Category: News

Liberals Table Plan to Replace Troubled Phoenix System with Random Number Generator

Tensions have been steadily rising over the last few years as the cost for the new Phoenix Pay System has ballooned out of control. The centralized system designed to compensate public servants is now expected to cost over half a billion dollars to fix. This week, however, the Liberal government is proposing a bold new system that will solve all of their problems: a random number generator.

Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Public Services and Procurement, sat down with us late last night to discuss this bold new plan.  

“It’s a very sophisticated system.” said Qualtrough, “it takes into account seniority, job type, bureaucracy rating as well as many other factors to generate a probable range of pay and then randomly selects a number from that range.”  A system like this would be the first of its kind for any government – municipal, provincial, federal and even international.

“People were upset about letting the HR personnel go.  The good news is that they are all back and working harder and more inefficiently than ever.  They are indeed performing the highest level of public service possible! The amount of new jobs that Phoenix has created has been staggering. Of course, we have no way of knowing if or how the new hires will be compensated.

When asked about why the government cannot simply pay employees according to an agreed-upon salary, Qualtrough commented: “We’ve looked into this option extensively, it’s just not feasible in the long term”.

Happy Holidays from Ottawhat!

We’ve been through a lot this year as a group. Each of us has welcomed a new female presence in to our homes in 2017 (bonus points if you can decipher that riddle), and we met a lot of new and interesting people through the year. We’re taking a little break for the holidays, but we wanted to take this opportunity to look back at the year that we’ve had.

The first thing we did in 2017 was visit Unlocked Ottawa, a brand new escape room at the time, and then have them on the show to talk about the new business.

We performed live at Backdrop Restaurant, and interviewed two of our favourite previous guests, Cait and Tavis. We talked to an astronaut candidate about the Canadian Space Agency putting him and his fellow applicants through their paces. We spoke to business owners, musicians, and gamers, and everyone in between.

If 2018 is anything like this past year, we’re surely in for a treat! If you’d like to recommend or can put us in touch with somebody you’d like to see on the podcast, please let us know on Twitter @OttawhatPodcast, on Facebook at Ottawhat, or at [email protected].

Thanks so much for being on this journey with us, and have a safe and happy holiday season! We’ll be back with more episodes in the new year!

City to Build Rainforest on Sparks Street to Bolster Amazon HQ Bid

City hall approved a $110M proposal this morning to convert Sparks Street into an Amazon-esque rain-forest in an effort to secure the bid for the tech giant’s second headquarters. This is the latest attempt by the nation’s capital to secure 50,000 new jobs in the tech sector. Somerset Ward Councillor Catherine McKenney felt like the city had to up its ante in order to to compete with the likes of Stonecrest, Georgia who offered to change their city name to Amazon or Kansas City’s mayor who bought and reviewed 1,000 products from Amazon’s website.

McKenney’s ambitious plan is to create a large greenhouse on one of North America’s most popular pedestrian promenades using high impact plexiglass and various membrane materials. The proposal includes plans to fill the temperature-controlled greenhouse with 150 endangered animals, native to the Amazon. By purchasing 150 animals, this will allow the city to use the $28M remaining from Canada 150 celebration funds.

The Councillor has contacted many South American zoos to acquire several dozen jaguars, anacondas and other amazonian animals. The sanctuary is anticipated to cost upward of $45.6M to build, and will create an estimated 40 full time jobs in addition to the 50,000 Amazon jobs.

Some are praising the city for proposing to create a space to house endangered animals and creating new jobs. Others, including federal environment minister Catherine McKenna are criticizing the council for the estimated 225 metric tonnes of greenhouse gases that will be created annually to heat the sanctuary in the winter. A small price to pay, says McKenney, to turn up the heat in this Amazonian bidding war.