Pie Palace

So far, I’ve gotten two comments saying that I’ve missed the point of GJ Hagenaars library policy. On the off chance there are other readers who feel that I’ve missed the boat, here’s my response:

Mr. Hagenaars made an unexpected proposal for the city’s libraries. He proposed replacing the existing OPL staff with 33 librarians (one at each branch) and a staff of volunteers:

In my opinion, what we truly need are small, local libraries, with one librarian [...] and volunteer staff from the community to keep them going. Let people vote with their feet if they want library services. If there are no volunteers [...], one full-time librarian is already too much.

His proposal didn’t explain who would maintain the OPL’s physical assets (lending materials, buildings, computer networks, website, bookmobile, and archives), nor did it explain the effect of cutting over 8,000 classes that have an annual enrollment of roughly 190,000. Perhaps worst of all, he proposes cuts without an indication of the savings they would provide.

This suggests that Mr. Hagenaars either:

1. knows about these services and didn’t bother to mention them in his proposal; or
   
2. made a policy proposal without understanding the issue.

My concern is that Mr. Hagenaars didn’t know what he was suggesting. My fear is supported by a question in his original letter “Where are the volunteers at the libraries, if people think they are that important?” Obvious answers aside: Ottawa has 555 library volunteers. It’s worrisome when a blogger with a couple of hours on his hands digs up more information about an election issue than a candidate.

Proposing a solution is easy. Proposing a useful solution is much harder.

In his response to my original post, Mr. Hagenaars seems more focused on the proposal for a new Main Branch rather than laying off 419.46 employees¹. This is good – Mr. Hagenaars doesn’t reiterate his call for a dismantling of the existing OPL and its programs.²

I hope that his original suggestion was nothing more than an overzealous cost-cutting proposal. If that’s the case, I would much rather that he said that, rather than continuing to avoid its mention.

Update: Cleaned up wording.

1. I can only assume that the .46 of an employee refers to .46 of a full time position, rather Eric the Half a Librarian. (back)
2. Ironically, I agree that delaying the construction of a new Main Branch is a reasonable way to save money, given that the existing Main Branch is still functional. (back)

PiePalace reader Gawp offered a fantastic comment on my post about GJ Hagenaars‘ assertion that the city should have exactly one staffer in every library branch. He starts out: “I know, lets use Mr. Hagenaars’ argument for other city services. They make just as much sense!”

what we truly need are small, local SNOW REMOVAL, with one SNOW REMOVAL PERSON (making less than six figures) and volunteer staff from the community to keep SNOW REMOVAL going. Let people vote with their SHOVELS if they want SNOW REMOVAL. If there are no volunteers (i.e. not enough interest), one SNOW REMOVAL PERSON is already too much.

Not to keep harping on Mr. Hagenaars, but I thought that was funny.

Bay Ward candidate GJ Hagenaars doesn’t seem to be a fan of the Ottawa Public Library. Apparently the $40 million budget is too rich for his blood. In a letter to David Reevely he says:

what we truly need are small, local libraries, with one librarian (making less than six figures) and volunteer staff from the community to keep them going. Let people vote with their feet if they want library services. If there are no volunteers (i.e. not enough interest), one full-time librarian is already too much.

I disagree.

I’m not sure if Mr. Hagenaars has had the opportunity to visit a branch of the OPL recently, but they offer much more than book lending: language instruction, room rentals, internet access, children’s programs, computer classes, and classes for recent immigrants (with titles like “How to Get an Ontario Driver’s Licence”). Libraries are community hubs, just like sports arenas and community centres. The OPL’s classes, programs, and resources help people get engaged with their city.

On top of that, our libraries get a lot of use. According to Elizabeth from Library Reference, the OPL’s usage for 2009 was:

Total uses:	27,608,868
Borrowed items:	10,692,133
In house use of materials	2,415,200
Visits:	5,005,050

The provincial government provides statistics from 2007: 4,286,900 visitors; 10,083,595 items lent; 8,485 programs; and 195,569 program enrollees.

