The O-Train makes its way through Ottawa. Controversy swirls around the contract for the extension of the Trillium Line.
Why select this legal firm for the O-Train project?
Re: City could not exclude SNC-Lavalin, March 3.
The city’s much hyped release of formerly classified documents on the retention of the SNC-Lavalin submission in the procurement bidding process for extension of the Trillium Line is but a fizzle and worse, an utter distraction for insight into the ongoing maintenance woes of the Confederation Line.
Reporter Jon Willing aptly observed, “Perhaps the most perplexing part of the legal analysis is that (legal team) Norton Fulbright was competitively hired by the city for its top-notch procurement expertise to help write the contract competition, yet the firm found potential snags in the Trillium Line procurement evaluation process.” Why did the city select the Norton Fulbright firm in the first place?
George Neville, Ottawa
Facial recognition could be used against police
Re: Ottawa police admit officers tested Clearview AI facial recognition software, March 3.
The Pandora’s box analogy is very apt in this case. Currently many police in the U.S. and a few in Canada are using Clearview AI to match a picture of a suspect with a huge database of pictures and information gleaned from Facebook, Instagram and other popular Internet media. Very useful, I’m sure.
But what happens when this software gets into the hands of ordinary Canadians, which it undoubtedly will. Imagine that someone with a hate on for the police, or any public figure, takes a photo of a cop and matches it with all that law officer’s Internet data, including address, phone numbers and family members. With that info, it isn’t hard for a determined person to get hold of even more sensitive personal information. A tool for law enforcement will now become a devastating tool against our public servants, and, in fact, all of us.
Another analogy? The double-edged sword.
Ian McMaster, Ottawa
Taxes and fees are killing our small businesses
Re: The worrisome remake of our traditional main streets, March 2.
The main culprit in these closings is the city biting off the hand that feeds it.
Ottawa has chewed on small businesses, and the subsequent bleeding is killing them off one at a time. Property taxes, business taxes, parking fees, patio permits and all those hidden fees are difficult, if not impossible, to take if one wants to own a family business.
The city’s “we know best” attitude has all but sucked the life out of trying to make a living.
Add to that the federal government eliminating the opportunity to pay family members dividends and deduct the expense; it has thrown away any nest-egg or safety net that once existed. Small business can absorb minimum wage gains but not the chunks of other items being thrown at them.
The transition will be to restaurants, then vacant spaces below increasingly dense condo-style buildings. You can see this on Preston street, with icons such as the Prescott hotel already giving their notice.
Brian Vachon, Greely
Not all boomers are resentful of the young
Re: Millennials practising what boomers preach, March 2.
I take exception to the author condescendingly lumping all boomers into one category. This boomer has millennial children who have millennial friends and while we all don’t agree on everything, we share a mutual respect and deep concern for the major issues of the day, including climate change and social norms. While the author may not be able to assuage his personal feelings of guilt over a life he claims to have mismanaged, he does not have any licence to include the rest of us boomers as hostages to his own described shortcomings.
Furthermore, his thesis that “inter-generational resentment is as old as humankind” is a generalization that cannot be supported and can in fact be dispensed as fallacy by observing the myriad examples of the “extended family” as one of the pillars of a strong social fabric.
Randy Sutton, Gloucester
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