Chow’s TO Mayoral Win Gives Ottawa Hope: DOUCET

By Clive Doucet

When I was first elected to Ottawa City Council, a small delegation of older women came to see me with an unexpected proposal.

They thought Ottawa should consider applying to the United Nations to be designated as an urban biosphere reserve. They explained very clearly and logically that Ottawa had it all.

Compared to most cities, a pristine environment, at the junction of three great and clean rivers, next to a glorious wildness reserve (Gatineau Park) had an excellent busway system that was on the verge of giving the car some real competition. They felt that just applying for the U.N. designation was the next step. At the least, it would push ordinary Ottawans to think a little differently about their city and the possibilities of making it even better.

I was flattered that they picked me out of all the new councillors in the 1997 election crop to represent their ideas and I did give it some serious thought, but the long and short of it was, I was too new.

We had just come through the ice storm. One of the biggest disasters ever to strike the city and I had some essential election promises to deliver on, among them a pilot light-rail project and the green renovation of Lansdowne Park. Reluctantly, I felt that by advancing such an unusual proposition at council, it would brand me even deeper than I already was as an idealist and hinder my chances of delivering on my campaign promises. So, I thanked them and said no.

I’m thinking of it now because of Olivia Chow and her recent election as Toronto mayor. Hope is the cement of democracy. We hope electoral change will mean something for your city, your nation and in the grandest sense, the world. Chow delivered that message, never lost faith in it, even when she lost her husband Jack Layton and her first bid for the mayor’s chair. She persevered and that has to make you glad for her and for Toronto, but it makes me a little sad for my own hometown. Where is the hope to be found here?

In 2023, can you imagine a group of women coming to visit a city councillor with the proposition that Ottawa consider applying to become an UNESCO urban biosphere reserve? What would we be able to put on the table to make a convincing argument that the city deserved such a designation beyond we’re not a heavy industry town.

Lansdowne 2.0 Gets 10x The Cash Of Seniors

The Tewin development in the far east end has blown up the urban growth line and put the city on sprawl steroids that hasn’t been seen since the Canadian Tire Centre was built in a Class 1 cornfield.

Meanwhile, the city’s own integrity commissioner found the chairwoman of the city’s planning committee to have a serious conflict with developers. Whereupon, the chairwoman left and a new face replaced her.

As well, the province investigated the city’s management of the light-rail system and found it to have been incompetently and secretively managed. The mayor left and a new face replaced him.

Lansdowne Park never received its green makeover. The public competition was closed and the park was given away to developers for a pittance. Their mall has never worked and the developers pocketed all the condo profits. The city saw none of them. The latest mall bailout takes another $350 million from Ottawa taxpayers. The total now is unknown but it’s west of half a billion. Why?

It certainly wasn’t to bring football back to the city because council had it in writing from the CFL that the league didn’t care where city’s new football stadium went as long as it was somewhere. So why did the city give away its oldest legacy park?

Why did the NCC suddenly perform a 180-degree turn about the best location for a new central city hospital complex and gave away 50 acres of a national historic site for the same purpose. That deal made Lansdowne look like small potatoes.

Weighty Ottawans such as former federal budget officer Kevin Page and many others have tried to bell the cat at city hall calling for transparency and accountability but to no avail. Reimagine Ottawa’s distinguished panel comes to mind. From time to time the faces change in the mayor’s chair but nothing else does. The same off-line, private discussions still run the city as they always have. Elections are nothing more than a ceremonial requirement of the Municipal Act which the backroom boys have to endure before they can get back to business as usual which is strip-mining city assets for personal profit.

Over the years, there have been a couple of mayors who have refused to play ball with the folks who really run the city. Marion Dewar was one and surprisingly Bob Chiarelli was another. In his quiet way, he refused to get on board with giving away Lansdowne Park or the light-rail line along the western parkway. His low profile and quiet resistance got him through three elections before the people who matter finally noticed.

There’s nothing written in the stars that democracy must work and frequently doesn’t, but there’s no chance at all if hope decays. That’s why Chow’s Toronto election win was important in Ottawa as well as Toronto. She proved that against many odds, you can be idealistic and outside of the clutches of developers, and still make it.

It was a great moment for all of us who would like to see real change at Ottawa City Hall, but the real test will be can she deliver with the Toronto power-brokers lined up against her, because they will be. The Ontario Premier Doug Ford you don’t see on the television will lead the charge as he has been doing since the day he was first elected as premier of the province beginning with decimating Toronto City Council.

Clive Doucet was an Ottawa city councillor from 1997 to 2010 after which he ran for mayor and lost twice, coming third and second. His last book Grandfather’s House was shortlisted for the Atlantic Canada award for non-fiction in 2020. Urban Meltdown: Cities, Climate Change and Politics as Usual”reflections on his life as an Ottawa city councillor was shortlisted for the Shaughnessy-Cohen Prize for political writing.

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