October 10, 2022
I walked into the community center hall and found a chair in the back row joining a couple of dozen white-haired folks. They were the burghers of Ottawa West, homeowners, of course. Five of the seven candidates showed up, vying to become Councilor at the upcoming election for Ward 9, in Ottawa.
What I would learn at this meeting would not change my voting since I had already voted in the advance poll. I came to hear the candidates in person; I had already heard them and their pitch on one of the news channels
Although I looked forward to a lively debate, the moderator cautioned us to be civil with each other and have respect for all opinions, even if we strongly disagreed. OK, no fireworks.
On the way in, they told me to wear a mask and offered one, but I always carry one with me. I thought we were beyond masking, but according to the organizers; we protect each other by wearing one. This was a relevant notion considering the age of the audience.
Most of us were over seventy years of age and retired – who else would attend a political meeting? Interest in local elections tends to be low; at the last local election, only forty percent of people voted.
The President of the local community association opened the meeting by thanking the Anishinaabe tribe for letting us use their land (I understand all of Ottawa is on unceded tribal lands). It has become de rigor to remind us of the natives’ goodwill by letting us use their lands. I think it is an attempt to express our guilt for past injustices meted out to natives in Canada.
This recent custom has never failed to u irritate me no end since I had never heard of the Anishinaabe until a few years ago. And when I bought our house, nobody told me I would live on the unceded territory of the Ashininaabi or explained what the implications were, if any.
I consider I own the land on which the house is, and that I paid for the land when I bought the house. What does it mean that I live on unceded land? Does this situation call for a resolution? And, if so, who is working on it?
After we masked up and paid homage to the Ashininaabi, the moderator asked the audience to state in a few words what their issues were. Not in any order of priority, people identified; housing shortage, especially affordable ones, thru-traffic, transportation, taxes,the environment, and police transparency. I called attention to the residential twenty-five-storey high-rise proposals springing up that, in my opinion, do not fit into a single-family neighborhood.
Now we were ready to listen to the candidates, who each had three minutes to describe their priorities for Ward 9. The one common theme from all of them was that they will represent and work hard for the community. An original notion!
But then they distinguished themselves: one emphasized that he would work with all levels of government and the community collaboratively. Another brilliant notion: I ask you, is there any other way to work on the City Council? He did not seem to have a vision or substantive ideas on what exactly we should be doing in our community, except that we should work together.
Another candidate distinguished himself by admitting he has no community activist experience and said that if we want a community activist on Council, then he is not the one to vote for. An honest but perhaps not a winning strategy.
The next candidate focused on the debt the city had accumulated and explained that his financial and business experience will help him on Council to curb this outrageous spending that quadrupled the debt in four years.
The remaining candidates were “community activists” and have been presidents of their local community associations, a highly desirable experience for this election in their views. I may have missed it, but the community activists had not described their achievements during their service to the community,
A firestorm erupted when one candidate accused another one of informally associating himself with ten other councilors to vote as a block, should they all get elected. The implication was that this candidate may not take his cue from the community serving local interests but vote with his allied partners. Further, the accuser called his competitor a leftie and suggested the city would end in never-never land with even more debt if that woke group of councilors get voted in. The discussion had become heated and loud with angry words being exchanged, not only by the candidates but included audience participation. The moderator interrupted by raising his voice, calling for quiet; he ordered the candidates to talk about their platforms and forbade them to attack each other. I thought I gained additional information by listening to the accusation. And I enjoyed the interchange as well as the raw emotions that was demonstrated, showing strong opinions.
The next kerfuffle began with an environmental expert asking if the candidates would support the city’s $60 billion-dollar environment plan, which, in his opinion, was untenable and unrealistic; for example, by calling for forty square kilometers of a solar panel farm. He also argued the federal government has jurisdiction in this area and the City’s role is limited at best. Some in the audience called the speaker a climate-denier and told the speaker to shut up and sit down, while the speaker insisted on his right to speak. The moderator had to step in again and first drew attention that the speaker had no mask on,well, he was speaking, and that he had enough time to expose his thesis.
According to one candidate, the city has responsibility to at least provide generators for emergencies such as the derecho this Spring and the hurricane a few years ago. I thought that was a good suggestion; we lost a freezer full of meat this Spring when the derecho came with no electricity for over a week, an expensive experience.
The protection of R1 zoning was probably the most important issue for this audience. R1 zoning refers to single-family housing that occupies most of our community. The candidates hemmed and hawed and the American dream of a house with a backyard where the children can play was brought up. But the candidates also talked about a housing shortage and the only solution is densification and intensification recommended by the City’s planners. That was pure political posturing. There is no room in our community for additional housing except by demolishing existing homes to make room for multi-family development.
According to the City’s planners, the only alternative to densification is urban sprawl, a decisively bad option creating costly infrastructure extension and additional traffic, generating pollution. Urban sprawl is an anti-environmental solution. As a city planner, I wondered why nobody considered a third option: “new towns”, such as those built in Britain as well as in the US. Why could we not grow our surrounding communities, such as Kanata, Stittsville, and Manotick, and attract residential development to satisfy future housing needs?
No, instead of developing new towns, we will destroy established single-family residential areas by allowing high-rise towers with their attendant traffic congestion. Our community is zoned R1, called “exclusionary zoning” now, intimating it is an elite zone where the poorer people cannot afford to live. Since when was single-family housing considered elite? Forty percent of Ottawa is occupied by such housing so how can this be elitist? You draw your conclusions.
I came away from the meeting feeling threatened by a future that will encroach on my community with high-density development. Developers have already submitted applications to the city for twenty-five storey and higher buildings So far, the developers seem to have the upper hand. The city planners do not seem to have the gumption to scale back the high-density development proposals despite strong local opposition; I attended many zoom meetings on “site plan approvals” submitted by developers for high-rise towers. The planners recommend “densification” to allow for the additional 400,000 people projected to occupy Ottawa by 2050. I do not know how the projections were made, since current population growth numbers do not justify the projection. But this set of candidates did not question the planners’ proposals.
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