We, the people of Orleans, are tired of being complained about. Using the euphemism “outside the greenbelt”, politicians, editorial writers, and “public intellectuals” alike, seem to believe that those who live in the eastern urban area of Ottawa are slothful suburbanites whose very existence encourages sprawl, wastes boatloads of other people’s money in infrastructure spending, demands unreasonable levels of services, and embodies boring, middle-class, wasteful lives spent in the perdition of ticky-tacky subdivisions.
Councillor and Urban Planning poet, Clive Doucet wants us to de-amalgamate from our betters in the “core” of Ottawa. After all, we take far too much of the scarce finances of the city and are never satisfied with our lot in life. Although City Council’s own fiscal study indicates that urban areas outside the greenbelt are only minimally away from balanced revenues and expenses (in the budgeting sense), it makes a far better argument to blame Orleans (or Kanata) by lumping it together with rural parts of region. The political orthodoxy is that everyone outside the greenbelt: this mythical social barrier to fiscal responsibility, is to blame for Ottawa’s budgetary woes.
Similarly, the Citizen Editorial Board consistently and repetitively pours scorn on our social incorrect lifestyles. The bias oozes everywhere there can be a geographical demarcation in lifestyle. In the 2009 Restaurant Guide, Orleans is relegated to a section entitled: “Outside the Greenbelt and Out of Town”. No wonder Orleans is almost never one of the “Five Best Places…” to do anything in. Journalists, in their infinite wisdom, don’t think there is much of merit to go to Orleans for. Except for our beach: Petrie Island, which should never have been built, according to the critics, because it is closed to swimming so often. Never mind that the main cause of that pollution is the antiquated sewage system within the greenbelt. Or that one of the main reasons for amalgamation in the first place was to have suburbanites financially help Ottawa fix its decaying infrastructure.
With peak oil raising the spectre of suburbia as a wasteland of abandoned tires and broken dreams, Orleans is seen all too often as a bad neighbour. And given the advent of Richard Florida’s creative class as the new “in-group” in town, the very ordinary residents of Orleans are cast as both passé and to be pitied. Is it not surprising then, that Orleans people have more university degrees and higher average incomes than many of our “cooler” neighbours in the core. Creative people aren’t supposed to live on a suburban street. Right?
They definitely cannot work here. The air was ripe with congratulations and celebration when the RCMP headquarters was moved to a JDS Uniphase building in Barrhaven a while ago. Pierre Poliviere and John Baird crowed with delight at the boon to the “local economy” this shift in workforce represented, not contemplating or caring that to pay Peter, they had robbed Paul. Everyone in eastern Ottawa knows what politicians from Western Ottawa seem to have conveniently forgotten. Orleans was the traditional, primary home of armed forces and RCMP families. Their presence was an integral part
of the fabric of our community. So what! Why not make them travel forty five minutes to get to work, or move? That makes sense.
Maybe this “official disconnect” exists because, we in Orleans are seen by the rest of Ottawa and its various governments to take more than we give. We must consume more than we deserve, mustn’t we? Notwithstanding the unfortunate truth that Orleans has the lowest industry and government base in the city, and is not expected to improve much under the watch of the City of Ottawa planning department. No, on the contrary, we should be contrite: hold our heads down in embarrassment, and simply not arouse further antagonism from the farmers’ market going, café sitting, bicycle riding, environmentally and socially correct minions of such inner city bastions of urbane-ness as the Glebe, Westboro, or Sandy Hill (among others) who can walk to work. Either that, or move to a chic condominium on Preston or Beechwood and reform our wicked ways.
We are outside the greenbelt. We must atone. Never mind that the barrier of greenspace between Orleans and Beacon Hill (the “in” edge of the greenbelt) to the west, is only three minutes by car, or ten minutes by bicycle path, the real measure of sprawl is the half hour it takes during rush hour to inch along regional road 174 to get to the infamous “split”, which many planning pundits still believe should not be fixed, because it only encourages us to live in those bad places beyond the greenbelt. For that reason, we, the people who use public transit more than almost anyone else in the whole city, must shoulder the responsibility of sprawl. And of course, multi-laned highways to Stittsville should be encouraged nay even demanded, but provincial funding to expand a local treacherous highway to Rockland, far closer to the core than its western counterpart, must be rejected by a “holier than thou” City Council on the alter of “sprawl”. The line must be drawn somewhere. So it is erected in stone at the eastern greenbelt.
Orleans then becomes a classic example of blaming the victim. They built the houses: the planning department, the developers, and their ilk. But we made the mistake of moving here. And if the neighbourhoods do not have liveable, walk-able features, it is the homeowners who must suffer the consequences. If a bloated ribbon of pavement along Innes Road divides and conquers neighbourhoods: encouraging us to drive and park, and drive and park, from one big box store to the next, all along its girth, it is not the politicians and planners who are to blame. It is all those Orleans commuters taking advantage of the situation.
