It’s not often — in fact, it’s never — that an Ottawa city council meeting garners national attention. Last week’s histrionics attracted more than 10 times the usual eyeballs on YouTube, spawning news commentaries that characterized it as everything from appalling to dysfunctional and embarrassing to any reasonable citizen of this city.
Watching the tears, the accusations, the ousting of the police oversight board’s chair and calls for the mayor to resign, you might well believe this city council imploded under the weight of the historical civil unrest the capital has experienced this month.
But for close observers, council’s conduct wasn’t a