Ottawa Citizen

We missed out on the mayoral debate that we deserved

- MOHAMMED ADAM Mohammed Adam is an Ottawa writer.

The municipal election is less than two weeks away, and despite the early excitement generated by Clive Doucet’s entry into the mayor’s race, the campaign hasn’t really captured the imaginatio­n. This was never going to be an inspiring campaign, but the hope was that Doucet’s candidacy would elevate the debate and give citizens real insight into the big issues.

It didn’t happen because there’s been no real, meaningful debate between Doucet and Jim Watson. When we go to the polls on Oct. 22, we’ll be making decisions based essentiall­y on our predisposi­tion to the two candidates — not on anything learned about their visions from the give-and-take of robust debate.

Pick any issue you want — affordable housing, public transit, infill developmen­t, garbage collection and recycling, the poor state of our roads or even taxes — and you’ll find no meaningful debate between the two principal candidates to test whose plan is best for the city.

What we’ve largely seen is a campaign of news conference­s at which each candidate releases a plan on an issue with little or no critical scrutiny or challenge. It goes something like this: Jim Watson makes a campaign announceme­nt; reporters then track Doucet for critical comment, which takes a paragraph or two in a story, and that’s the end of it. The same thing happens when Doucet makes an announceme­nt and Watson offers his take. We learn very little about who is making sense and who is not.

Take affordable housing, one of the most important issues in the city. Announcing his plan last week, Doucet wheeled out Dick Stewart, the city’s former general manager of people services, to deliver an indictment of Ottawa’s housing and homeless policy. Stewart pointed to rising homelessne­ss and said the city has

We learn very little about who is making sense.

failed to live up to its own affordable housing objectives. Doucet then proposed a series of policies on housing and elderly care and that was it. Watson will soon release his housing plan in the same manner as Doucet and move on.

All this is happening against a backdrop of rental accommodat­ion shortages and Heron Gate renters being evicted or relocated (depending on your perspectiv­e). This is an issue that should have been subjected to serious debate to enable citizens to compare and contrast each candidate’s policy. But that’s not happening and we are the worse for it.

Looking to the future, perhaps the most important thing we can do as citizens is review how we conduct elections and organize debates, especially for mayoral candidates. Everyone has a right to enter any race and that’s why we have a dozen candidates running for mayor. But that doesn’t mean community groups have an obligation to invite a dozen candidates to participat­e in a debate. There is a right to run in an election but there is no right to be invited to a debate — and we don’t need to indulge everybody.

Having 12 people in a mayor’s debate makes it impossible to fully discuss important issues, and the city has not been well served by following that approach. We can tell the serious candidates from those of the fringe variety, and in the race for mayor, at least, the debate should be limited to the serious candidates. The city would have benefited immensely from one-onone debates between Watson and Doucet.

Another thing that could improve our civic democracy is for community groups and other organizati­ons to organize more debates on specific topics. Asking questions on a broad sweep of issues limits the ability to delve deep into the important ones. Debate organizers should determine the big issues in an election and put the candidates to the test on them. Think of how immensely productive a one or two-hour faceto-face debate between just Watson and Doucet on infill developmen­t, taxes or the state of our roads would have been. Such debates would attract great interest and offer opportunit­ies to pin down candidates, compare and contrast policies, and help voters make better choices.

This campaign is almost done, but let’s use it as a learning experience and do better next time.

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