The Infrastructure Bills We Delayed Are Coming Due. Ottawa Needs a Plan.

Ottawa faces an $11 billion gap in infrastructure repairs. The solution starts with fixing structural inefficiencies.

I’m running for Mayor if 1,000 people are ready to work together to win back our city. Follow here for my values, priorities and thoughts on how we get Ottawa back on track.

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Three Priorities for Restoring Ottawa
Winning Ottawa. Governing Differently.
Transit is Broken. Here’s How We Rebuild It.
Ready to Fix City Hall

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We knew this was coming

Ottawa’s finances are more fragile than City Hall admits.

The problem isn’t a single year of overspending. It’s accumulated infrastructure.

Much of the infrastructure we rely on — roads, pipes, arenas, fire stations — was built in the 1960s and 70s. Those assets are now reaching the end of their useful lives. For decades, we did not set aside enough each year to properly maintain and replace them.

Now the bill is coming due.

Provincial asset management rules required Ottawa to publicly report how it planned to close its infrastructure funding gap. The numbers are stark: over the next 10 years, Ottawa started with an $11 billion shortfall in funding required to maintain and replace aging assets.

Council approved 5% annual water rate increases and additional borrowing to address a $4 billion gap in water and wastewater infrastructure.

But the remaining $7 billion — covering roads, parks, facilities and other assets — was deferred.

To address its own infrastructure deficit, Toronto increased property taxes by 9.5% in 2024 and 6.9% in 2025.

Under Sutcliffe, Ottawa chose to delay rather than confront the remaining gap.

We can’t delay any longer.

This is what I do

I’ve spent decades in budgeting and public finance. Fiscal planning is my bread and butter.

Every serious candidate should present a credible fiscal plan to deal with this structural gap in infrastructure financing.

My plan focuses on five actions we can take before considering property tax increases.

1. Stop overpaying

Ottawa routinely pays far more for basic infrastructure and services than it should. $200,000 for speed bumps that we’re told cost $50,000 in Montreal. $6 billion for a light rail system that struggles with reliability.

City Hall needs to stop overpaying — across the board.

The best way to find out where we are overspending is through full financial transparency.

Present the budget so that anyone can follow the money. Every purchase, every contract should be open to the public. Transparency in spending can expose waste, allow us to benchmark against other municipalities and put a spotlight on procurement deals that result in lowball bids which are quickly followed by costly “change orders”.

When City Hall is forced to open the books and allow public scrutiny, we can find the inefficiencies and cut costs without cutting services.

2. Stop the sweetheart deals

Too much of our city spending is dictated by the demands of a handful of powerful developers.

Residents deserve value for money. Instead, this Council has chosen to spend:

• $500 million for Lansdowne, to fix a broken Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group business model, even though we redid that site a decade ago and could keep it going for another 40 years at a fraction of the cost.

• $600 million for Tewin, a proposed subdivision southeast of the city that the Taggart Group wants to build, even though we have cheaper and more efficient housing options.

• $95 million for a dump site, when the land was appraised at $23 million and originally purchased by Taggart for $8 million.

3. Stop leaving federal money on the table

Revitalizing downtown is expensive, and Ottawa taxpayers can’t cover it alone.

The federal government has both the funding and the vision, but our local government keeps getting in the way of key projects. City Hall opposes a new bridge, even though it is essential to federal plans to remove trucks from downtown streets. City Hall is holding up the redesign of Wellington Street, even though it is critical to federal plans for securing Parliament, creating a new Confederation Boulevard and enabling better public transit to and from Gatineau.

Because the City refuses to compromise, projects get stalled and tens of millions of federal dollars that could go into beautifying downtown are lost.

We need a City Hall that works with the federal government, not against it, unlocking millions in funding for downtown revitalization.

4. Lower the burden on future taxpayers

When you’re in a hole, the first rule is to stop digging.

Building new infrastructure — roads, sewers, community centres — is expensive. Replacing it decades later is even more costly. Yet Ottawa continues to expand at the edge of town, building subdivisions on undeveloped land.

This is a high-cost way to grow. Powerful developers push for this approach, because it’s a predictable way to make healthy profits.

But those profits are effectively subsidized by taxpayers over the years to come. It’s far more cost-effective to thicken existing neighbourhoods, taking advantage of infrastructure that already exists.

Every new road or pipe at the edge of town is a long-term bill for your children and grandchildren. We need a City Hall that does the right thing today and rebalances growth to minimize future costs.

5. Lead a new deal for cities

Canadian cities are structurally underfunded. The City of Ottawa can’t fix that alone.

We need a mayor who can lead—not just locally, but nationally — negotiating a new fiscal federalism that gives municipalities a fair share of tax revenues.

Going it alone doesn't work. We saw that with Sutcliffe’s failed Fairness for Ottawa campaign. One city claiming unfair treatment is easy for the province and feds to ignore.

Instead, we need cities to work together to get their fair share of the Canadian tax dollar.

For the City of Ottawa, that requires leadership that understands public finance and which can rally other cities across the country to force higher levels of government to provide a fair, sustainable funding model for all municipalities.

It won’t come easily. But cities have more influence than is often appreciated. It’s time for cities to mount a sustained and coordinated campaign for a new fiscal federalism that rebalances how the tax pie is divided up.

We need a mayor who can be at the forefront of making that shift happen.

Then we have an honest conversation

After we take these five actions, we may still face difficult choices.

It would be a mistake to arbitrarily cap tax increases and force the budget to fit within a politically convenient number. That approach leads to deferred maintenance and long-term costs — as past experience has shown.

Instead, we should reverse the process.

First, decide what kind of city we want.

Second, calculate what it would cost.

Third, examine every available funding source.

And finally, decide on the trade-offs we’re prepared to make and the appropriate level of taxation.

Pretending we can permanently limit tax increases to inflation, regardless of the state of infrastructure, guarantees stagnation.

But it would be wrong to ask residents to pay more without fixing structural inefficiencies first.

Responsible leadership does both: reform first, then level honestly.

Getting Ottawa back on stable footing

Ottawa can be financially stable, transparent, and forward-looking again.

That requires discipline. It requires reform. And it requires City Hall to treat residents as more than just an ATM.

The infrastructure gap did not appear overnight. But it can still be managed responsibly, if we act now.

The alternative is sharper tax increases later.

Fiscal stability doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when residents demand leadership that plans ahead instead of defers.

It comes when enough people — 1,000 of us — stand up and return City Hall to the people.

Will you be one of The Thousand?