Ottawa's Real Budget Savings, Without the Marksplaining
The Mayor claims $45 million in savings for 2026, but most of it comes from deferring capital projects, accounting tricks and changes in federal programs. True efficiencies? I don't see them.
Marksplaining the Efficiencies
The Mayor took to social media to reiterate his claim that he has found a quarter billion dollars in savings over the past 4 years. He has talked about how a committee of councillors and staff dug through the different city budgets, looked in every nook and cranny, and found historic savings.
He calls that the equivalent of saving you a 12% tax increase.
Apart from his basic financial misunderstanding that one-time savings do not add up to an on-going tax increase, his claims are nonsense.
Here is what the City asserts as savings and efficiencies, as provided in Budget documents.
This table doesn’t explain much. No additional detail is provided in the budget documents about these savings.
Cutting through the spin
However, many items were explained in Committee budget presentations. And as someone who spent many years at the Department of Finance Canada, I can translate that table into English.
Let me breakdown what the 2026 “savings” are all about.
7 items account for 85% of the 2026 savings. Let’s look at what those 7 measures really mean, and whether they are actual savings or something else.
Transit Services: $14 million. OC Transpo staff provided “a summary of the efficiencies that we’ve taken to reduce both operating and capital requirements in 2026. Most of these are deferrals of non-critical capital projects into a future year.” In other words, Mark counts delaying required repairs and letting our infrastructure deteriorate as savings. Most people would see that as just kicking the can down the road.
Workforce management savings strategy: $6.5 million. As explained by the City chief financial officer, the City budget assumes that all City jobs are filled 100% of the year. But, when one of the City’s 17,387 positions becomes vacant, it takes time to fill that job — 6-8 weeks on average. That in-between time is how Mark claims another $6.5 million in savings. Of course, this is not a savings; it’s just lazy budgeting in the first place.
Facility Rationalization — $5.6 million. The City will be closing or cutting back certain facilities in 2026. We don’t know which ones, but those savings would likely include the discontinued operations at the Belltown Dome in Britannia. I don’t think most residents consider cutting or closing our community facilities as the sort of efficiencies they are looking for.
Ottawa Police Service: $4.3 million. Every year, the OPS claims millions in savings, despite their overall budget going up by considerably more. We have no way of verifying whether these are real or not. OPS staff noted savings from a range of measures, including new wellness programs (to reduce sick leave), lower fuel costs (see fleet efficiencies below), and making more use of lower-cost Special Constables.
Prudent investor and interest income: $3 million. The City is increasing its reserves in 2026, after budgeting for them to slip in 2025. More reserves means more money sitting in the bank earning interest. The City is putting away an additional $74 million in reserves and counting the interest on that as an “efficiency”. If Mark hadn’t run down reserves over the past three years, this just wouldn’t be a thing. As it is, it’s more of an accounting trick than an actual savings or efficiency.
Municipal Child Care Centres new funding model: $2.9 million. After much delay, the Ontario government signed an agreement with the federal government to extend $10/day child care for 2026, and so additional monies are now flowing from the feds to the province to municipalities consistent with that agreement. Mark calls that a savings.
Fleet efficiencies: $2 million. The federal government cancelled the consumer carbon tax earlier this year, and so municipalities — like all of us — will no longer have to pay this tax when they filling up at the pump. Mark counts that as another savings he found.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
New budget same old spin
It’s the same story for 2023, 2024 and 2025. Phantom savings, deferred capital investments and creative accounting.
I was involved with strategic reviews at the Department of Finance, and savings are only real when a department hands that money back to the budget process. Those resources may get allocated out to new priorities, including potentially back to departments that came up with the savings, but that’s a budget decision, not something that each department gets to self-report and reallocate themselves.
Real savings are hard to find
When I look through the City budgets over the past 4 years, it’s hard to know what are real savings.
The only verifiable saving is the $10 million cut to bus operations that came with the New Ways to Bus.
Mark wants you to believe that he has found all sorts of savings and efficiencies. But they are little more than changes in federal and provincial programs, accounting tricks or putting off critical capital upgrades.
Don’t be fooled by the Marksplaining.
As but one example of how they don't even want to look for savings is the recent idling bylaw review. I suggested -- and the idea was brought forth by Councilor Brockington -- what NRCan has recommended for years: Put a reminder sticker in every municipal vehicle to remind city staff to turn engines off when parked. Hundreds of city vehicles on the road every day and the number of them that idle unnecessarily is astounding -- that adds up to a trifecta of thousands of litres of wasted fuel, thousands of wasted tax dollars, and all we get for our pains is crappier air.
Congratulations for your stamina to have looked through the budget documents of the last 3-4 years. Having spent a lot of time with them myself, I share the general opinion that they are nearly impenetrable, and to the extent they are readable they don't give you the answers you were looking for.
CAFES sent a letter to the City during this business cycle, suggesting a number of ways to improve budget information. I'm not aware of a response. All we ever get is Engage Ottawa spin.