At least Ottawa paved the road. But in the core of Orleans, the hydro wires are still not buried along St. Joseph Boulevard. Choices were made on how money was spent in Orleans, and those choices were not necessarily the right ones. They certainly do not help in the revitalization of central Orleans into a community which could draw people into a “downtown” that careful stewardship could have evoked. That kind of thinking is “too big” for “the sticks”. It must be saved for inside the greenbelt. Intensify or die, is the mantra of those who think the village of Orleans never existed, and that a community of more than 100,000 is nothing but a suburb. It must grow without a soul, or not at all.
Orleans is the epitome of mindless sprawl, you say. Really? We must live on huge lots (40 feet by 100 feet is considered a large piece of property in most of the neighbourhoods of Orleans), given the uproar about intensification targets, and how Orleans does not meet them. Why, then, is it acceptable for a typical residential lot along Wellington, or Alta Vista, or Riverside to often be up to twice as wide or deep? The answer, unfortunately, is because those neighbourhoods are within the greenbelt, and safe from scrutiny. Orleans is not, and is tarred and feathered with charges of unsustainability. The only difficulty in the logic involved is that there is not one city map available, nor statistics to support the drawing of that map, to determine what the population density in Ottawa communities actually is. Try to compare the number of people per square metre in an Orleans neighbourhood with one in Ottawa South, and you will give up in frustration. The city, in its wisdom, does not know the answer. It uses macro-statistics for whole vast swatches of Ottawa to justify decisions that would not bear the scrutiny of micro-economics. It sets the examination: where those who pass get access to rapid transit networks, and those who don’t, are suburbanites.
The “liveable community” is the mantra of planners and their official plans. How nice it is to be able to walk from your house to the local coffee shop or bar, and stop to pick up a few tomatoes at the market, a loaf of bread from the baker, and a book from the independent seller along the way. The people of Orleans can only dream of such a rich lifestyle. After all, in its infinite wisdom, the Ottawa planning department has decided that this kind of community belongs only within the greenbelt and be frustrated everywhere else.
In order to travel by bus from one part of Orleans to another: for example from Place d’Orleans to Innes Road, we are expected by transit planners to travel ten minutes west to and from Blair Road to make a connection between express routes. There is no efficient, fast, circular route around the community, and no plans to create one. In the unlikely event that light rail ever arrives in Orleans, it is designated to go along a corridor behind row after row of big box stores rather than link to the core of Orleans. What will that plan produce? Sprawl. City planners perversely held focus group sessions on this transit scheme in Orleans, but paid absolutely no attention to the critical opinions of community participants who attended them. It almost seemed as if the consultations were not designed to consult but rather to sell a vision that few in Orleans wanted.
Forcing Orleans to look outward to Ottawa to meet almost all of its needs rather than within itself for a sense of community is nothing new. For example, we have no central library, and the facilities that do exist are difficult to access unless you open the double car garage and take a car. Without one, it is actually faster to travel “on the 95” to the main public library downtown, than it is to take a series of buses to either of the two local branches. We have two pools in Orleans for more than 100,000 people, and unlike parks in the Glebe or Lower town, for example, the wading pools in local parks are few and far between.
Yes, we have new schools. All new communities have them. Fifty years ago, the new communities were different ones, closer to Parliament Hill. They are excused from
parochial attacks now because we all seem to have short memories and think that everything within the greenbelt was always the way it is. Yes, new schools have a capital cost which affects the tax rates of central Ottawa. But is it not ironic that the begrudging contribution of Ottawa taxpayers to Orleans is more than offset by the increased tax on operating costs we Orleans taxpayers incurred when the amalgamated school boards decided to arbitrarily adopt the higher Ottawa Board salaries than the lower Carleton Board ones? Or the fact that for several years of transition, our residential property taxes, as a whole, went up, while many in the core had theirs frozen. Why do you think that so many people who live in “suburbia” are livid with the myopic view of the centre? We had fiscally responsible governments who used a “pay as you go” system of development to build things. In fact, the citizens of the Gloucester half of Orleans actually voted to willingly pay an annual surtax to get a library, only to be rewarded with fewer hours of operation. Ottawa, on the other hand, gave Orleans its labour costs and debt. Having the big city come to us was just as costly, if not more so, than bringing us to the city ever was. Well-meaning but woefully uninformed people like Clive Doucet just don’t understand that fact.
A lack of respect in the City of Ottawa for Orleans and its people has been evident for a long time. It shows in the rolling of eyes when we tell people we are from Orleans. It is demonstrated in our newspaper when it shows outright ignorance of the community in some cases, and completely ignores it in others. And it definitely is prevalent in City Hall. We are viewed to have more than our share. We are seen as a drain on the taxpayer. If that is true, then let us go. We will be just fine. And perhaps, in going, we will create just the kind of sustainable, intensified, well rounded community that we deserve. Despite you.

