered if and how the City of Ottawa would invite the public to comment on upcoming developments in our neighborhood. My curiosity increased with my discovery that over 3000 apartments units in highrise buildings have been proposed in our neighborhood in the last few years. Construction has already started on some of them.

 Where will all these people come from to fill these new units? And who will pay for the infrastructure required by the increased demand for roads and utilities? Who is the target market for all these units: families, singles, retirees? What effects would all these proposals bring to our traffic? To our water and wastewater systems, and electrical grid? Would our taxes go up to pay for the new infrastructure required or do developers pay for the increased demand for these services?

So it pleasantly surprised me when I saw an ad in my local community newsletter in Ottawa. The City of Ottawa, it said, was accepting applications for “community engagement” to review neighborhoods’ development proposals. What better way to understand plans for our neighborhood than to take part with the city in reviewing these proposals So, I jumped on the opportunity and applied.

The response to my application came a few days later, advising me: I have to belong to the local community association; sign a “non-disclosure” agreement, and that I’ll need some training provided by the City. Instead of providing training, I expected the City to find out what skills I would bring to these reviews. I sat back, awaiting info on my training.

When cleaning up my old emails yesterday, I came across my exchange with the City on the application I submitted ten weeks ago. Wow! I followed up and copied my local City Councillor on my response. That did the trick: I received an email from the city the day after explaining that their “priorities have changed” and that is why I have not heard from them. But someone will follow up this Spring. Does that mean that they have one training program in the Spring? Or that they do not need volunteers anymore?

More importantly, does the City want “community engagement” or just check boxes to reflect “political correctness”? I suspect the latter: the email I received from the City to my application ends with three expressions; “Thank you” “Mercy” and “Migwetch”! The first two words are standard in a bilingual city with English and French. But the last word got my interest. It is in a native language meaning “thank you”. OK. We are politically correct, the City occupies Algonquin lands and I suspect the native language word is an acknowledgment of that.

But only five percent of the Ottawa population is of native origin. The same percentage of the population is Chinese, Arabic, and Asian. Will we see “thank you” notes in City of Ottawa letters in Chinese and Arabic and Hindi as well to acknowledge other major ethnic groups? Just a question.

However, my more serious concern is the commitment of the City to “public engagement” – it has now been three months since I applied in response to a request by the City for “public engagement”. It looks like it will be another three months before there is a “training” session. The sluggishness and response to my inquiry lead me to believe that the City is more interested in checking boxes than receiving input from citizens on development proposals. Just my opinion.