What to do about the National Capital Commission (NCC)?

[ars]

Originally Posted by hwy418

I would like to see a system where elected mayors of each provincial capital city (sans Rob Ford ) in addition to the mayor's of Ottawa and Gatineau have a seat on the board - not just random people from all over Canada without any accountability.

I think NCC should be composed entirely of people from Ottawa/Gatineau(which is Mayor JW's final goal) rather than some executive from Winnipeg or some community leader from the maritimes.

I totally agree with JW that the NCC is an annoying hurdle that no other city in Canada has to deal with, and it really does affect the development in this city.

[Urbanarchit]

Originally Posted by ars

I think NCC should be composed entirely of people from Ottawa/Gatineau(which is Mayor JW's final goal) rather than some executive from Winnipeg or some community leader from the maritimes.

I totally agree with JW that the NCC is an annoying hurdle that no other city in Canada has to deal with, and it really does affect the development in this city.

It would be better if local people had more control.

I decided to see if the Ottawa Sun had anything on this, and they do. The comments are depressing.

[ars]

NCC REJECTS THE MAYORS PROPOSAL

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/busines...291/story.html

OTTAWA — The National Capital Commission firmly shut down demands on Thursday from Ottawa and Gatineau’s mayors to sit on the commission’s board of directors.

Russell Mills, NCC chair, told reporters he sees no need for the NCC’s governance or staffing to change.

“The NCC’s been around since 1959 and we’ve been through little bumps in the road before. There haven’t been actually very many,” Mills said. “So I would say, yes, things are working very well.”

It's sad really, I think it's time to abolish the NCC if they're so against having more local representation. You don't see Ottawans making decisions regarding the development of Toronto or Vancouver.

Originally Posted by defishel

It would be better if local people had more control.

I decided to see if the Ottawa Sun had anything on this, and they do. The comments are depressing.

Sun readers have to be some of the most cynical people in this city, so I'm not surprised.

You'll probably find more level headed comments on Citizen articles.

[S-Man]

Sun readers have to be some of the most cynical people in this city, so I'm not surprised.

You'll probably find more level headed comments on Citizen articles.

Don't bet too much dough on that - I'm constantly amazed by what passes for reason on the Sun, Citizen, CBC, etc's comment boards.

I just look for those few shining lights. Not hard to do, with such dimness.

[hwy418]

Originally Posted by rocketphish

Why? Those mayors were elected to govern their cities, not influence ours. And the citizens of those far-flung cities already have representation in Ottawa through their MPs, no need for duplication of effort. Recall that the NCC reports to the government of the day.

Additionally, and I'm not sure if I'm the only one who's noticed this or not, but I don't hear a lot of people from outside Ottawa taking any interest in, or even caring about, what the NCC does for Ottawa. The only ones who do are the minority of Canadian tourists who visit their national capital and see a nice clean downtown, wander through the market or maybe skate on the Canal.

These are important things for a national capital, but it doesn't take a body like the NCC to do manage this. Ottawa & Gatineau could just as easily do these things themselves without the obstructionist NCC claiming that only they can accomplish it.

I'm with you on that - I would rather see the NCC disappear altoghther. I deal with these guys all the time as part of my work and its nothing but roadblocks.

I recall a few years ago the NCC didn't want the MTO to install highmast lighting on Highway 417 between Moodie and Eagleson Road during the expansion project. MTO basically told them to go to hell Funny stuff. Too bad the City can't do the same!

[S-Man]

What problem did the NCC have with the lighting on an 8-lane freeway near Bells Corners?!

[Dado]

Well high mast lighting does throw light pollution for miles around. Long before I was interested in urban planning I was interested in astronomy and stargazing, and I can you that those high mast lights are some of the single worst offenders for polluting our night skies.

And it's because of the MTO that the Queensway is a freeway and not a Parisian boulevard; Gréber and the NCC unfairly get the blame for that one. It's also because of the MTO that the City frequently finds it more convenient to try to use NCC lands for transit and transportation rather than MTO lands. We could do with taking over the MTO's lands and the gas taxes raised here that help fund it.

Finally, the NCC does do a far better job of coming up with street designs that are actually pleasing to look at than does the City. When was the last time the City put cobbles, trees, hedges or plantings in a street boulevard or median? The NCC did with Blvd des Allumettières in Hull, but Ottawa? Probably never. On the bad design side, I don't think the NCC has yet to come up with proposals for steel street trees, for instance, nor did the NCC come up with the concrete horrors of the Transitway. Yes, it probably is a bit much for the NCC to be asking about what kind of plantings the City will be putting around new LRT stations... but then the fact that the NCC even has to ask is just as telling since we can guess at what the City would do if the NCC hadn't asked.

The City would definitely have a better case when it goes up against the NCC if it would actually improve the quality of its own work. It would also be easier to take the City seriously if it were waging a serious campaign against interference from OMB, which it isn't.

