Ottawa may have a new force on the municipal political scene. But those involved are keeping a low profile, as the movement may be the city’s first local political party.
A group calling itself “Our Ottawa” has begun holding meetings and recruiting people interested in running for city council.
In an e-mail to Centretown News, someone claiming to speak for the group said it was not yet ready to talk with media.
“We are not taking interviews at this point as I’m sure you will understand. There isn’t much more information that we would like to provide until the new year.”
The only name publicly linked to Our Ottawa so far is David Chernushenko, the former Green Party leadership hopeful and federal candidate in Ottawa Centre in 2004 and 2006.
Chernushenko says he was approached about attending Our Ottawa meetings. He’s considering running in Capital Ward, the council seat currently held by Clive Doucet. However, he hasn’t made the decision yet.
While he doesn’t speak for the group, Chernushenko says those involved come from a variety of backgrounds.
“It’s a wide cross-section of community associations with no party affiliation,” he says. “The best way I can describe it is as a group of people trying to further a vision of a sustainable community and smart growth.”
He adds the group shouldn’t be called a “party” yet, referring to it as a “coalition” instead.
“Have I been formally approached? I don’t think there‘s a formal ‘us’ to be approached by.”
David Siegel, a political scientist at Brock University specializing in local government, says a choice of words may have more to do with style than substance.
“There’s a sort of cultural bias against parties at the local level,” Siegel says. “So I’m not surprised they want to downplay this and call it a coalition.”
Siegel says the bias stems from an idea that local governments are more about fixing potholes than producing policy.
“That’s the historic idea,” he says. “But, I hope we’ve moved beyond that.”
Ottawa, like most Canadian cities doesn’t have much history with municipal political parties. Candidates have always run as independents.
That doesn’t mean the city’s councillors haven’t had political stripes, says John Taylor, an Ottawa historian and retired Carleton University professor. But city political candidates have never run explicitly under a party banner.
“The closest Ottawa came to party politics was probably under the mayoralty of Marion Dewar, who had on council a leftist coalition, many of whom were NDPers, but did not run explicitly as such,” Taylor wrote in an e-mail.
Other cities have seen a different story. Municipal politics in both Montreal and Vancouver are structured by political parties, but with very different dynamics.
In Vancouver, municipal parties, while not directly allied with provincial or federal parties such as the Conservatives or NDP, do reflect a city polarized at either end of the traditional political spectrum, says Siegel.
In Quebec, municipal political parties have been a regular feature of the political landscape for decades.
They’re especially prominent in Montreal, which tends to see parties associated with a particular personality.
“These parties often tend to be one-man shows that coalesce around a candidate for mayor,” says Robert Young, the Canada Research Chair in Multilevel Governance at the University of Western Ontario.
“Then they sort of fall apart when that leader leaves the scene or is discredited.”
The Parti Civic de Montreal, for example, formed around Jean Drapeau. Drapeau had been mayor in the mid-to-late 1950s and again for more than two decades beginning in 1960. The party would outlive him, but only to 1994.
How Our Ottawa will pan out remains to be seen. But it has already taken a big step towards becoming the city’s first modern political party.
“Well, they’ve got a name and platform ideas,” Young says. “That makes them more than a slate.”