An analysis by an Ottawa city inside employee

Following is an analysis by a close friend at Ottawa City Hall.  Seems reasonable to me:

"Mark Sutcliffe took over the transit system mess left by Jim Watson. I will say, while Watson was a bit of a dictator, apparently Mark at least tries to work with Council as a whole. 

"He made a lot of promises (150+) on the campaign trail. Reporters are saying for the most part, his promises are either met, or on track. The issues that I was concerned about included, for example, keeping kept taxes low at 2.5% for the first 2 years and a little higher at 3.75% in the second;

Sutcliffe stumping.

"On the other hand, while he brags about 1/4 billion in efficiencies, some were simply transferred to owners, like garbage collecting that shot up 10% with more restrictions on what can be put out for collection and now minimum charges for residents at dump sites. 

"He didn't cut recreation fees by 10%. He did add 42 paramedics and 100 police officers. 

"The LRT transit extensions are underway but with no Provincial funding commitment as promised, future work is at risk. There is still no confidence in the LRT system and roads are overwhelmed with the Queensway at a standstill during rush hour. 

"He kept his promise spending $100 million on roads and sidewalk repairs. He added 55 Km of cycling paths. 

"He promised 100,000 new homes. However, even with streamlining the approval process and removing the sales tax for first home buyers, he states that due to the current high cost of ownership, demand has weakened, thus fewer houses are currently being built. He promised and came through on a new landfill site and expanding the one near us.

"Given the record of the previous loser and the candidates Jeff Leiper (a community activist and ward Councillor) plus two unknowns, Neil Saranamuttoo and Alex Lawson, there was not much of a choice. So it's another 4 years to see what Sutcliffe can accomplish."

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So, Ottawans can judge my friend's analysis. As he says, we'll see.

Out of his own mouth

 Mark Carney continues to tell us who he really is, but no one seems to be listening.  Here are three excerpts from 'The National Post', describing his real agenda:

Carney is courting evil left, right and centre.

"New World Order", right there from his own mouth.

There are his words again.  Getting the picture?

When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

Unpublished letters...........

Here are a few letters which didn't see the light of day:

Letters to the Editor.

 Dear Editor (Globe and Mail):

There's another ubiquitous expression that grates: "Can I grab you guys anything else?"  This is the go-to question when one is asking for the bill in any restaurant.  

Call me old-fashioned, but asking in that way conjures up an unpleasant image of food being grabbed from a kitchen counter and thrown onto a random plate.

"May I get you anything else?" would be preferable.  Sadly, that form of polite speech has also fled.

Nancy Marley-Clarke

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Dear Editor (Globe and Mail):

I remember when there was a federal department called, 'Employment and Immigration', which logically, sensibly and responsibly tied immigration to national and regional Canadian employment requirements. 

Created in 1977, it was abolished in 1996 and hived off into a number of separate and distinct ministries.

Perhaps immigration needs to again be returned to a wider lens to ensure coherence returns to the messy hodgepodge in which this file currently staggers and stumbles.

Nancy Marley-Clarke
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Dear Editor (Globe and Mail):

I'd say Canada has had very deep ties with Africa, if you measure such ties monetarily.  Canada has given -- and continues to give -- billions and billions to Africa over decades, so one wonders how much more this country can contribute, given our own dismal economic reality?

The tragedy appears to be that such billions do not seem to trickle down.  Perhaps African leaders could answer that question.

Nancy Marley-Clarke
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Dear Editor (Calgary Herald):

So, the jewels of Canada, its magnificent parks, are being sacrificed on the altar of international aid.  Canada has committed $26 billion and counting to Ukraine and $3.2 to Africa, to name just two of more than 130 recipients of Canada's largesse.
  
Closer to home, for a measly $80,000 out of a $12 million security contract, Canada's Commissionaires have lost a long-held security contract to a U.S. company. 

 
Now Parks Canada is being gutted and 3,000 staff will lose their jobs.  When are Canada's interests going to be supported?

Something seems terribly out-of-whack.

Nancy Marley-Clarke
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Trouble is, I have been published very recently, so they have to wait for another.  BTW, if any of you want a letter penned, over your own name, I would be only so delighted to help.  I know many people can't put thoughts succinctly on paper so they will be published.  That is a skill I do possess.

Simple agenda

Or, should be.  There will be another First Ministers' meeting shortly, focussing on Indigenous issues.  Naturally, AFN Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak gave the real agenda away when she issued the following statement:

The second paragraph highlights the real purpose of the gathering:  "The budget is the big test," said Nepinak.

Well, of course it is.  In fact, it's the only item she wants to talk about.  She claimed it was to chart a new course for her people, but the only course she will be charting is the one to the nearest bank.  

Let's face it, her headdress, finery and puffery aside, money is the only object on that file.

Chow

And I'm not talking about the Chinese variety.  I refer to the disasterous Olivia, currently running for re-election as mayor of Toronto -- a city she has ruined with her bonkers left-wing agenda.

First it was breakfast programs in schools and now her latest aberration is to expand it to lunches.  Have parents no responsibility to feed their own kids?  And all this while Toronto slides further and further into degradation and chaos!  Drug addicts have taken over parks and streets everywhere, with police unable to do a thing.

Remember when she pushed to re-name Dundas Square to some ridiculous thing called "Sankofa Square"?  Why?!  I blogged it a while ago (see "Sanitary Pads, Dec. 16, 2023.  Just re-read it, it's brilliant).  Under Chow, the city has officially tanked.   

