So COPE’s two City Councillors – Ellen Woodsworth and David Cadman – and their lone Park Board Commissioner – Loretta Woodcock – have been invited to the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies but have refused, citing the fact that they aren’t willing pay for tickets on their own, and thus they are not going to accept them from the City.
To begin with, there are a lot of things that these officials probably wouldn’t do on their own if their weren’t elected – sitting in Council chambers until past midnight listening to concerned citizens have their voices heard, attending events on many evenings and on weekends at the expense of family time, reading reams of staff reports that most likely is comprised of a small forest by year’s end, just to name a few – but they do them because they ran for office willingly, and are now fulfilling the duties associated with the job.
But what bothers me about this vacuous martyrdom (each and every Councillor should at the very least be responsible to attend the ceremonies to represent the host city) is that it benefits no one (do they think that by not showing up the city is going to save money when the tickets have already been purchased?) and worse, it has all the characteristics of partisan hypocrisy designed to get media attention.