Whoever wrote that taxpayers contain within themselves the seeds for their own funny farm sure saw the OC Transpo boys coming. Let me get this straight Ottawans: your bus drivers now have a higher salary than a mid-career JAZZ airline pilot, and are hot and bothered and ready to turn down a pay increase over some choice thing where they get to choose the colour of their band-aid on boo-boo Thursdays.

Somebody should be writing some laws to throw these collective no-bargaining bums on the street.

TJ Snodgrass, from far away

A footnote of history for political junkies is that I was thrown out of the Conservative caucus one day before the Harper government brought in its long-awaited green plan, which turned out to be the recycled Clean Air Act.

During the caucus meeting which saw my ship go down, as you will be reading in due course, one of the major concerns colleagues had is that I would slam the plan as inadequate, and beneath my expectations. The fact that the day before I had interviewed Elizabeth May, Green Party leader, for a webcast on this site just sealed my fate. Heave-ho, overboard I went.

Of course, the world was told that Garth had sold some Harper Administration secrets to aliens or, worse, Belinda Stronach. But, not so much. In actual fact it was my published expectations for a decent climate change strategy that apparently did me in. I learned later a lot of people on the government benches thought I was about to jump to the Greens, especially since I’d served as a director of the Sierra Legal Defence Fund for a few years, and published on environmental issues. Ironically, I had absolutely no intention of doing so. Honest!

Of greatest concern was my statement that I feared the Tory enviro plan would be a sellout to junk science and the oil sands. And, by gosh, I was right. It was, and it sucked. And you knew it. Public opinion surveys now rank the environment and climate change as the most pressing public policy concerns. Stephane Dion won the Liberal leadership in no small part because of his credibility on this issue. The Green Party has jumped in the polls. And now the Harper Administration has recognized it messed up, fired Rona Ambrose and brought in John Baird to, as they l-o-v-e to say in Ottawa, “handle the file”.

