Maybe We Are The City Hall Problem: CRERAR

Many local pundits have bemoaned the current state of Ottawa City Council, especially its shortcomings with regards to city planning and financial matters.

It has often been stated that replacing existing councilors with new ones would go a long way to solving the current problems.

Since 2018, 18 new councillors have been elected to represent constituents in 24 wards (10 of whom were elected in 2022). Steve Desroches, who was elected in 2022, had previously served eight years on council before stepping down in 2014 so he is not included in the counts of 18 or 10.

The senior councillors at city hall are Tim Tierney and Alan Hubley (both elected in 2010), plus Jeff Leiper and Riley Brockington (elected in 2014). The newest member of city council, Isabelle Skalski, who won the recent Osgoode ward by-election, has no previous experience on council and has not been included in the above counts. Nor will she be included in calculations to come so as not to skew any results.

As well, let’s not ignore the fact we have a new mayor with no prior political experience who was also elected in 2022.

The average amount of time spent on council by the 23 councillors, who have served prior to last Monday’s Osgoode ward election, is just more than years or a term-and-a-half. If the senior members of council, Tim Tierney and Alan Hubley, are removed from the calculations, the average time for all remaining councillors is 5.3 years, or one term plus one year (note that calculations are slightly misleading because all numbers have been rounded since it is currently June and the next election will not occur until November 2026).

Returning to the concern regarding the effectiveness of city councilors, it appears that the out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new solution is not working as some anticipated.

So, what is the solution?

Let’s examine the current team’s makeup, noting that all good teams consist of members with different skills and backgrounds. Members of Ottawa City Council come from different ethnic backgrounds, different age groups and have worked in a variety of fields in both the public and private sectors. So overall team makeup does not seem to be an issue.

Perhaps we’re looking in the wrong place. Maybe city council is not the problem, maybe we should look more closely at senior management and city staff as the source of the city’s woes. The first question that comes to mind is: Why can Toronto operate a city with roughly 42,000 employees while Ottawa requires 17,000?. And for that matter, why does Ottawa require 24 councillors to govern while Toronto can do the job with only 25?

Or perhaps the problem is with us, the public. Maybe we should stop banging our heads against the wall and accept we live in an imperfect city in an imperfect world where problems just occur for various reasons. An acquaintance once told me a new sport will be added to the next Summer Olympics and Canada is guaranteed to win the gold medal. The new event? Complaining.

If we had a political system that worked perfectly, what would we have left to complain about? Complaining about the weather is so 1980s.

Howard Crerar is a project manager and has worked in the software industry for three decades.

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