In what sort of looks like ... a mutiny? ... City Council has voted no, 14-9, to the cuts to services, social support, housing, and the arts! It feels like a slap-down of the Mayor for his blind promises of zero tax hikes to me. They chose to chuck out the line-by line excising of everything that makes a city worthwhile ("everything that brings a city joy," to quote one councillor,) throw out the cuts, and stop wasting everyone's time quibbling over whether seniors, or the poor, or the artists, deserve to be supported more. The Mayor shouldn't have promised a four-year tax freeze, they said, and they backed it up.
They're not cutting investment in the arts. And not only are the arts not being cut, but the city is actually honouring the Arts Investment Strategy promises that were aimed to increase arts funding over the next few years, to bring Ottawa's spending on the arts into line with other major Canadian cities (i.e., to make its per capita arts investment less, shall we say, humiliating.)
Larry "doesn't think there'll be a lot of happy people when they wake up this morning?" Sorry, Larry, I woke up to CBC announcing this decision, and I have to say, I'm a very happy person. So is everyone else I've spoken to about this.
This is a good day.
Too bad it's marred by the impending (in fifteen minutes as of this writing) OC Transpo strike, which is going to cripple a lot of the artists, arts workers and arts fans that rely on public transit to get anywhere. Lord knows the Writers Festival office will be operating on intermittent hours for the foreseeable future (as in, we'll be there when we can beg, steal or borrow rides)... and I feel a little as though I'm under house arrest, from my home in the South Keys area. I hope it's over quickly, I hope Transpo management can see reason, and I hope it doesn't prove too hard to figure out how to bike in several inches of snow.
At least it hit after our final event for December - Gwynne Dyer, who spoke at Saint Brigid's this evening on his latest book Climate Wars. I think I kind of gushed a little when I got to talk to him. What a smart guy. Saying terrfying things. At least, he did get to the good news (some really interesting technologies that might cool the earth, and buy us some time to get the carbon emissions down, and a reassurance that we are a pretty damn smart species who can probably get most anything done once we wrench the politicians around to it.) Getting the politicians around to it... that's a tougher call.
