The Ottawa Citizen has been running a smear campaign aimed at the federal Conservatives called “Wish You Were Here“. This campaign is to highlight the federal prorogation and keep it in the eye of the public even though nobody else is talking about it anymore. Every day, it lists a number of area MPs and gives us their schedules to see what they are up to because they aren’t working on the hill.

However, today’s edition went horribly wrong: it seems the cons are working hard with many meetings and visits, the libs are either taking the day off or not saying where they are, the bloc did not respond, and the one NDPer is working:

John Baird (Cons.) Ottawa West-Nepean:

Three constituency read more

The same professional “protesters” who keep crashing the G8 and G20 summits everywhere. Organized, and bused in, carrying weapons and wearing ski masks, these are no ordinary protesters. These are anarchists. Most of the time, these idiots don’t even know what they are protesting. All they look for is clashing with local police to get them on the evening news crying about police brutality.

Go home and get a life, you bums.

A brand new garage for Ottawa’s OC Transpo’s bus fleet: $29 million.

Oh, the columns are placed so that our articulate busses can’t turn in it, better change the design while we’re building it: add $30 million.

Jeepers, we forgot: we have double-deckers too: raise the ceiling and add another $30 million.

Total: $97+ million dollars. For a garage.

Are you all nuts there at city hall?

After years of supporting campaigns to conserve water in the City of Ottawa, the city has now run into a problem: water consumption is down so much, that the city is looking at a $7M deficit in revenues, and in return will have to increase the rates on everything (including your water bill) to make up for it.

So, first they ask us to consume less, we do what they ask, and then as a thank you, they hit us over the head with an increase on the very bill they asked us to reduce.

I think the brains at city hall are made of 100% water, as opposed to the regular 70%.

And don’t get me started on exactly WHY we should read more

I know this has been a busy news week, with such utterly important subjects as Michael Jackson’s Memorial Extravaganza, Shannon Tweed Day (yes? no? ye.. no? no!), and Did He or Didn’t He (also titled: Damned if you do, Damned if you don’t), and a nearly missed photo op (would you want to be in the picture with people who think they can influence the weather? I wouldn’t either) but I’d like to point your attention to another pressing issue: the City of Ottawa Weed Team.

Upon getting a complaint from a neighbour, the City of Ottawa Weed Team was sent out to a suburban back-yard to take note of the unruly collection of grasses and weeds protruding through their fence and peeking read more

We have the guys on video.  They brought a gun and a sword. They eviscerated the victim, live on video, cut off his fingers and then killed the guy. Five guys got off (I suppose hanging around a guy with a gun and sword who ends up killing someone just isn’t a crime in this country), the sixth, Mr. Man (Wahab Dadshani), who defended HIMSELF against the full might of the Canadian prosecution, got convicted for MANSLAUGHTER. Murder just wasn’t proven. We’ve got a dead guy. A murder weapon. The act on video. (Lenny would say: I love it when they make our job so easy). But murder wasn’t proven. Bringing a gun and sword and someone ends up dead read more

So we headed down the Queensway late Sunday night to drop off our daughter and her boyfriend at the (depressing) downtown Greyhound bus station. They are headed back to Vancouver (where they study at Emily Carr University on Granville Island) via bus: you just can’t beat $240 for two people to travel across the country. However, for your $240 you can count on losing at least one bag along the way. It’s just that kind of a gong-show.

What I want to talk about is the new “security measures” implemented since the unfortunate incident in Manitoba last summer. These “security measures” are supposed to protect the travelling public from crazies with knives. As you may have seen, I put “security measures” in read more

This OC Transpo mess just won’t go away: after John Baird proposed to lift the exemption on Canada labour safety laws</a> on OC Transpo, Ottawa’s public transit, effectively limiting the maximum number of hours a driver can drive in one shift to 14, all the drivers are coming out of the woodwork today and yesterday complaining that this is unfair: you sure can drive for 16 hours straight. No problem. We’re a little bit sleepy, but that’s OK. We gotta make that overtime! Overtime! Two times and a half! Overtime! Uhmmm… 16 hours shifts… wasn’t the strike all about “quality of life”, and “drivers deserve to spend some time with their families”? How do 16 hour shifts fit in with read more

So I’m sitting in my favourite recliner yesterday evening come 11 pm, with a half eaten bag of pretzels on my chest, waiting for the local A news of Ottawa to come on, and what did I see appear on my TV? A comedy show! The A news had been cancelled. No announcements, no fanfare.

CTV, the station’s owner, had cancelled a whole bunch of news shows across the country for its A channels. As a private company, they have to cut back as ad revenue continues to decline, as opposed to the publicly funded CBC which just keeps on truckin’ without layoffs. CBC is out there with more employees than all the private broadcasters combined, competing with private companies with taxpayers’ money. How are Global read more

The Heart and Stroke Foundation released a ridiculous report this week about the cost of healthy foods across Canada. It found that Calgarians pay much more for healthy foods than say, Ottawa or even North Bay (if you know North Bay, you’d know it’s slightly… uhm… “out of the way”, adding transportation costs), and that in general, healthy foods are more expensive than unhealthy foods. They are implying that price is the biggest factor in Canadians eating less healthy.

The report relies heavily on volunteers who fed their families for a week by shopping at regular well known grocery stores. Items included 6 apples, bag of potatoes, whole wheat pasta, brown rice, 1% milk, cheddar cheese, lean ground beef, peanut butter read more