Clive Doucet gets help digging into new ideas

By Mohammed Adam, The Ottawa Citizen August 2, 2010

OTTAWA — He is known for award-winning exposés on crime, corruption and human-rights abuses. Only recently, he penned a book on match-fixing that shook the soccer world. Now, though, investigative journalist Declan Hill wants to sell you a mayor.

Hill has accepted mayoral candidate Clive Doucet’s request to be his campaign manager and for the next few months will be plotting the veteran councillor’s path to the mayor’s chair. Hill said he was as surprised as anyone when Doucet approached him, but was excited about the candidate’s desire to run a campaign of ideas to lift Ottawa.

“What Clive is trying to do is run a campaign outside the political establishment and so he’s looking for new ideas, new stuff,” Hill said. “He is seeking out ideas across the political spectrum and a whole range of different professions.

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Clive Doucet Campaign announces campaign manager

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, July 26, 2010

Ottawa - The Clive Doucet for Mayor team is pleased to announce that Dr. Declan Hill the international award-winning author and journalist is to be its campaign manager. Hill whose book, The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime, is published in fourteen languages ,is an expert in organized crime and anti-corruption.

“Declan is a real find. He will bring rigour, intelligence and a commitment to getting the job done, no matter what the challenges may be,” said Clive Doucet in a tweet Sunday night.

As a journalist, Hill worked at the CBC: The Fifth Estate. He has won a number of national and international awards including from Amnesty International, the Canadian Association of Journalists and the Danish organization Play the Game. Hill has also lectured and consulted in anti-corruption practices for clients like the Council of Europe, the Dutch and Danish Soccer Associations and the Austrian Anti-Corruption Agency. Dr. Hill gained his degrees from the Universities of Toronto and Oxford. He continues to give occasional lectures at the University of Oxford and at the Anti-Corruption Centre in Passau, Germany.

A Statement by Declan Hill

"I am proud to say that I was born and raised in Ottawa. My closest friends and family have always lived here,” says Hill.  “However, when I returned to live in the city two years ago I was deeply angered by what has been happening to it. Some of the parks and green spaces I had enjoyed growing up have been replaced by parking lots and condominiums. There is no effective transit plan and there are traffic jams up and down the Queensway. Taxes are going up year after year and it seems that a handful of rich developers are being benefited to the expense of everyone else in the community. Worst of all, no one in the present government status quo seems to be doing anything about it. The current mayor even spent much of his term fighting off officially-laid corruption charges.

"Until Clive Doucet announced principal candidates were the mayor, a former mayor and one of the deputy mayors. There was no opportunity for real change – they were all simply variations of the political status quo that has so failed this city. There is only one person at City Hall who had consistently stood up and fought this state of affairs - Clive Doucet. I have known Clive all my life. He is a friend and mentor and I know him to be a man of tremendous moral courage, extraordinarily high-principles and great civic vision. I watched him in the last year, as he went through a number of family tragedies but at the same time kept fighting to bring forth inexpensive, but creative solutions to the problems that our city faces. He inspired even more admiration and pride in his battle to make Ottawa one of the best cities in the world.


"It is for all these reasons, that I am proud to take on a leadership role in Clive's campaign. Many people in this city of all different political stripes want change. As Ottawans, we can do better for this city, we should do better for this city and we must do better for this city. Clive Doucet is the only candidate who will genuinely bring that change."