A new group, whose members are as yet unidentified, has set its sights on city council seats.
With a municipal election nine months away, certain memories will stand out in the minds of voters – the lengthy debate over how to develop Lansdowne Park, a multi-million-dollar Light Rail settlement and a 51-day bus strike that cost the city almost $6 million.
They’re all issues that have polarized urban and rural councillors and highlighted tensions at city hall.
But a group called Our Ottawa wants to fix what it calls a “dysfunctional” city council. It plans to rally volunteers and publicly endorse a group of candidates for the Oct. 25, 2010 election.
“It’s about getting a good municipal council elected,” says an Our Ottawa spokesman, who asked not to be named.
“There is such a thing as good policy and we haven’t been getting that because of the dysfunction of city council.”
Our Ottawa says it has a vision on how to reform city politics in the capital but has yet to release any specific details about the group or its direction.
Call it a political party, call it a slate or call it concerned citizens – Our Ottawa is getting mixed reviews. Capital Ward councillor Clive Doucet doubts the group will be able to mend divisions at city hall.
“It won’t change the fundamental divide between suburban-rural and inside the green belt,” says Doucet. “If a party system had any chance of working, I would support it. But I just don’t think it does.”
Doucet is one of nine councillors who voted against a public-private partnership that would build shops and condos as part of the Lansdowne Park redevelopment.
He’s concerned rural councillors who are disconnected from urban issues are shaping the future of the city.
“You have basically 400,000 people saying they don’t want a mall in the centre of their old Victorian fair ground. And the rural and suburban guy’s saying, ‘We don’t care if there’s a mall there. We think it’s fine.’ ”
The remedy, says Doucet, is giving individual wards more authority over issues that affect them directly rather than moving toward a party system.
“We have a damaged local democracy. And so we get basically rump groups – fragmented groups grasping for control. Do parties change the damaged democracy at the federal level?” Doucet asks. “It doesn’t. I think it’s grasping at straws.”
But mayoral candidate Jim Watson blames a lack of leadership for the divisions at city hall – not amalgamation itself.
Watson was mayor when the City of Ottawa Act was passed in 1999, which amalgamated 11 neighbouring municipalities into Ottawa, making it largest farming city in the country.
After more than six years in the provincial cabinet as MPP for Ottawa West-Nepean, Watson has stepped down to run for mayor in the hopes of restoring a sense of teamwork on council.
“The role of the mayor is to create an environment where councillors want to work together – co-operation, collaboration, we haven’t seen a lot of that, obviously, in the last couple of years,” Watson says.
The ability to act independently of party lines is unique to city politics and would be a refreshing change from provincial politics, Watson says.
“It’s very healthy to have men and women who are elected to a ward, their own individual communities, who are free to vote the way that they want to vote – based on their own perspective and not some party law or some party whip,” Watson says.
Watson says introducing party politics to city hall would distance councillors from the residents of their ward.
“Municipal government is a collaborative government. It’s not a party system or a Parliamentary system, it’s 23 individual councillors working hopefully for a common purpose to improve the city.”
But with so many councillors, building a majority on any question can be a lengthy process, says Caroline Andrew, director of the University of Ottawa’s Centre on Governance.
Andrew says a party system could help build consensus on city council.
“Political parties were supposed to be groupings that cut across the social cleavages. So you get parties that brought together people from urban-rural, men-women, racial minorities-white professionals,” Andrew says.
Candidates may band together on environmental platforms or food security issues, such as encouraging local producers to sell to local markets, Andrew suggested.
Like-minded councillors might also come together less formally on a slate, which centres around an issue or group of issues, says Andrew.
“The idea of slates is an idea that has come up periodically in Ottawa,” Andrew says. “It dates back quite a while.”
Andrew points to Marion Dewar’s leadership of the city, between 1978 and 1985, as a time when councillors voted together certain issues.
“But that hasn’t been true in the last little while,” she adds.
While Our Ottawa has yet to reveal its members and plans for the city, Andrew warns that if the group is organized along urban or rural-suburban lines it could further deepen the divide between communities who have divergent views.
“If they didn’t cross those social cleavages, they could probably exacerbate some of those tensions,” Andrews says.
Just how successful – or unsuccessful – a group of candidates running on a single agenda could be depends largely on public opinion.
“The problem is, generally speaking, voters don’t want anything that resembles a system of political parties,” Andrew says. “Which is a huge stumbling block.”
Somerset Ward councillor Diane Holmes agrees.
Holmes says she’s always preferred independent councillors, but public opinion will determine whethernow is the time for a change.
“As long as it’s very transparent and the public knows what they stand for, then it’s fairly acceptable,” Holmes says.