How to Unbreak Ottawa
We can fix a broken City Council
Shameless.
That is the only way to describe the majority of Ottawa Councillors after watching the Lansdowne debate unfold.
Council, of course, voted to green light the Lansdowne 2.0 proposal. Taxpayers are now on the hook for $16.4m a year for 40 years, to rebuild a sports stadium that has four decades of life left in it.
Despite hearing from countless residents that the rosy financials are unlikely to ever pan out. Or that we should be spending available tax dollars on real priorities, such as transit or housing. Or that what’s being proposed will do little to get people onto the site.
The Lansdowne vote was the first real test of this new Council. And it failed. Badly.
Breaking point
We’ve seen poor decisions from this City Council before.
The non-action on curbside garbage. Or keeping OC Transpo on its slow-motion death spiral, through increased fares and reduced service.
But those decisions were really just kicking the can down the road.
Lansdowne was different.
This vote showed that the Mayor and most Councillors are willing to deliberately and knowingly repeat the mistakes of the LRT. They are prepared once again — quoting from Justice Horigan’s conclusions in the LRT Public Inquiry — to “control the narrative by the nondisclosure of vital information or outright misrepresentation.”
Tell a false story to achieve a desired outcome, by withholding information or lying.
It took him a year, but Sutcliffe has finally learned the Watson Club playbook.
He is prepared to use raw political power to achieve certain outcomes goals. In this situation, providing corporate welfare to some of the richest men in the city.
What he doesn’t realize is how many Ottawa citizens he has pushed to the breaking point.
“A small political backlash”
A literal breaking point.
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe said that we shouldn’t prevent going ahead with Lansdowne over concerns of "a small political backlash."
I think he is about to find out how wrong he is. How he has irreversibly broken the trust of thousands of residents.
Sutcliffe made it clear to people who care about this city that we have only one option left.
We have no choice but to radically reform how the City is governed.
No other options
Many of us thought the LRT Public Inquiry would shine a light on the mistakes of the past, and prevent them from being repeated in the future.
We got the first part right. But Council is more than happy to keep making those same mistakes.
We cannot trust this Council to put the interests of residents first.
To radically reform how this City is governed means either de-amalgamate or implement a borough system.
De-amalgamation is the choice that most people will understand. Unwind the 2001 process to merge 11 municipalities into a single Ottawa city, and create probably four municipalities in its place.
There is precedent. Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon are currently de-amalgamating, and will be separate municipalities in 2025.
Reform movement
We could go through something similar in Ottawa. The de-amalgamation process is clearly laid out in the Ontario Municipal Act.
Would you support splitting up Ottawa in a smaller number of municipalities?
Not returning to the 11 pre-amalgamation municipalities, but probably shifting to four:
Ottawa inside the greenbelt
Orleans, Cumberland and communities to the east
Kanata, Barrhaven and communities to the west, and
Findlay Creek, Osgoode and communities to the south
Voice your opinion in the poll below.
Enough is enough
De-amalgamating the city is no small task. But there are two, maybe three, strategies for how we make it happen.
I’m not going to share those strategies now.
I want to hear first if there is a critical mass of people who share the view that the City is broken and who are prepared to do something about it.
Has Ottawa Council mismanagement gotten to the point where you are ready to support de-amalgamating the city?
If that describes you, please let me know. By voting above, or more importantly, replying to this email with your thoughts.
I’m going to take a few weeks to consider the feedback, and will report back in January.
P.S. incommunicado for a few weeks
Starting this weekend, I’m going to go offline until mid-December. You’ll see weekly newsletters, but I will not be answering any correspondence.
Fully agree (hate to borrow a word from Poilievre) that the City is broken, in so many ways. De-amalgamating certainly is an option to be explored. However, there will always be the need for management and oversight of common services. Recall that the former Regional government had 80% of the budget dollars.
Another option, at least to get a better grip on planning issues, is to create three Planning Committees, in line with the three Committee of Adjustment panels.. Each panel could have a Councillor from each of the other regions, but there would be a majority of Councillors representing the region involved in the issue or proposal. There is a lot more wrong in how City Hall plans and reviews, but this "de-amalgamation" of Planning Committee could help.
Sorry to be so late in responding. I'm only now catching up with your newsletter.
But even before amalgamation, we had a Regional Government that looked after some stuff (big roads, water, social services, some planning, etc). There was some rationale for these. Sharing the wealth and pain, what your throw in the river goes downstream, etc...