Mayor’s view on council size has evolved
In 2010, he campaigned for reduction, but now worries Toronto is a precedent
Mayor Jim Watson says he no longer wishes for a smaller city council in Ottawa — a position he previously campaigned on.
Watson’s change of tune, which he attributes to lessons gleaned from eight years on the job, comes in the wake of a proposed shakeup at Toronto City Hall.
There, Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s new government wants to drastically cut the size of city council from 47 to 25 seats ahead of the Oct. 22 municipal election.
“What’s happening with the electoral system in Toronto disturbs me because, you know, who’s next?” Watson said Thursday.
The mayor said he’s been assured by the region’s top minister, Lisa MacLeod, that the province won’t tinker with the size of Ottawa’s council. But Watson himself once had his own plan to tinker with it.
During his 2010 campaign, candidate Watson unveiled a plan to shrink council by up to a third in the hopes of saving taxpayers about $2 million a year on councillors’ salaries and office budgets. Council would have been reduced from 23 to between 14 and 17 seats.
The reduction in city councillors would have been combined with a new borough system where area councillors with no taxing powers would be enabled to make decisions on local or neighbourhood issues.
“My view is council should be in the crow’s nest looking out over 30,000 feet, not get bogged down with stop signs or turn signs in local neighbourhoods,” Watson told this newspaper back in 2010.
Once he became mayor, Watson waited two years before asking city staff to outline in a report options for a boundary review, including the possibility of a smaller council.
That 2012 proposal went down in flames and Watson said he has no plans to revive it.
Currently seeking a third term, the mayor said he now understands how large the city is, how long it can take to travel from one part to the other, and how the demands and values of residents differ in rural, suburban and urban parts of the city.
“I didn’t have that opportunity when I first ran in 2010 for the simple reason that I had only served on the old City of Ottawa council,” Watson said.
Ottawa has a unique challenge — it’s geographically larger than Toronto and several other big cities in Canada combined, but it lacks a similarly large population.
Watson is infamous for pulling out a graphic showing the outlines of Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver fitting inside the outline of Ottawa.
“We have to take into account what I call the (Prince Edward Island) example. P.E.I. has four seats in the House of Commons for a population of about 120,000 people, and there’s exceptions to rep-by-pop in that case because of historic circumstances,” he said.
Watson said he won’t bring forward any proposal to shrink the size of Ottawa’s 24-member city council, noting council has already committed to review ward boundaries next year. But when the time comes, does he still wish to preside over a smaller council?
“Out of fairness, I should go into it as impartial as possible and allow the public to have a say because it’s an important decision that they will want to have input on in 2019,” Watson said.
Asmayor,Watsonsaidhe’spushed councillors to deal with smaller items at the committee level, allowing more time during council meetings for debate on bigger issues that carry a larger price tag or have far-reaching city-wide impact.
A dozen men have entered the mayor’s race, including Watson and former city councillor Clive Doucet.