Her Worship in her official Mayoral, Number One dress.  I assumed it was AI; sadly it wasn't.  

Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville, after whom Dundas Square was proudly named.

I lived in Toronto in my "salad days" as a journalist working for Maclean Hunter -- the Canadian version of the brilliant "Mad Men" -- and I loved every second of it.  Back then, the "Red Rocket", as the subway was called, was safe, clean and reliable.

Not anymore.

The once proud and glorious Toronto.  Gone.

Were I still a resident, I'd cast my ballot for the sensible Brad Bradford -- he of the back-to-basics agenda.  When you think of it, all city council agendas should be basic -- not the lefty variety we see in Canada everywhere these days -- starting with Carney.  City councils are, by definition, conservative.  Why?  Because they are charged with handling the basics, i.e., garbage collection, road repairs, safety, cleanliness, order -- not communist gobbledygook.    

So, the dour, humourless David Eby was handed a ferocious shellacking yesterday by the B.C. electorate he tried to hoodwink into giving him another four years when he already had two to go with a majority.  It was time to throw the bum out.

Have you ever seen the guy smile?  I haven't.  His brow is always furrowed and his mien morose, glum and sullen.   Looks like his dog has just died.  And that sneaky ten-dollar-a-day daycare scam he deviously enrolled his kids in finally roused a few somnolent voters into realizing what the guy was really about.  I mean his wife's a doctor and he makes, er, made, a ton of money as premier, so how he slipped under the waiting list rope and got his brats that sweetheart deal had to have been a slight-of-hand move.

So, he's gonzo and mercifully monstrous Olivia will be next.  

Canadians have had enough of lefties.  Did you hear that Mark and Diana Carney?  Please Gawd you're next.

Today's thoughts

Reading the morning papers, several photos caught my eye.  Here they are:

Quebec separatist party cabinet.  Still insecure after suffering defeat on the Plains of Abraham in 1759 and still planning for a referendum they will lose.  Quite a long time to harbour a grudge.  Get over yourselves.

This is what Carney is doing in Turkey, pushing LGBTQ-RSTUVW-blah-blah rights.  With a trans daughter, is that his agenda?  Nero fiddles while Rome burns.

Canada's precious and much in-demand mineral wealth can't get out of the ground.  Many thanks to the Indigenous.

Bombardier, the recipient of billions from Canadian government, is rushing to expand in the U.S.  Whaaaaat??!! 

These photos perfectly capture what Canada is mired in: Deadlock, insanity and industrial paralysis.

"Well, that's the limit."

When my Mother said that, you knew you were in big trouble.  The other giveaway was when she slowly uttered, "Oh. My. God," in a slow, low voice, a timber she never raised.

For some reason, my algorithm delivers delightful tales of old life in Appalachia and Ireland to my facebook feed.  Although my adoptive family were decidedly Canadian English (I am genetically 100 percent Irish and it shows) from the Ottawa Valley, they used many expressions from these societies, all of which I relate to.  Another favourite was, "If you don't stop whining, I'll give you something to really cry about."  She would not abide whining.

I also relate to the lifestyle of my Grandmother, Mother and Aunts, who cooked like it was the Depression-era thirties.  They canned everything -- even at our cottage in sweltering July, when the woodstove would be cranked up to make raspberry preserves, raspberries my Grandmother had sent us to pick in neighbouring famers' fields.  Never mind half of them never made it back to the cottage, because we'd eat them, there was always enough for a few jars of her delicious nectar.

We also ate a lot of root vegetables in winter.  Salad in February?  Forge that.  And for dessert, always canned unless in season.  We also had bread pudding and fruit cobbler, two dishes I still make regularly.  I also remember dandelion salad and apple crisp, the latter of which I continue to make every Fall.

Whenever my Mother prepared a turkey, she always boiled the innards, called "giblets", and we ate them for lunch with bread and butter.  I loved kidney, heart and neck -- as well as head cheese (look it up, it's not cheese) and tongue.  And there was nothing like turkey soup, made from boiling the carcass, picking it clean, discarding the bones, adding back the meat and throwing in whatever you had handy -- a sort of "clean out the refrigerator" soup.

But before we got to the turkey, I remember my Grandfather taking the live bird my Grandmother had bought at the market into the backyard, ringing its neck and burning off the feathers.  It used to be a ghoulish fascination watching him.  

I burst out laughing when I started to see expensive broth being sold in supermarkets.  Really?!  Broth is something you make yourself; you don't actually buy it.  In fact, made a pot of chicken soup the other day.  My grandchildren love mine because I add tortellinis, very exotic in their world of lentils and quinoa.  One of the dumbest and wasteful sights I have ever witnessed was watching my Texas son-in-law throw out an entire turkey carcass!  "You won't like this, Nancy," my step-daughter said, as I watched in horror and alarm when he tossed it in the bin.  I didn't.

A big ham, bone-in, also makes delicious soup with yellow split peas -- another favourite in our home.

Sundays were always devoted to visiting the family plot to pay respects to my Grandfather and Great grandparents.  Rain or shine, we went after Church.  When I lived in Ottawa as an adult, I used to pack a picnic -- including cocktails -- and the whole family would gather on our plot.  Afterall, we were landlords in Beechwood Cemetery, so why not?! 

Typical of a visit with my Grandmother.  She always dressed up to pay respects to her departed family.

Grandma sewed many of our clothes and knitted some of the most beautiful sweaters I've ever owned.  Yes, my family hails from strong, gentrified stock.  I am very lucky they adopted me.