Alistair Steele is at today's corporate services committee meeting...

This is where local politics meet global reality, and some of the city councillors on Ottawa's corporate services committee are clearly uncomfortable with the convergence. With the photographs of horribly wounded children displayed on the large screen behind them, councillors are listening to delegation after delegation exhort them to stop hosting military trade shows on public property. Last month, for the first time in two decades, the CANSEC conference was held at Lansdowne Park. Peace activists were there, and they're here now. But some councillors seem offended by the notion that, by allowing CANSEC and similar conference organizers to lease public space, they're somehow compliant in the slaughter that's happening in the world's war-ravaged regions. Rick Chiarelli has just accused one woman of "crossing the line" by drawing a direct link between the decision here today, and the deaths of innocent civilians abroad. Diane Deans objected to one woman's comments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And a clearly emotional Eli El-Chantiry, who came to Canada to escape death and destruction in Lebanon, told one delegation, "We're not promoting killing children anywhere." Unable to continue, he switched off his microphone and angrily turned his back on the man.