As I walked down my street on Monday, I heard a hauntingly familiar rumble, followed by a flash of red and white. And, just like that, visual confirmation that the nearly 60-day bus strike was over. Part of me was so perturbed about the whole situation that I still wanted to walk, but my feet were begging for the ride, and the ATU was trying to show some beneficence and win back some of their ridership by eliminating the fare for a week, so I hopped on.
As I took my seat and picked up the paper on the seat next to me – an amenity of public transportation that many avail themselves of, and had probably been missing as well – I found an article that really spoke to me and to the root of my exasperation with the strike:
People get the government they deserve. Certainly Ottawa does. If you are prepared to take nearly two months without public transit, without a clear return, and few compensatory measures to soften the cost, that’s what you’ll get.
When Ottawans stoically and heroically organized car pools, walked to work, rearranged their lives, missed classes, lost income or stayed home, they gave politicians no incentive to act.
Astoundingly, the first protests came late in the strike. Until then, some real suffering — particularly among the elderly, the sick, the disabled and others who have no voice — was easily ignored. In Paris and other real cities, they would have been marching on city hall, if not burning it down
…But the transit strike is symptomatic of Ottawa’s larger problem, which lies in its contented people and its feckless politicians.
There are no citizens of Ottawa, as the mayor likes to say. Citizenship implies a sense of belonging. That notion, even if it had a legal standing, is foreign to this city. Ottawans aren’t residents, either. Even those who own homes or are born here have a permanent impermanence. More likely, Ottawans are tenants.
The article goes on to challenge Ottawa, in no minced words, to get serious about itself as a city. As a resident I feel as guilty as the next person. While I did my best to incite some conversation (and ire) around the issue with my radio show, it wasn’t until mid/late January that I got it in me to start trying to organize some of the young entreprenurial community in the city, and by the time I had myself organized, the strike was over. It was exasperation with the complacency and civic deficit that spurred me to act though. I felt that Ottawa was selling itself short. Telling by the wave of responses the article has garnered, I’m not the only one.
It has been said over and over by Richard and a host of others – it’s a shame to waste a good crisis. Initiatives like ChangeCamp have been probing the frontiers of civic engagement through technology. In a city that isn’t organized with density in mind, is this the kind of thing that Ottawa needs? How does Ottawa leverage this one to emerge from it a more responsive and engaged population? What will it take for people to wake up, get involved, and become citizens?
And now, as always, some music.