Ottawa's Private Property Rights
Anybody who thinks private property ownership is at risk in this country should just visit Ottawa. Right now and for the past couple of months and for an indeterminate time in the future, a delinquent property owner is holding Centretown in Ottawa hostage. An unsafe, structurally unsound building stands surrounded by barricades, the streets cordonned off, no buses allowed through, police on duty with cars idling 24/7, traffic gridlocked for blocks.
Today, an ambulance couldn't get through all the mayhem.
The city councillor for the Centretown area is really good, too. But even she can't work around the rights this guy seems to have. Businesses in the area are suffering because nobody can get to them, the city offered up free parking to encourage people to shop in what is essentially a walk by downtown shopping area, so, of course, the parking spots have been snapped up by government workers looking for free parking spots.
Now, with the crazy amount of snow we've had, the situation is even worse in terms of traffic gridlock and less room for pedestrians who can't take the bus anymore all the way up Bank Street because a huge section of it is blocked off and buses are detouring around it.
You wouldn't believe it. Or maybe you would. I don't know. What I do know is that the private property rights of one person are impacting on the public property rights of thousands of people with no end in sight and it's becoming very clear very quickly to a lot of very inconvenienced people that what we need in this country are public property rights to check and balance this insanely unfair situation.