Now. I probably know John Baird better than you do. I don’t traipse around official Ottawa on his arm, the way Laureen Harper does, but I’ve spent enough time near the guy to make a few observations. First, I never heard the word “environment” come out of his mouth before the cabinet shuffle last week.

Second, he is the most vicious partisan in the government, who has become a caricature of himself. In the opposition lobby outside the House of Commons, there are cartoons of him with a giant, six-foot-wide mouth. MPs often laugh when he stands up, in anticipation of the instant outrage he’ll manufacture. The man simply is not taken seriously and the fault is his own.

Third, he is a professional politician who has never had a non-political job. When he was barely into his twenties, Baird went to work on Parliament Hill, on the political staff of Tory minister Perrin Beatty, staying on until the defeat of the Progressive Conservatives in 1993. He then briefly became a lobbyist to the federal government before winning a seat at Queen’s Park. He quickly became immersed in the right-wing ideology of the Mike Harris government, and joined cabinet in 1999 as minister of community and social services, where he implemented the hugely controversial workfare program that removed thousands of low-income people from social assistance.

In 2002, Baird was the first cabinet minister to jump on board Jim Flaherty’s leadership campaign. Each man had been elected in 1995, and each had become hard-core Harris supporters, sharing on obvious bond. Flaherty lost the campaign to Ernie Eves and Baird continued on, as government whip, then energy minister until the Conservative government was defeated in 2003.

Baird then co-chaired Flaherty’s second attempt at leadership in two years, which Mr. Flaherty lost to John Tory. At the same time, Baird was supporting Stephen Harper in his bid to become leader of the new Conservative Party, then co-chaired the federal party’s Ontario campaign in the same year. Both Baird and Flaherty then left provincial politics in 2005 to campaign for the House of Commons.

He was elected last January, became the President of the Treasury Board, and as such shepherded the Accountability Act through Parliament, managing along the way to admit the Conservatives had themselves breached the spirit of the legislation. Mr. Baird is where he is right now because Stephen Harper trusts him, not because he is an environmentalist. He’s a politician.

Now this is not a condemnation of John Baird and I actually find him a gas to be with. But I’m also a tad concerned I’m riding my motorcycle in January and that 2007 is forecast to be the hottest year ever. I’m worried that the declining price of oil will be used as an excuse by the energy sector not to invest in the technology we need to tame the tar sands. And I am pissed that a guy as smart as John would, on day one of his new job, be blaming the last government for greenhouse gases.

Get over it, big guy! We don’t care. We just want a plan with gonads that will establish targets that’ll be met. If it takes a professional pol like you to do it, fine. If not, maybe you should go dancing with Mrs. H.

By Garth Turner

Living here is like perpetually scanning a set of boring personals ads. Everybody wants the same cozy evenings by the fireside, the same long walks on the beach. But it’s all a facade. Organicism is a myth. Our bodies are never ourselves, our words and texts are never really our own. They aren’t “us,” but the forces that crush us, the norms to which we’ve been subjected.

