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The Conservatives nearly saved the National Capital Commission from being this city’s bogeyman. It took years of hard work. And then they messed it up.

The next federal government, of whichever party, will have “do something about the NCC” on its list of Ottawa tasks. Again.

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Nearly 10 years ago, I wrote a column calling for the NCC’s abolition, on the grounds that it was unnecessary and sometimes harmful. It saw this city not as the constantly evolving creation of the people who live here, but as an imperfect monument in need of a few hard blows with the chisel.

My view was in the minority even then, but even Ottawans who didn’t want to abolish the NCC had long been fed up with the way it operated.

The struggle to make the snooty, defensive NCC more transparent and accountable goes back decades. The argument, in the early 2000s, was that public board meetings would “politicize” the NCC’s work.

Its board chair and CEO were combined in one powerful person. Its land speculation was difficult to fathom. It occupied itself with cockamamie schemes for improving Ottawa whether Ottawa liked it or not, the most notorious of which was the plan to move Metcalfe Street (bulldozing as needed) to create a nice view. Meanwhile, LeBreton Flats sat empty in the heart of the city, the result of an NCC razing decades before. The Flats encapsulated the sterile NCC view: Better to have nothing at all in downtown Ottawa than a neighbourhood with poor people living in it.