I’m coming a bit late to the party writing about developer donations and the debacle over a contribution to traffic calming and affordable housing in Capital Ward.
The story started last year when a development application containing an unsigned agreement to spend $300,000 in traffic calming measures and affordable housing came to Ottawa’s Planning & Housing Committee. $300,000 is not a large contribution to affordable housing but new federal programs might have multiplied its impact. We’ll never know: Katasa Group pulled their offer after some not-so-well-meaning councillors – whose campaign donation records look like the invites for GOHBA’s Christmas party – accused Katasa Group and Councillor Shawn Menard of corruption.
The type of developer contribution negotiated by Shawn Menard in this ill-fated agreement was not uncommon until last month. It was one of the last bastions of meaningful influence for councillors on matters of planning and development. In some cases, it gave councillors a way to smooth the rough edges of community backlash by requesting an unwarranted traffic study or the preservation of a special tree. In other cases, it helped preserve the integrity of the planning process by plugging holes left by policy and giving residents an opportunity to be heard in a meaningful way. We all know about sidewalks ending 25 metres from an intersection, pathways leading to a closed fence, bus stops in ditches, the list goes on. A careful councillor (or <cough> their staff) would notice these near-misses and have a chat with the developer. “Any chance you guys could just build the sidewalk 25m longer?” “Any chance you guys could connect that pathway to that other pathway?” and so on. These adjustments came at a cost to the developer but they were part of building a collaborative relationship. They were rolled into development applications and approved as part of the development review process. Shawn Menard’s arrangement with Katasa Group differed in that there was an explicit cash amount instead of a desired outcome.
The fact that Shawn Menard was able to play nice with a developer should have been the news.
When I worked at City Hall, I heard a lobbyist tell a first-term councillor « we thought you’d be more like a Shawn Menard. » A Shawn Menard was already shorthand for someone who would not be caught dead working collaboratively with developers. His progressive idealism admitted no compromise and often fell short of serving his constituents.
Shawn Menard won his seat on Ottawa City Council in 2018 by beating an incumbent, a rare feat in municipal politics where low voter turnout tends to work in favour of familiarity over competence. Shawn’s personal congeniality was only matched by his political ruthlessness and his style quickly became difficult to take. In many ways, Shawn reminds me of my federal MP Pierre Poilievre. People often quiz me about Pierre Poilievre’s political longevity. « Why do people keep voting for him?? He is so unpleasant! » What they miss in the big picture of national politics is Poilievre’s work as a constituency MP. In person, he is fun and engaging, a relatable family man who remembers your name and will personally go look for your passport in the halls of government until he finds it.
Like Pierre Poilievre, first-term Shawn Menard had a way of advocating for his community by running his nails down a chalkboard. But he was approachable and his constituents knew he cared. Unfortunately, the support of your community only gets you a seat at the table. Getting your ideas through council requires the support of a majority of your colleagues. Shawn’s manner at the council table and on social media was abrasive, polarizing, and unproductive.
It didn’t help that he was ideologically pitted against a formidable foe in Mayor Jim Watson. Jim Watson had started honing his political skills in 1982 — Shawn Menard’s birth year — as President of the Rideau River Residence Association. In 2018, he was wrapping up a storied political career in the third term of his second stint as Ottawa’s Mayor.
Jim Watson took a visible delight getting under Shawn’s skin, never letting a rookie procedural mistake go unnoticed. Their political enmity was the flint, the spark and the fuel of the dysfunction that came to mark Watson’s last mayoral turn. Watson squandered his political legacy swatting off a political rookie who had no problem shooting off his own foot.
If Shawn Menard was incapable of getting a motion through council, his ability to use social media to polarize Ottawa voters along right/left political lines was unmatched. Some suburban voters started asking their councillors to vote with Shawn Menard as a litmus test of their progressive creds, even when doing so was detrimental to progressive ideals in their own communities. For instance by cutting transit service to the suburbs to increase frequency in the core. Councillors who supported the new Civic Hospital campus were demonized online by constituents who do not have a family doctor or a brick-and-mortar clinic in their community.
For four years, voting records were posted online and cast in the most politically damaging light: if you voted in favour of housing development you were in the pocket of developers, if you voted for a tax incentive you supported corporate welfare, if you voted to build a road you were a climate denier, if you voted against a tax increase you hated poor people. It was relentless.
During the election campaign, Shawn Menard supported progressive candidates by knocking on doors in some of his council colleagues’ wards to help get them unseated. It throws a chill on cordial relations when you report back to “work together” in the first week of December after the election.
The new term of council under the helm of Mayor Mark Sutcliffe ushered in a more cooperative mood. Shawn Menard matured as a second-term councillor and I can’t help but think that not having Jim Watson breathing down his neck has helped. Unfortunately, the bad blood he created and nursed for four years in the last term of council has not been forgotten
If Jim Watson’s retirement allowed Shawn to find a more positive stride, some of his colleagues made the reverse journey. No longer able to throw rocks safely from behind Jim Watson, councillors like Matt Luloff had to start slinging their own crap. During the council meeting discussing the Katasa Group contribution, Luloff declared that he knew “on good authority” that Shawn Menard had pressured Katasa Group to make the donation. From there to an accusation of extortion, there is barely a developer-funded crosswalk. When asked for more details at a press point after council, Luloff said the quiet part out loud when he admitted that there were things you could say at council (under the cover of immunity) that you could not repeat in front of media (when a defamation lawsuit is in the mix) (italics mine).
It turns out that when you call people corrupt for four years, they are disposed to return the favour. Shawn Menard’s Katasa Group debacle showed us in one embarrassing afternoon at City Hall what happens when you spit upwind.
The problem is that Shawn didn’t catch his own spittle, his community did.