It’s hard to see Mr. Hagenaars’ 31 paid staff keeping up with that load. I have an even harder time imagining people volunteering to push mops, book room rentals, fix water leaks, wire up computer networks, teach French/English/Mandarin/Arabic, or amuse a room full of other people’s screaming wonderful children. Perhaps Bay Ward has a more civicly minded population than Centretown.

Our libraries do a pretty good job. I’m sure there are improvements to be found, but arbitrary pronouncements like “one librarian and volunteer staff from the community” don’t help. If Mr. Hagenaars does get elected, I hope he takes some time to understand our city before he tries to fix it.

Image Credit: GJ Hagenaars website and the Bytowne Museum

Today’s a good day for Capital Ward. The incumbent councillor isn’t running for re-election, which opens the field for newcomer David Chernushenko.

I’ve volunteered with David in the past, and I’ve been impressed by what I’ve seen. He’s good at building consensus and working with others, and exudes competence. Over the past few years, David has extricated himself from the federal Green Party, been appointed to the National Round Table on the Environment, and produced two documentaries. He gets stuff done. And non-Glebe residents of Capital Ward (yes, we do exist) will be pleased to know he’s from Old Ottawa South.

The current councillor, Clive Doucet, is running for mayor. Even though I agree with some of his ideas, he’s the wrong candidate for the job. He was right to argue that we should consider multiple routes for the O-train, and he was right that OSEG should have had to compete against other bidders for redeveloping Lansdowne. But both of those pushes were hampered by Doucet’s inability to build a coalition around his ideas, and apparent problem with deadlines. As a councilor, he’s been a poor representative of the Ward: he consistently doesn’t show up to his public meetings at the Wild Oat (according to his column in the Glebe Report), and his previous election pamphlets have taken credit for work done by community organizations.

I hope that Doucet’s exit from Council will make it possible for David to win. But I worry that Doucet will split the anyone-but-O’Brien vote.

If you had $27.44 burning a hole in your pocket, what would you buy?

An awesome pair of scuba fins? A smoking hot picture of Pamela Hannam (National Bodybuilder) with a sword? A bitchen’ pair of pliers?

Sadly, you can’t get any of those. Your $27.44 has already been spent on a riot:

The federal government spent $933 million on security for the G8/G20 talks in Toronto, which works out to a little over $27 per Canadian. The amount is seems excessive, especially given the amount spent on security for previous G8 meetings:

(Note that the graph above is a dramatic low-ball, as it assumes that half of the $933 million was spent on the G20 summit)

It’s too bad that vandals that showed up with the legitimate protesters. They’ve provided a post hoc justification for a mind-numbing waste of money.

Next time perhaps they could consider renting a cruise ship and buggering off to the middle of the Atlantic. Or maybe head to Kannanaskis again?

Oh dear. Folks at the British Medical Journal have released a report that slams the World Health Organization’s pandemic plan and the declaration of the H1N1 pandemic – the authors/experts appear to have conflicts of interest with vaccine manufacturers. At the same time, it questions the value of Tamiflu (oseltamivir) and Relenza (zanamivir) and notes that neither drug proved effective during FDA testing.

It’s worrisome that (a) it took a specialist journal like the BMJ to track down the conflicts of interest, (b) the WHO is circling the wagons in the face of this criticism, and (c) there’s no coverage of the story in Canadian media (as of the evening of Sunday, June 6).

Over the past couple of weeks the proposals for Lansdowne Park’s have dribbled out. First, we got an idea of what the park portion would look like and now the proposed layout of the stadium area has been released.

The proposal for the commercial areas includes of blocks of multi-story glass residential buildings perched on seven blocks of retail, a cinema, and an office tower. The Aberdeen Pavilion and Horticulture building are furthest from Bank Street, tucked behind the rest of the development.

