Our Ward 9 Newsletter is typically published every two weeks, on the Tuesday following a regular Council meeting. Since our next regular Council meeting will be on November 12th, we are publishing our next regular newsletter on November 18th. This week, however, because of the importance of the passing of Lansdowne 2.0 at last week’s Special Council Meeting, as well as in response to today's tabling of the 2026 City of Ottawa Draft Budget, we are issuing this short Special Edition Newsletter.
COUNCILLOR’S MESSAGE – SPECIAL EDITION
Lansdowne 2.0: A Master Plan for waste and lost opportunity
Over the weekend, while my memory banks were re-playing the November 7th debate that led to Council’s predictable 15 – 10 vote in support of Lansdowne 2.0, it dawned on me: where will all the waste go?
One of the more overlooked concerns in the Lansdowne 2.0 debate was the environmental impact of demolishing and disposing of debris from major facilities that are not at end-of-life. The North Side stands, the Event Centre, some of the retail structures; all of it will be knocked down just to be re-built again. This decision disregards the principle of embedded carbon — the emissions already spent in constructing these buildings — and generates significant new carbon through demolition and rebuilding. Such an approach contravenes the City’s own Climate Change Master Plan, which aims to establish a carbon budget and reduce emissions by prioritizing retrofits over new builds when it comes to City facilities.
And how does Lansdowne 2.0 fit into the City’s Solid Waste Master Plan, our 30-year strategy that aims to address our growing waste challenges while promoting environmental stewardship? We’re tearing down and laying to waste usable infrastructure, trucking it away to landfills that we’re struggling to preserve, all in the name of “progress” and “moving Ottawa forward.”
These are just some of the glaring concerns that have been laid bare by this “city-building” initiative.
Based on how this matter has been communicated and debated over the past few weeks and the long-lasting legacy that Lansdowne 2.0 may have over our city, I feel it important to repeat why I voted against it. It goes beyond the clarity with which the residents of Ward 9 communicated their opposition – with over 90% of residents who wrote to me urging me not to support it. My opposition addressed several important considerations that I want Ward 9 residents to fully understand.
My concerns fell into three categories:
- Money
- Need
- Process
First, the money. No matter how hard Mayor Sutcliffe, the 14 other Councillors who supported this, and City staff downplayed the “true cost” of Lansdowne 2.0, Council has now authorized a massive long-term outlay of public money, to the tune of $418.8 million, at least. I appreciate the diligence that staff applied to making this proposal work on paper. But many experts, including several economists, university professors, and our own Auditor General, expressed genuine concerns about the risks this project is taking on, and how every additional dollar in costs will become the City of Ottawa’s burden. And the implication made by City staff repeatedly is that this proposal, and the financial strategy that underpins it, was our one good chance to fix Lansdowne.
To focus on just one component of that financial strategy: property tax uplift. Briefly, property tax “uplift” is the additional tax revenue that will be generated from a parcel of land because of further development. In the case of Lansdowne 2.0’s uplift, 75% of the net new taxes generated from development will be used to pay off the project’s debt. This practice is almost unheard of in Canada, and for good reason. For 40 years, 75% of those new tax revenues won’t be used as they normally would: which is to support core services like transit, housing, emergency services, or infrastructure. Do you know who will suffer as a result? All of us.
My second issue was need. Where was the publicly identified need for Lansdowne 2.0, at this given time? Because the timing of this decision could not have been worse. While the world economy is fragile and volatile, governments are slashing programs and services, municipalities are having trouble funding basic responsibilities like fixing sidewalks and providing viable public transportation, Ottawa is facing thousands of public sector job losses, and one in four Ottawa residents are facing food insecurity. Despite this, we’ve just approved a brand-new entertainment complex that had just been given a $200-million makeover a decade ago, and where the project’s financial viability is contingent on increased ticket prices and luxury suites. To say that this project felt “out of touch” with what the average Ottawa resident considers to be a priority right now is to put it mildly.
Yes, economic stimulation is great, and creating jobs is important. But a majority of Council acted as if this was the only major economic development that we could ever come up with. What might have been the long-term economic benefit of using debt to accelerate the construction of publicly funded affordable housing, or transit, or climate-resilient infrastructure? What might have been the long-term economic, societal or environmental dividends of that kind of investment?
If need is demonstrated by public demand, the loudest demand I heard from residents across Ward 9 and the entire city was the demand not to do this. Despite that, the mayor and fourteen Councillors chose to listen to the voices of other, less public interests.
And finally, some thoughts on process.
Public projects carry a large burden of transparency and accountability, which is as it should be. One way that governments ensure that public money is used in meaningful and accountable ways is by exposing those decisions to public scrutiny, to allow sunlight into the process, so that the public can decide whether the government’s work merits praise or scorn.
It seems clear from what I am still hearing that scorn is the prevailing public sentiment towards this project. And I would suggest a lot of that has to do with process.
