It’s rare that there is any real change in city politics. Elections come and go but the same development forces that control City Council change the faces but not the policies. Ottawa is no different. There’s only been one Mayor in the history of the city who hasn’t been bankrolled by either the real estate or development industry. Jackie Holzman used to say, “we know where the votes are, let’s vote!” At least she was honest, there was no pretence that the debate around the council table meant anything.
Mayor Marion Dewar was an accident. She was a public health nurse who was not expected to win the Mayor’s chair. The development industry were so confident that their guy would be as usual elected that they weren’t paying much attention, but there was a split between two
development candidates, which no one had taken care of, and to universal astonishment Marion won and went on to become Ottawa’s first ‘people’s mayor’.
My sense of it is, Ottawa is on the cusp of one of these rare political sea changes similar to what happened around Marion Dewar and John Sewell in Toronto. Sewell was elected the end of that epic struggle to stop the Spadina Expressway when the old, developer guard was thrown
out. And not just new faces appeared but a new political philosophy that wasn’t controlled by anyone but the united voice of Toronto communities.
It's not exactly the same in Ottawa in 2022, but there are many parallels. Like in Toronto, where a robust civic engagement grew to fight the Spadina Expressway which eventually came to include over 250 community associations, in Ottawa well organized groups like Horizon Ottawa and Reimagine Ottawa have focused on belling city council for a series of badly mismanaged projects. Among them would be: The Occupation fiasco, the financial bog of Lansdowne, the LRT debacle where after spending more than 2 billion new dollars, the new service takes longer and serves fewer people; and the appropriation of irreplaceable green space at the Central Experimental Farm in order to protect Tunney’s for Developers.
Unlike Toronto’s mayor, Mr. Watson, ever the canny politician, has figured out the writing is on the wall and has escaped to let someone else take the fall, but the political sea change hasn’t gone away with his departure. My prediction is simple. Ottawa will follow Toronto’s example
after the defeat of the Spadina Expressway. There will be a sharp turn to the left. The developer vote will split between Sutcliffe and Chiarelli, and Catherine McKenney will have a narrow victory. Further, they will have a fresh, progressive council backing them. The first one since Marion Dewar.
Their great problem will be what does they do with the mess they inherit? How do you fix a light rail system poorly built and located in the wrong place from one end to the other. These are systemic errors.
The farm hospital construction, if it goes ahead, will be a cost and service horror show with the city manager advising her to trying to sell off more pieces of the farm to pay for the mess. This will face legal challenges.
The old Civic Stadium at Lansdowne is falling apart and the developers will continue to harass council for more subsidies for a mall which never should have been built and so on.
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Clive Doucet is a writer and a former City Councillor for Capital Ward. His last book was “Grandfather’s House, Returning to Cape Breton”.
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