[Capital Shaun]

Originally Posted by defishel

It would be better if local people had more control.

I decided to see if the Ottawa Sun had anything on this, and they do. The comments are depressing.

Par the course for The Sun comment section. Watson is a "Lieberal" so anything he does is instant poison to your typical right wing partisan.

[Urbanarchit]

Originally Posted by Capital Shaun

Par the course for The Sun comment section. Watson is a "Lieberal" so anything he does is instant poison to your typical right wing partisan.

How divisive a world we live in with this poisonous thinking...

[Capital Shaun]

Originally Posted by defishel

How divisive a world we live in with this poisonous thinking...

My thinking or those of The Suns commenters?

[Kitchissippi]

Originally Posted by hwy418

I recall a few years ago the NCC didn't want the MTO to install highmast lighting on Highway 417 between Moodie and Eagleson Road during the expansion project. MTO basically told them to go to hell Funny stuff. Too bad the City can't do the same!

The night time panorama that you see when you descend from Kanata is actually a special and unique gateway that warrants consideration. That darker stretch of the highway through the Greenbelt actually makes the view of the city lights special. By the way, the MTO didn't tell the NCC to go to hell, they were required to put baffles on the lights to mitigate the glare and light scatter.

I think that 8 lane highway to Kanata has become an ugly monstrosity, an excessive scar that ruins the landscape. That eastbound HOV lane is the dumbest thing ever, so much money spent on something so out of character with the rest of the city. If the city had balls, it should have insisted on 6 lanes max, and forced the MTO to spend the rest on a separate Transitway or LRT expansion as part of the project.

[Urbanarchit]

Originally Posted by Capital Shaun

My thinking or those of The Suns commenters?

The Sun's commenters.

[S-Man]

Watson shouldn't be free from criticism. That said, much criticism is uninformed.

And an exurban freeway isn't a Parisian boulevard. Nor should it try to be.

And did someone just suggest the city download MTO lands onto itself and raise gas taxes to pay for it? Wow.

[hwy418]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

The night time panorama that you see when you descend from Kanata is actually a special and unique gateway that warrants consideration. That darker stretch of the highway through the Greenbelt actually makes the view of the city lights special. By the way, the MTO didn't tell the NCC to go to hell, they were required to put baffles on the lights to mitigate the glare and light scatter.

I think that 8 lane highway to Kanata has become an ugly monstrosity, an excessive scar that ruins the landscape. That eastbound HOV lane is the dumbest thing ever, so much money spent on something so out of character with the rest of the city. If the city had balls, it should have insisted on 6 lanes max, and forced the MTO to spend the rest on a separate Transitway or LRT expansion as part of the project.

I don't think the lights have really taken anything away from the "gateway". The baffles that you speak of are a very small compromise, but the NCC really didn't want the lights.

As for the HOV lanes they will extend in the EB and WB directions from Palladium to Moodie Dr once the 417 expansion is completed to Hwy 7. The alternative would have been two extra lanes of traffic on both directions.

Does the City have ZERO balls - yes. Did they want the highway expansion - hell yes! In fact, they are begging the MTO to take OR174 back.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by S-Man

And did someone just suggest the city download MTO lands onto itself and raise gas taxes to pay for it? Wow.

Yes and no.

Yes that MTO lands should be downloaded to the city or some agency headquartered here, no that gas taxes should be raised - just keep the revenues from the gas tax that is collected or raised here, here. I used "raised" in the sense of levied, not in the sense of increased.

The MTO is too much of an obstacle to effective transit planning because it is more concerned with preserving the ability to add an extra traffic lane than it is with allocating space for transit. It also has a curious obsession with A4 Parclo interchanges which make crossing them with transit infrastructure all the more costly.

Just what rationale is there for the Queensway from the Hwy 7/417 interchange east to, say, Hunt Club, as well as Hwy 416 north of the Prince of Wales Dr, being under provincial control? The vast majority of traffic on those segments of highway is local and highway expansion in this area can and does have knock-on effects on land use and transit usage. The only rationale I can think of is fiscal capacity, but that's only because the Province is reserving the gas tax for itself.

It need not necessarily be the City, either. It can be an agency like the GTA's Metrolinx or the Vancouver-area Translink. Heck, around here it could be a successor to the NCC with representation from the two cities, the two provinces and the feds.

[Capital Shaun]

Originally Posted by defishel

The Sun's commenters.

Sorry for the confusion. I agree.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Dado

How so? Would they have a financial stake in the outcome of any random NCC board decision? They might on the odd decision, but that's no different than what all government officials face.

Conflicts of interest usually arise when a person stands to benefit financially due to their position on a public body with decision making powers.

That's one kind. There's also an institutional kind, which is what you would face as a member of both city council and the NCC board.

Wouldn't this have been an issue in the early days of the RMOC when it was composed of councillors from the municipalities?

