Mayor Knew About ‘Staff’ Senior Fare Hike: THE VOTER

There’s absolutely no way that any staff person would ever come forward with a proposal to more than double the cost of a seniors’ transit pass without, at a bare minimum, running it by the mayor and the chairman of the transit commission.

For the staff and politicians to claim that sort of thing is a decision made at the staff level and that it was a complete surprise to the politicians strains credulity. Are we also supposed to conveniently forget that one of the Watson-era changes at Ottawa City Hall was to take the budget creation process out of the hands of staff and move it into the mayor’s office? Pull the other leg, Mayor Mark Sutcliffe.

Even if we are to believe that Sutcliffe himself is naive enough to put forward such an idea on his own with no fear of repercussion, there are people on his staff such as Robyn Guest who have enough experience and political savvy to know this increase for seniors would be dynamite.

Not only do seniors vote in great numbers but they also contribute, financially and otherwise, to political campaigns. So let’s take a deeper look at what’s going on. I think this proposal is carefully planned and very intentional.

There are two potential plans here, either or both of which may be in play. The first is that by throwing such an outrageous number into the pot, i.e. an increase of more than 120 per cent, they hope to divert people’s attention from the increases to other fares. In previous years, the increases were closer to 2.5 per cent to which there was loud objection. If the conversation can be focused on the seniors’ pass, they hope others may decide not to rock the boat lest their five per cent should be increased further.

The second scenario is that there was never any intention to increase the seniors’ pass by anything like the amount they’ve proposed. They have put that number out there with the full knowledge that it will never actually see the light of day.

The idea is that the staff will appear to be promoting an increase that is completely unconscionable and then politicians will, predictably, respond that they could never support such an attack on a vulnerable population who built the world we live in and to whom we owe a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid, etc. We will hear of little old ladies forced to eat cat food so they can afford the bus fare to go to church and elderly gentlemen who will have to miss essential medical appointments because they don’t have the car fare. (Note to younger readers: many seniors’ first experience with public transit was on streetcars and they still refer to the amount they pay for the ride as “car fare”.) Someone will mention that this budget debate will be taking place exactly one month after Remembrance Day – lest we forget the sacrifices this generation made for us.

Some very clever councillor, possibly even the mayor, will move that the draft budget be amended to reduce the increase to the seniors’ pass to, say, 12.5 per cent. That’s still a lot but it is only a 10th of what was on the table. Councillors will fall over each other to support the amendment and it will be approved. Somewhere in the rest of the transit budget, an amount that very conveniently matches the rest of the proposed increase will be ‘discovered’ and inserted into the budget to balance the change.

At the end of the day, OC Transpo general manager Amilcar will keep her job for the moment and, on October 26, 2026, Ottawa’s senior citizens will be able to afford the transit fare to get to the polls for the next municipal election. Councillors will be blowing their own horns about how they defended seniors.

Of course, they still won’t have dealt with the multi-million dollar hole in the transit budget that they claim will be filled by as-yet-nonexistent money from the feds and the province. They will also continue pouring money into the LRT; cutting essential bus routes and blaming all their woes on low ridership and work-at-home public servants. And we’ll be back again next year at budget time talking about our money-losing transit system and listening to another litany of excuses and unsustainable solutions.

The Voter is a respected community activist and long-time Bulldog commenter who prefers to keep her identity private.

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