Transit: Larry O's Small Minded Rampage

Ottawa’s coffee shops have been dining with talk of the ongoing transit strike. The ATW have gone on strike over driver scheduling. Depending of which spin you believe, it is either an issue of efficiency (city spin) or worker control (union). Either way both sides seem to have dug in hard, claiming the other is being inflexible, and refusing to negotiate. Having been involved in disputes of this kind I’ve learnt to ignore what the press has to say about these conflicts since they almost always get the facts wrong, and unless you are on the inside it is almost impossible to know what is going on especially if the issue is as technical as scheduling. While the union seems to be loosing the public relations war (thanks in part our anti-union rags the Sun and Citizen), it might be worth recalling some of Larry O’s view labour rights and how this weeks events at City Hall have affected his rigid position.

As I have noted before O’Brien major success was building Calian Technology (with family money, I might add). Calian’s largest division, BTS, is a staff placement agency, with core functions of recruiting and workforce management. BTS, Calian’s website tells us, “offers temporary help, staffing and outsourcing services in the NCR.” In the federal retrenchment of the 1990’s, Larry O made huge profits from supplying the feds with workers, and facilitating Paul Martin’s “hell or high water” cuts to the public service. So when Larry O asks for new powers to manage city contracts, be careful about what he is actually after. This guys hates unions and loves temporary workers!

Second, O’Brien ego is deeply bruised from this weeks decision from council to pull the plug on his line-by-line review of the city budget. This ridiculous exercise in micro-management was doomed to put make a political football out of the vulnerable city services, and risked leading to the most debasing form of politics. Being more mature than the flip-flop trigger happy doomsday-cutting machine O’Brien tends to be, the council thought of the greater good of the city’s essential services and passed a compromise budget without the Mayor who vainly continued to protest. When will Larry learn the basic lesson of Canadian municipal politics: the mayoral system only gives the mayor one vote, so you have to seduce your partners in governance not blast them into submission. He just doesn’t get it. So when Larry comes out guns-a-blasting about the transit conflict you can bet at some level he is trying to reestablish his tough-on-budgets creds (and fix his wounded ego).

All this sadly points to the ongoing small-mindedness of our current Mayor. Think big-picture Larry. Your role is to provide vision and direction. Thankfully for once City Council decided to simply ignore your limited view and provide some strategic direction.

(When is his trial for influence peddling anyways? Mabye he will just go away. I hear there is an (perhaps two!) openings in Indiana. Mabye he can buy his way into that office.)