When it comes to Lansdowne 2.0, at no point since I was elected to this office in 2022, has it felt that Council was doing anything other than marching steadfastly toward a pre-determined outcome. Despite Lansdowne 2.0 hardly being mentioned in Mayor Sutcliffe’s 2022 campaign, it was clear early on that this was one of his key priorities.
And at no point over the past three years has it felt like Council was being offered clearly delineated, viable options—just the choice to “take Ottawa forward” or to “hold back progress”. And if anyone questioned that, whether as a member of the public or a Councillor, they risked being branded as spreading misinformation, or that they simply didn’t understand.
That is not how public policy is meant to be developed.
Options – genuinely viable alternatives - are the lifeblood of good public policy. On Lansdowne 2.0, we saw policy certainty. We saw optimism bias. We saw “take Ottawa forward” or “hold back progress”. It’s one thing to get that from elected officials, as we are naturally political. It’s another thing to get it from City staff. Without argument, they worked extremely hard on this file. But the neutrality and objectivity I would have hoped to see from our professional staff of civil servants was not always apparent, whether in staff memos, technical briefings, the City’s social media posts, or even the so-called “Lansdowne 2.0 Fact Sheet”.
Although Lansdowne 2.0 has formally been approved, the story that will be told is not yet complete. While I hope that the story has a happy ending, I believe that there will be some dark chapters before us. No matter what, it will be a page turner.
Budget 2026 & the Ward 9 Budget Survey
On Wednesday, Council received the tabling of the 2026 City of Ottawa Draft Budget. This proposed draft budget will have been developed based on the directions that staff were provided on September 10th, when Council directed staff to develop the budget based on a 3.75% increase.
Last month, my office issued a survey for Ward 9 residents on the subject of the 2026 budget. We were pleased to see that our survey collected 665 responses. And while a survey of this nature takes some time to properly analyze the data that it produces, we wanted to provide just a small “teaser” of the reporting that we’ll be doing over the next few issues, as we work towards the December 10th Council meeting where the 2026 Budget will be debated and voted on.
Our survey was done using a Likert Scale, which is a tool used to measure attitudes and positions on various issues by providing a range of response options that reflect varying degrees of agreement or disagreement with any given statement. For our survey, we offered a range of seven responses, from “Strongly Disagree” (score of 1) to “Neutral” (score of 4) to “Strongly Agree” (score of 7). We also collected some demographic information, including asking respondents to choose their age range, so that we could measure the different responses for each statement against different age groups.
The two bar graphs below show a “hierarchy of budget priorities”, based on individual responses to the budget priorities that were addressed in each statement. The first bar graph is the “overall” hierarchy of budget priorities. The second bar graph is the hierarchy of budget priorities “by age group”.
Our survey included a series of statements on budget priorities. We’ll provide a more in-depth analysis of the survey responses in our next newsletter. Today, I want to talk about two survey items in particular, especially in the context of Council having just passed Lansdowne 2.0.
Over the past few years, I have written repeatedly about my concern over whether Ottawa’s property tax rates have been sufficient to keep up with costs. I’ve also spoken regularly about the need for greater investment in municipal infrastructure.
One of the survey statements read as follows:
“The City should focus on maintaining and improving roads, sidewalks, and winter operations over new capital projects.”
When factoring all responses across all age groups, the results from our survey showed that the highest-ranking budget priority was to focus on maintaining and improving infrastructure over spending on new capital. You can see this indicated by the purple bar (labeled as “Maintenance”) on the first bar graph, which shows the “overall” priorities, as well as the high-placement of the purple bar on the second bar graph, which shows the ranking-by-priority of each age group.
Another one of our survey statements read as follows:
“I would support a slightly higher property tax increase if it ensures properly funded infrastructure maintenance and renewal.”
This statement is represented by the peach-colored bar on the two graphs (labeled as “Higher Taxes”). What you’ll see is that this priority ranked relatively high across most age groups:
- Among 25–34 year-olds, 35–44 year-olds and 75-84 year-olds, this priority ranked 3rd
- Among 15–24 year-olds, 45–54 year-olds, 55-64 year-olds and 65–74 year-olds, this priority ranked 5th
- Among those aged 85+, this priority ranked 1st (tied with Public Health)
What I believe this indicates is that, generally, Ottawa residents would have a positive attitude towards paying higher property taxes if those increased funds were directed to something that residents care about, which in this case, is the proper maintenance and improvement of our current municipal infrastructure and assets.
Fundamentally, our annual budget is a series of decisions on what we do with your money. If I asked you today whether you’d like to see your money go towards new capital assets like Lansdowne 2.0, or taking better care of our existing assets, like replacing broken sidewalks, or properly maintaining our cracked roads, or fixing our aging arenas and community centres before they are no longer usable, I think the residents of Ward 9 have made their position clear.
We’ll cover this and more in greater detail in our next issue.