Mr Sutcliffe's Not-So-Good Week
Tulips, junkets and bad math. (Without even getting into shawarmas.)
[This weekly newsletter is meant to be about forward looking ideas for our city. But the Mayor keeps making poor decisions that need to be called out. So this week, I’m writing an extra article to clear the deck of the Mayor’s mistakes, with the hope that he can go gaffe-free over the next four days and I can write about something positive in my regular Thursday column.]
April has not started well for his Worship.
Cuts to the Tulip Festival
Over the Easter Weekend, we learned that the City of Ottawa is cutting its contribution to the Tulip Festival from $100K to $50K this year and to $0 next year.
This was foreshadowed by Luke LeBrun of Press Progress, despite Sutcliffe’s campaign promise to maintain funding for Ottawa’s festivals.
Not a good look for the Mayor to be cutting City funding to one of Ottawa’s more popular festivals, and one of the few that is free-to-all. And furthermore, breaking an election commitment.
As an aside, I’d like to know why we are only finding out about this now. The 2024 City Budget was decided in December, and we are only hearing about this cut 4 months later. Talk about a lack of transparency. And should we be expecting other festivals to come forward with their own reports of cuts in City funding?
Marathon Junket
Fresh on the heels of the Tulip Festival cuts came word that Sutcliffe would be participating in an Ottawa Tourism trade mission to London, which just happened to coincide with the London Marathon.
Here’s what we know:
Ottawa Tourism invited the Mayor on the trade mission, is paying for his costs, and secured a speaking spot for him at a SportsPro Live conference on Tuesday, 23 April.
SportsPro Live is a sports industry conference. It is not geared to tourism, although Ottawa Tourism says that they have attended previously and that it is a useful venue for connecting with major sporting competitions that could be hosted in Ottawa. Sutcliffe didn’t mention any of this when he first tweeted out his trip:
“We'll be hosting a series of events, promoting tourism to Ottawa, meeting with companies that do business in Ottawa, marketing Ottawa Race Weekend, and possibly signing a deal or two. And while I'm there I'm looking forward to participating in the London Marathon. It will be a quick but busy and impactful trip!”
Ottawa Tourism is covering Sutcliffe’s airfare and hotels. Sutcliffe is paying his own marathon registration fees.
Ottawa Tourism reports that they invited the Mayor in May 2023. Sutcliffe accepted and noticing the alignment of dates with the marathon, reached out and secured a race entry. Applying to the race entry lottery would have closed in April 2023, but he may have been able to get a late race entry as a visiting dignitary.
Sutcliffe has made the point that his trip comes “at no cost whatsoever to taxpayers”. Ottawa Tourism is a quasi-governmental organization that is dependent for its funding on a Council-approved and City-collected revenue stream. That would suggest a conflict of interest if Sutcliffe is accepting a gift from an organization with whom he and Council have a pecuniary relationship.
Ultimately, this comes down to two points.
What came first? The trade mission invitation or the marathon registration. Show us the ‘receipts’, Mr Mayor, if you want this to go away.
If Sutcliffe was only speaking at the event, and not running in the marathon, he would likely arrive into London on Monday morning, for his Tuesday event. But with Sutcliffe running the marathon on Sunday, he is likely arriving on Friday morning, to collect his race bib on Saturday and run on Sunday. Who is paying his hotel and meals for the additional 3 days? According to Sutcliffe, he should be paying it himself:
“I secured an entry into the London Marathon, which I am paying for myself, and any personal expenses or any extra time that I would spend in the U.K. as a result of this trip, I am paying the expenses for myself”
Last of the Big Six
We all know that Sutcliffe is an avid runner (good for him). We’ve also heard him say that he is aiming to run the “big six” marathons — New York, Chicago, Boston, Berlin, London and Tokyo.
I believe he has completed the first four. This trade mission will complete #5.
Ottawa Tourism, whatever you do, please do not announce a Tokyo trade mission around the time of the 2 March 2025 marathon.
New Deal for Ottawa Underwhelms
As the dust settles on the Ford government’s New Deal for Ottawa, more people have noticed that it’s not a particularly good deal.
Stephen Blais, Liberal MPP and former City Councillor is the latest, writing a Citizen op-ed, making many of the fiscal points I made last week.
Compared to what Ford is providing to Toronto, on a per capita basis Ottawa is getting much less. Toronto - $654 per person. Ottawa - $395 per person. (In an apples to apples comparison with Toronto, the Ottawa deal would actually only amount to $336 per person).
During the election campaign, someone dug up a 2012 op-ed by Sutcliffe in which he sung the praises of Donald Trump:
"When I was 19 and dreaming of owning my own business, I picked up a copy of Trump: The Art of the Deal.
It was the first business book I read and I learned a lot from it."
Trump, it turned out, was never much of a master negotiator. He’s too lazy and uninterested in the details, and simply looking for a quick announcement that he can spin as some major achievement.
Maybe our Mayor learned a little too much from Trump.