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The National Capital Commission is looking for a new chief executive officer. Could there be a worse time for a leadership change?

The LeBreton Flats redevelopment may well be the grandest thing the NCC will do since it was created in 1959 — save for skating on the Rideau Canal, but let’s not give the feds credit for inventing ice.

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And the project is at a critical juncture, with an important update due at a board meeting this week.

The next six months, we are told, will reveal whether this $4-billion act of city building — with an NHL arena as its centrepiece — is going ahead.

The latest reboot has been shepherded lo these many years by Mark Kristmanson, the urbane CEO called “Dr. K” due to his PhD in Thinkology, sometimes called Humanities. He was appointed to the top job by the Harper government in 2014 for a five-year term that ends on Feb. 2, 2019.

The collective federal brain trust here — the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Privy Council Office, the local Liberal mafioso — could have extended his term by now, at least until LeBreton plan is up and running, or dead and buried. Instead, it announced in June that the position would be open to competition.