As Burroughs knows, there’s no getting around it: “To speak is to lie–to live is to collaborate.” The only way out is the same way we came in. With postmodernism, as with drugs and pornography, the only way to get anywhere is to immerse yourself in it as much as possible, as mindlessly and as abjectly as possible, and then just sit back and enjoy it. One fix after another, one purchase after another, one orgasm after another; for there is no end to the accumulation: “the lonely hour of the ‘last instance’ never arrives” (Althusser). All we can do with words and images is appropriate them, distort them, turn them against themselves. All we can do is borrow them and waste them: spend what we haven’t earned, and what we don’t even possess. That’s my definition of postmodern culture, but it’s also Citibank’s definition of a healthy economy, Jacques Lacan’s definition of love, and J. G. Ballard’s definition of life in the postindustrial ruins. It’s a relief to realize that culture is after all empty, that its imposing edifices are just ruins or sound stage facades, that bodies are extremely plastic, that facial expressions are masks, that words in fact have nothing to express. For bodies and words are merely exchange-value: commodities or money. If postmodernism is indeed, as Fredric Jameson argues, “the cultural logic of late capitalism,” then it is perhaps most accurately regarded as a frenzy of delirious shopping–or better still, of shoplifting. We engage in orgies of endless consumption, forever postponing the moment when the bills come due. The party never ends: S & L scams for the rich, Visa and Master Card financing for the middle class, and even occasional riots and looting for the poor. (As I write these lines, unpaid credit card debts come to more than 33% of my yearly salary; but since I don’t expect ever to be able to pay these cards off, it feels as if I’m getting everything for free). It’s all a whirl of extendible lines of credit, substitution of goods, and metamorphoses of capital. The postmodern economy unfolds in an eternal present. We aren’t interested in duration or preservation; we devour and squander at a frantic pace, latching on to one thing only to throw it aside in favor of something else the very next moment. Everything is negotiable, everything is available for exchange. So let yourself go. Don’t be a good citizen. Don’t produce, expend. Be a parasite. Consume images and be consumed by them. Live off your Visa card, and scavenge in the debris.

- Steven Shaviro (Doom Patrols)

I wake up every morning with coffee and the Globe and Mail. I have done so pretty much without deviation from my routine since I was in university. If for whatever reason this routine is somehow broken, that’s it I’m done for and so is anyone around me. The rest of the day is a write-off. Sometimes I manage till the next morning, bit I’m not happy about. No sir! I don’t like, I don’t like it all!

On this morning I was gladdened to see that open of my favourite commentators, Rick Salutin, was once again, after a long hiatus, going to share some of his bon mots. Now Rick, he let’s me call him that, yes it’s a first name basis relationship, as I was saying, Rick is in my opinion spot on, Jeffrey tends to be, but too often writes about not so interesting subjects. This morning Rick was not only spot on, but he was dead-on centre target. I would tell you about it but this is one I want to share with all of you. When you’re done, the title of this entry will make sense. Here goes.

“The Globe and Mail - National Edition July 11, 2008

Maybe it’s Canada’s role, or that of today’s white dominions, to be more imperial than the Empire long after the Empire has relinquished its crasser forms and learned a few lessons. I mean, who still celebrates Victoria’s birthday? Trust me, it’s not the Brits.”

And there it is folks. Our Prime Minister, kaki shorts, safari hat and all. May nature have mercy on our souls.

Ok, I’ve waited long enough. Now that generalissimo Hillier has taken to greener pastures rather than the killing fields (actually I like the guy. Anyone who doesn’t give a rats ass what Harper says or thinks is ok by me) I gotta say, are we nuts or what? I know we live in Orleans or are as some “cutely” offer up, CFB Orléans. But, come on who in their right minds wants to go to war. This is not a war to defend our way of life, unless by that you mean consuming like it was 1965, and we’ve seen where that’s gotten us. This is a war to free up Americans troops so they can go defend their oil interests. Yet I’ve heard it from everyone, from intelligent mothers to devout Catholics, “oh my, but if we want to bring peace order and good government to Afghanistan”, …because we’re not so presumptuous as to think we will make the world safe for democracy, “we have to be there”. Or here’s a good one, “we’re there becasue we have to stop them from treating women that way”. It never fails, that that last one always comes from the - women should be barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen - conservative who has discovered his own inner female to take care of that inner child. Please! Give me a break!

This war is not only stupid and wrong it is stale or rather its justification is more fabrication than anything else, seems to be unable to come up with a single novel idea about how to sell it. No, really! The clichés are so old that pretty soon we’ll be waiting for our doe boys under the apple tree till Johnny comes marching home. But my favourite one is the patriot card. Oh, you gotta love that one. You cannot have an opinion or a point of view that deviates from established and acceptable patriotic fervor. Why, I ponder? “Because they are making the ultimate sacrifice and protecting the values and beliefs that have made this country the envy of the world”, they tell me. Now here’s a thought. Perhaps our soldiers might serve that purpose better if they came home and protected us from Harper and his neolithic apparatchik that have been dutifully dismantling Canada with their weapons of mass delusion (WMS).

