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When you watch how politicians spend our money, you’re never sure whether to laugh or cry. On reflection, I’m going to place the $2.3-million plan to take boats around a power dam near Fitzroy Harbour in the laugh category. It’s just too silly to look at any other way.
For what you and I might consider a large capital expenditure, a truck will pull boats up a ramp on one side of Chat’s Falls and put them back in the water on the other. As many as five or 10 boats a day could use the service between June and September.
That’s the net benefit of $2.3 million in public money, but it all sounded good to city councillors this week when they agreed to put $350,000 in city tax dollars into this odd little project. The rest of the bill is being paid by various arms of the provincial and federal governments and Ontario Power Generation, the province’s power company.
All a promoter needs to do is throw around the words tourism and economic development and politicians start reaching for your wallet. The non-profit company that will build and operate the bypass, the Ottawa River Project Inc., believes it will move between 250 and 500 boats a year. That might be wildly optimistic, but even at five or 10 boats a day, it’s difficult to see any real economic or tourism impact.
A bunch of politicians from up the Valley told councillors how keen they are on the new boat bypass. There are already five of them upstream, but one of the people opposing the Chat’s Falls deal presented a newspaper article saying the whole system moved only 233 boats last year. No one contradicted him. Volume might be affected by the fact that it costs $50 and you have to reserve 24 hours in advance.
Maybe there is a tiny bit of upstream value in a few boats from Ottawa getting upriver easier, but it’s difficult to see any value at our end. None of the boaters who supposedly want the bypass were present at the city committee meeting.
No one in his right mind would put a dime into this deal, which leads us to Ottawa city councillors. Despite the project’s lack of any tangible benefit, councillors had approved spending in 2002 and again in 2004. The issue was in front of them again for final approval but councillors were told by the city lawyer that if they changed their minds, the city could be sued. That simplified the issue for most of them.
Having missed the obvious original point that the project is almost worthless, councillors have had the proponent spend years proposing alternative locations for the ramps and studying the effects on plant life. Project manager Gary Wiseman estimates the bill for biological and engineering studies the city required will cost as much as the entire $350,000 city contribution.
It’s not entirely clear what motivates the people behind the bypass project. Former city councillor and acting board chairman Dwight Eastman talked about “a vision.” Back in the late 1990s, federal Liberal politicians waxed poetic about a $70-million plan to somehow bypass the falls and dams around Ottawa and connect the whole Ottawa to the St. Lawrence. The little truck pull program is all that has come of that. It will add 50 kilometres to the 500 kilometres of river that’s already navigable.
The river project company is non-profit, but that doesn’t mean the effort to get the bypass built hasn’t been profitable for someone. Wiseman is a consultant charging $100 an hour. He won’t say how much he’s made from the project over the years and argues he has put in as much volunteer time as paid time.
Some councillors did make a modest effort to pretend they care about taxpayers’ dollars. There was talk of due diligence and of the company’s “business plan,” which councillors haven’t seen. Actually, it’s simplicity itself. Once the taxpayers have picked up the bill for the expensive boat ramps, the truck and the trailer, all that’s left is insurance, gas and the driver cost. Drivers only get paid when they pull a boat, so the company really can’t go wrong. It’s actually pretty easy to run a break-even business once someone else has paid all of your capital costs.
The only group that had even a modest obligation to put any money into this was Ontario Power Generation, and that’s on the strength of a 1930 promise to find a way to get boaters around the then-new dam. OPG is giving $400,000. For that, someone could have built a couple of the kind of gravel ramps boaters customarily use and bought the truck and trailer and still put a couple of hundred grand in the bank.
The project’s proponents and some on council said those who are against the bypass just don’t want it in their backyard. Well, it shouldn’t be in anyone’s backyard. It’s a stupid waste of money.
All right, it’s not that funny after all.
Contact Randall Denley at 596-3756 or by e-mail, rdenley@thecitizen.canwest.com