YOU SAID IT: Library opening delayed? Shocking

LIBRARY OPENING DELAYED? SHOCKING

Re: Word on the Street; Ottawa’s landmark new library won’t open in ’26, Dec. 4

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Is anyone really surprised? I’m not. All levels of government should have the motto “never on time, never on budget”.

The original library cost was slated to be $175 million or $192 million (depending on what article you read), but we’re almost twice that now and the project isn’t close to being finished.

Carina Duclos, director of infrastructure and water services, which is overseeing the project, says all the typical things, deflecting, word salad kind of things, and then goes on to come up with myriad excuses. All I hear is blah, blah, blah, and in the end ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching considering the “added resources”.

I’d like to remind everyone that no level of government pays or funds anything … we, the taxpayer, do. So when we see hundreds of millions and even billions being wasted while our own suffer it tends to get taxpayers a little upset.

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Lansdowne 2.0 will be no different, and like the library it isn’t something we needed so badly that taxpayers should be on the hook for it. Affordability for housing, food and health care should come before these “legacy” projects.

SANDY JOHNSTON
GREELY

HOW WILL EQAO RESULTS CHANGE?

Re: Standardized test results disappoint Ontario education minister, online, Dec. 3

Education Minister Paul Calandra says the province is appointing an expert advisory body to review its approach to student assessment in response to the EQAO results.

How about asking the teachers? They’ll do it for free! Not sure how the province plans on results changing when class sizes are often around 30 students to one teacher with no support, there are continuous cuts to special education programs, violence in classrooms is at an all time high with little consequence, student apathy is through the roof, too many parents aren’t invested in their child’s education and students in Grade 8 and lower cannot be held back a grade anymore.

The system has been broken for decades, and a Ford government sure isn’t going to fix it. All their education “investing” has been in smoke and mirrors.

TAYLOR WOOD
STITTSVILLE

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