That was more of a confederal-type arrangement. The NCC-city relationship is adversarial.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by JeffB

I think it is more that putting these people on the board would allow the cities to have some say and influence in decisions. Right now, the NCC operates with their mandate for "all Canadians" and don't necessarily consider the Canadians that are in Ottawa and Gatineau.

Yes, and their vision of "all Canadians" means planting grass "for all Canadians" and putting 14-flagpole collections everywhere "for all Canadians".

Abolish the NCC.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by rocketphish

These are important things for a national capital, but it doesn't take a body like the NCC to do manage this. Ottawa & Gatineau could just as easily do these things themselves without the obstructionist NCC claiming that only they can accomplish it.

Ottawa and Gatineau, as well as other agencies such as Parks Canada, already do most of this work. The NCC, as often or not, gets in the way.

[J.OT13]

NCC slams door on Ottawa, Gatineau request for seat on the board

By Carys Mills, OTTAWA CITIZEN January 31, 2014

OTTAWA — A demand by the mayors of Ottawa and Gatineau to sit on the board of the National Capital Commission was firmly rebuffed by the Crown corporation on Thursday.

But Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson, who has accused the NCC of meddling in city affairs, said he’ll keep pushing the federal government to make the legislative change he wants.

NCC chair Russell Mills disregarded Ottawa and Gatineau’s concerns about the commission’s “relentless obstruction” in their cities outlined in a letter sent to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Wednesday.


“Anything that would undermine the role of the NCC is unlikely to produce better results,” Mills said. “We need to retain the authority to stop bad ideas like a railroad along a precious riverfront.”

The commission has refused to let Ottawa run a light-rail line along the Ottawa River near Highland Park. Mills also dismissed Gatineau’s grievance about the NCC shuttering part of Rue Gamelin, saying council there backtracked.

Overall, he said, nothing needs to change at the commission to appease the mayors.

“The NCC’s been around since 1959 and we’ve been through little bumps in the road before,” Mills said. “There haven’t been actually very many. So I would say, yes, things are working very well.”

The NCC, which owns 10 per cent of the region’s land and is charged with ensuring the capital is a source of national pride, was reviewed in 2006 at the federal government’s request by University of Ottawa professor Gilles Paquet.

“The two mayors are right in wanting to be in the loop a lot more, but they are wrong in thinking they should be on the board,” Paquet said in an interview Thursday.

His review suggested a senior vice president be tasked only with co-ordinating with the region.

Currently, the board consists of seven local directors and eight people from elsewhere. The mayors want that ratio reversed. But changing the ratio, and adding the mayors to the table, wouldn’t help anything, said Paquet, a senior fellow at the university’s Centre on Governance.

“They’d bellyache (and) ruin the work of the board, because they’d simply be there complaining all the time and they would have no impact on the day-to-day operations,” he said.

Watson, however, maintained his demand.

“You can have two elected officials, that would not be paid, that would bring some accountability to the organization and be much more effective,” he said in an interview. “We’ve struck a chord with the public that in the 21st century, do you really want to have an organization that is unaccountable and unelected micromanaging municipal projects? I think the answer very clearly is no.”

Watson said his chief of staff met with Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird’s staff Thursday in preparation for a meeting about a variety of issues, including the NCC, in the next month.

While the mayors’ letter was addressed to the prime minister, Baird, MPP for Ottawa West-Nepean, is the also the minister who oversees the NCC.

Baird’s office stuck to the same message Thursday as the day before, reacting cooly to the mayors’ demands and not directly answering whether staffing changes would be possible.

“I think the fact the prime minister has had a local minister responsible these last eight years is an enhancement,” said spokesman Rick Roth. “The idea of putting city officials on the board is an idea this and the previous government have not endorsed.”

NDP MPP Paul Dewar said he’ll introduce a motion in the House of Commons to request the NCC board include members of both city councils.

“It’s not a magic wand. It’s something to have a seat at the table, to have some local accountability,” said Dewar.

Jean-François Trépanier, the NCC’s interim chief executive, said he continuously consults with Ottawa and Gatineau but that there might be room for more talks with the mayors.

“When there are issues, we invite both cities to call us and set up meetings for discussion,” he said.

Board member Richard Jennings, from Gatineau, said he personally doesn’t believe the mayors should be at the table or that the board makeup should change.

Jennings said he doesn’t see the board’s job as reflecting what the region wants, since there’s consultation with local officials. “We can look at either side of the river. They benefit immensely from the taxes paid across Canada,” he said.

[email protected]

twitter.com/CarysMills

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http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/sl...291/story.html

My two favourite quotes from Russell Mills;

«We need to retain the authority to stop bad ideas»

Well maybe the City should gain the authority to stop the NCC`s bad ideas!!!

«The NCC’s been around since 1959 and we’ve been through little bumps in the road before. There haven’t been actually very many. So I would say, yes, things are working very well.»

That's because no accountable body has the authority (or in the case of Baird, the will) to oppose the NCC's decisions!!