When I was a boy I had a friend whose father was from Latin America. When I was over at his house his father would be watching a news item on T.V. that depicted the horrors of the Vietnam War and my friends father would exclaim that the world is like a “flea Market”. He was a very explosive man, given to fits of rage, but with a warm and caring nature.

Years later when we were in our late teens I asked Mr. Enrique why did he always refer to bad things on television, specifically in the news, as a flea market. He look at me and said it was an expression in Latin America. A flea Market is called a “cambalache”, but a cambalache, as he used it, is more. “you see, a cambalache in my country is a flea market full of people that would do anything to sell anything. They are “traicioneros”, trators, they will cheat you if they can. So, the whole flea market is “traicionero” treasonous. “Our world, my friend, is a cambalache where production and profit are worth more than a human being”. “Soon” he said, “we will only be a part of that greater machine. The worth of a human being will only be measured by his or her ability to produce something of value. Even nature will only be there to be exploited by production and profit”. He seemed to lose some of his famous energy and his gaze had a faraway look as though he was at once looking into the past and the future.

Long after Mr. Enrique had passed from this cambalache, I had a feeling of overwhelming anxiety while studying for an exam in a course in the Politics of the Middle-east at university. I remembered Mr Enrique and took a break. I decided to check-out his song so I went to the card catalogue and looked up the word Cambalache.

It was in fact the title of a book and in it there was Mr. Enrique’s song. And it was translate.

I read it through three times and I only wished I spoke and read Spanish because if the English version was any indication, we are in fact as Mr. Enrique put it, all in a cambalache.

Here is an excerpt from Cambalache

The world has been and is rotten this I know in 1506 and the year 2000
There always have been thieves, traitors and victims of fraud, happy and bitter people,
the real thing or a cheap imitation.

But, that the twentieth century is a display of insolent malice, nobody can deny it anymore.
We lived sunk in a fuzz and in the same mud all well-worn…

Twentieth century bazaar, problematic and feverish!
If you don’t cry you don’t get fed and if you don’t steal you’re stupid.

Go ahead! Keep it up! That there, in hell we’re gonna reunite.
Don’t think anymore, move out of the way.
Nobody seems to care if you were born honest.

It’s the same the one who works, day and night like an ox,
than the one who lives from the others, than the one that kills or heals
or than the one who lives outside the law

Something to think about!

If you would like to hear the song in Spanish go to
http://www.planet-tango.com/lyrics/cambalac.htm

Elections are much like chinese food, you have just finished eating and you are full of it.

But then you see the fool that was elected, like our federal MP, then you cannot wait to engage again in an election.

You then get to eat your fortune cookie, and you read your fortune “…may we live in interesting times”

Aah summer! Unlike some red-green climate change doomsayers I for one look forward to a warmer climate, exotic plants and animals and an ocean beach that only takes me an hour to get to on a Sunday afternoon in March. And then there are the secondary benefits.

There is nothing quite as inspiring to the male “drive” than the flip-flop clad red toe-nail painted feet of a beautiful woman on a beach by the ocean…or anywhere for that matter. I say let’s herald in the coming warming trend and spew out those Green House Gas emissions into the atmosphere. Never mind the increase in medicare cost caused by more people with respiratory problems coming to the emergency wards. With summer starting in April and ending in October, and I do mean summer not Spring and Fall…summer, and the horizon festooned with red toe-nail, flip-flop wearing lovelies the more SUV’s we buy the quicker we’ll get to that ocean-beach playground, probably sooner than the city of Ottawa and its amalgamates will build an LRT system.