It’s bland. It looks like an uninspired corner of Carleton University: cement, glass, featureless facades, and lots of right angles. The two dominant thoroughfares are designed for cars, with pedestrians relegated to sidewalks partially-obstructed by cement planters. The plazas are cement blocks. If there’s any theme it would be “cement”. Meanwhile, the new buildings are three to seven stories in height, obstructing views of the Aberdeen Pavilion.

The view of Aberdeen Pavilion from Holmwood Avenue

OSEG's proposal features wide roads with sidewalks partially blocked by planters

I’d like to say that it isn’t all bad – that there are some highlights that redeem the plan. But there aren’t. The two features that caught my eye were the medians on Bank Street, and the “Lord Grey’s” building. The medians proved to be lipstick on a pig: the Bank Street entrance still looks like the asphalt afterthought it is today. Similarly, even though the dramatic overhang of Lord Grey’s looks interesting in the rendering, the detailed image makes it look more like a walled off gas bar.

Does it have to be so boring?

I don’t think so. If commercial is included (which is fair – it’s a money maker and it would offset the cost of the park), then it should be built around public spaces. A good example of a public space can be seen in one of the old pictures of Lansdowne: a gently curving pedestrian-only street that leads past the Aberdeen Pavilion, with single-story commercial structures on either side. A modern take would be a curved pedestrian street with stepped buildings facing the Cattle Castle – they would provide retail space and somewhere interesting to walk.

Another alternative would be to go to the extreme: build an iconic structure that would dominate the commercial portion of the site and would contain all of the retail. Ottawa’s new convention centre is a striking example. Yes, it’s ugly, but it’s like a chihuahua – it’s so ugly that it goes beyond simple everyday ugliness to a weird kind of beauty.

It’s disappointing that OSEG didn’t use the commercial portion of the design to present something attractive. Instead, they’ve designed a boring streetscape that could be any poorly planned city centre in North America. City Council should send OSEG back to the drawing board or find another proposal.

Debugging cyphered connections is a hassle, but Wireshark can occasionally help. I recently spent a few hours trying to debug a Jetty server that insisted on speaking HTTPS.

First, I had to convert the Java Key Store to something Wireshark could consume: a PEM file. A fairly simple tutorial, should have been enough, but a GUI-based key store manager proved to be indispensable. Then I realized that Diffie-Hellman is the sworn enemy of network monitors everywhere, as illustrated by Wireshark’s SSL debugging output:

ssl_generate_keyring_material not enough data to generate key (0×16 required 0×37 or 0×57)
dissect_ssl3_hnd_srv_hello can’t generate keyring material

Of course, if you’re in control of the Jetty server in question, then you can use org.mortbay.jetty.security.SslSocketConnector.setExcludeCipherSuites() to prevent pesky DHE. Then it’s Wireshark all the way!

I was skimming through OpenParliament.ca, when I ran across a discussion of bill C-4, (aka “An Act to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts” or “Sébastien’s Law”). For the uninitiated: it’s the Conservative push to reform the young offender act.

The thing that got me about it was Bloc MP Serge Ménard’s comments. That dude has something to say. He starts by pointing out that Quebec has had a youth crime rate half that of the rest of Canada, and then he goes on to describe how QC applies “the right measure at the right time.” As far as I can tell, it involves parents, psychologists, and specially trained judges. After saying his bit, he goes on to outline exactly the parts of bill C-4 that suck. With quotes. The only way this guy could be more excellent is if he spoke with footnotes and had X-ray vision.

The exchange between Ménard and Conservative Ed Fast is interesting. Ménard makes an argument based on experience, describing what has worked well in Quebec for the last 25 years. Ed Fast makes an argument based on aspirations – saying how their changes are intended to behave, but without any apparent evidence. Even the Liberals and NDPers (between verbally high-fiving each other) make arguments based on what has been shown to work.

I could draw conclusions about the relative merit of the arguments, but I’ll leave that up to you, dear reader.