Municipal elections in Ottawa are 4 weeks away and mayoral campaigns are finally picking up steam. Wikipedia informs me that there are 14 mayoral candidates registered for the first election campaign since 1997 where an incumbent is not running for re-election.
Ottawa’s current and longest serving Mayor is retiring after a storied career in politics that started in 1991 as a City Councillor. He was first elected Mayor of Ottawa in 1997 and took a “break” from municipal politics to run for Provincial office in 2003, only to come back to municipal politics in 2010 and win three consecutive mandates as mayor. Ottawa likes its municipal politics bland and predictable, which explains Jim Watson’s staying power.
Despite what you may read on Twitter, Jim Watson is generally well-liked by residents who have always given him large majorities. During his last term as Mayor, he used this argument to disregard diverging opinions around the Council table. This divisive approach bore its rotten fruits and he leaves a Council marred by toxic discourse and tension. For insight about the state of Council as a difficult term wraps up, listen to Kate Porter’s 3-part series about the status of City politics in Ottawa.
Ottawa residents rarely go for vision over status quo. I often describe Ottawa as socially liberal and politically conservative. It wants left wing services for a right wing price tag. But when push comes to shove, Ottawa skews conservative rather than liberal: it votes with its tax bill over its best progressive intentions. That’s why, even when a “visionary” candidate breaks through — as Larry O’Brien did in 2006, — it is with a vision of fiscal restraint and service cuts to those who need them most.
(If you are about to argue the “need them most” statement above, you must first send me an example of a fiscal restraint campaign focused on cuts to snow clearing and roads rather than crack pipes and transit. I’ll wait.)
The retirement of Jim Watson has opened the door for a few serious candidates to slide their foot in. The presence of a strong incumbent in municipal politics is often discouraging to those who don’t have 6 months of their lives and $X,000 of campaign donations to throw at their pet issue. When an incumbent is graceful enough to step down — or old and sick enough to retire — a rash of new candidates erupts. In the case of the mayoral race in Ottawa, three arguably credible candidates rose from the crop of 14 registrants. I write “arguably” because I never considered Bob Chiarelli to be a credible candidate but he is definitely a contender. Just to show how willing Ottawa is to vote for anyone’s whose name they’ve seen before. No matter what you think the problem Ottawa needs to solve is, I can promise you that someone who was first elected in 1987 is not the solution. All this to say, arguably three credible candidates: Bob Chiarelli, Catherine McKenney and Mark Sutcliffe. For me, the choice is between McKenney and Sutcliffe.
It’s unusual in Ottawa to have a clear choice between two credible options. As I tried to illustrate above, Ottawa normally has the choice between the devil they know and a slate of unknown — and sometimes unsavoury — characters. McKenney and Sutcliffe present an interesting mix of old and new insofar as McKenney is known in municipal politics but running on new progressive ideas, and Sutcliffe is an outsider in municipal politics but running on a conservative platform that feels very familiar to this long time Ottawa resident.
When people ask me “Who should I vote for?” I always tell them it depends on what you want. We have two solid candidates who will make credible mayors. They will both face the same frustrations and limitations as any newcomer in the role, and their tenure as mayor will be peppered with successes and failures, highs and lows. Both could be remembered as the mayor who ushered Ottawa through its growth as a city of over a million residents. It will be a period of rapid change, growing pain, and identity crisis. It will be a period of battle between the old and the new where the winners will determine the challenges we will tackle for the next 50 years. Will we be defined by our fight against change or by our fight to adapt to change? Both roads will be bumpy, and Ottawa’s next mayor has the potential of being remembered as the leader who made it or broke it. Pivotal moments in a city’s history offer little in the way of nuance and Ottawa stands on the threshold of its next identity as a large city. How we take that step will determine if we enter it gracefully or teeth first.
McKenney (they/them) offers a platform of radical change. They believe that our current policies, which focus on low taxes, low housing density and car dependent communities, have contributed to our greatest affordability, environmental and solvency challenges. McKenney presents a platform of radical equity, with catch-up investments in housing, transit, active transportation, and climate resilience. McKenney understands Ottawa residents’ desire to increase services and amenities without paying for them. They plan to fund these massive investments through service cuts elsewhere (“reprioritizing existing City spending”) and maintaining Ottawa’s 3% cap on tax increases (“3% property tax approach”).
I have bad news: Canada’s year-over-year inflation rate currently sits at 7%. A 3% approach to tax increases means a tax increase served alongside massive service cuts, not increased investments in transit, housing and climate action. The reprioritization of existing city spending will happen all right, but only to cover the difference between the increasing cost of everything and the insufficient tax revenues. To maintain current levels of service, taxes need to increase to the rate of inflation. To make additional investments, you need inflation + X. McKenney’s platform is serving up a half-baked vision seeking to comfort conservative Ottawans in their time-tested belief that they can have their cake and eat it too.
Sutcliffe offers a platform of radical stay-the-course, a “safe, reliable, and affordable Ottawa.” He stepped into the mayoral campaign from a successful career in business and journalism, inspired by Naheed Nenshi’s tenure as Mayor of Calgary (you can listen to his podcast interview with Nenshi here. It’s really good.) He is personable and engaging. I met him last July with my partner and unlike other mayoral hopefuls, he was more interested in listening than talking, which is commendable. His platform makes sure not to overpromise anything. Ottawa is already safe and reliable by any standards, so that part is easy. As for making it affordable, his goal of building 10,000 new homes in the next 10 years is keeping Ottawa’s current housing starts where they are: well below where they should be. In Ontario, catching up our housing shortage involves increasing our housing starts tenfold. Tenfold. And we haven’t made housing affordable yet. We have only made housing sufficient. As long as we keep housing supply below housing demand, we will remain in an affordability crisis. Sutcliffe’s housing platform is typical of his other promises as they concern safety and reliability: he promises to improve something by doing exactly what got us here. Ottawa residents love this stuff. Improvement without change. Like McKenney, his investments projections are matched with a promise of low taxes.
So, who should you vote for? If you want to cast an aspirational vote for a new vision of Ottawa that will be impossible to achieve in 4 years, vote for McKenney. If you want Ottawa to struggle with exactly the same issues 4 years from now as it is today, vote Sutcliffe. Both will make good, solid mayors.