But hold on, we don’t have to wait for the flip-flops and hotter air. After all this is Ottawa and these days there is no greater concentration of GHGs than in the Nation’s Capital. And some people don’t think that CO2 emissions are caused by human activity! Nowhere, I might, add, is this warming trend more concentarted than in Ottawa-Orléans, and no one wears the flip-flip, sans the red toe-nail polish - thankfully, better than our own M.P. Royal Galipeau.

So how is it that Monsieur Galipeau wears a flip-flop so well? In a recent public information pamphlet M. Galipeau says that he will not bring jobs to Ottawa-Orléans because those jobs are simply a way of “…awarding federal jobs for political reasons either to reward a faithful, federal riding or to buy votes in a coveted riding.” This is of course consistent with his insistence that if people want jobs in Ottawa-Orléans they “…should vote Liberal”. Oddly he may actually get his wish. But what is really odd is that in the same pamphlet M. Galipeau says he will promise “new Jobs” from the “New Economy”. Then he has the temerity to say that “Steeling jobs from other Canadians to move them to a coveted riding used to be in vogue, but is unfair and outdated.” Indeed, unless you’re a Conservative. Flip-flop!

Well M. Galipeau, perhaps you should tell this to your boss Mr. Harper. How happy would the boss man be with his straw boss if he knew you would suggest to him that the Portrait Gallery was stolen from Ottawa and moved to Calgary? I think the RCMP should start an investigation right around the middle of the next election about allegations of the theft of art from the National Capital.

And then there is the cape crusader’s side kick, that boy wonder of the “New Government of Canada” Pierre Poilievre, born in Calgary Alberta by the way, who stole the RCMP from Ottawa-Orléans to put it in his west-end riding of Nepean - Carleton “Holy Liberal License Stephen!”. Flip-flop!

And finally M. Galipeau seems to think anytime jobs are created they are somehow allocated according to some pre-established criteria. I think he will find, if he can keep staff long enough to do the research for him, that there is a kind of economic criteria that the conservatives use to justify their “thefts”. It’s called neo-classical economics and it suggests than under the stupid theory of marginal utility and the sterile calculus of neo-con economics it makes perfect sense to steal because it makes economic sense. Or wait! Maybe the conservatives are just so vengeful that they felt it necessary to do the eye-for-an-eye thing and offset Jean Chretian’s Shawinigan art gallery nonsense in 2003. However, we should be reminded that that was not a permanent gallery and does not own it’s own collection like the portrait gallery now in Calgary. Anyone out there who thinks that jobs will accrue for Calgarians raise your hands. Do Calgarians need more jobs? Now everyone that thinks so raise your hands. I thought so! Is this not political favoritism? Flip-flop!

You see M. Galipeau ensuring economic development for Ottawa-Orléans is a part of the reason we elected you and apparently according to your pamphlet you seem to understand this.. You say you have new federal jobs for Ottawa-Orléans? M. Galipeau I know you have some inkling of what a zero sum game is therefore it strikes me as contradictory or at least flip-flopish to suggested that any jobs accruing to our riding will somehow not impact other ridings in Ottawa or Canada for that matter. Better check with the boss on that one. Or perhaps you are going to personally train people to give tours of the House of Commons since by now you must have a thorough knowledge of the highlights from the ahem resources you “borrowed”. But perhaps that would take you away from your more important responsibilities, like being substitute speaker. This, in fact has no doubt been a priority for you, witness the pride with which you wear its garbs in public outside the House of Commons. Wow! Can you do that or did you buy your own for effect? Unlike the priority of bringing new jobs to our area, one which you seem to have suddenly discovered, your tenure as M.P. has been an unmitigated promotion of your own political careerism. Flip-flop…well done!

M. Galipeau stop contributing to Climate Change. And if you want to be seen wearing flip-flops please make them the foot wearing kind, sans the painted red toe-nails…please!