EYEING THE ROAD AHEAD
Sudds’ priorities tech, traffic
If there’s one thing Jenna Sudds wants city hall to know, it’s how important Kanata’s technology industry is to the economic health of the city of Ottawa.
Expect to hear a lot about the booming business sector in Kanata North from the incoming councillor as she lays the tracks to get LRT to the western suburb far sooner than what’s currently projected in the city’s transportation plans.
“From a road-infrastructure perspective, we have unfortunately the morning and the afternoon rush hour that is impeding people’s quality of life,” Sudds said in an interview before she takes over as Kanata North ward councillor on Dec. 1.
“One solution is around better public transit. The employers in Kanata North, some of whom are the largest employers in our city, continually express concern that people are not accepting jobs within their companies because they can’t get there. The public transit routes are so horrible that people unfortunately turn down job offers.”
And so begins Sudds’s four-year quest to get the west into Ottawa’s transit blueprint as the city prepares to extend LRT to Orléans by 2022 and the Trillium Line to Riverside South by 2021. The farthest west LRT will go in the short term is Moodie Drive by 2023.
Kanata North was one of those election races where no one could predict the outcome. A fivecandidate ballot included David Gourlay, the former Jim Watson staffer and baseball executive, and teacher Matt Muirhead, who built name recognition from running in past elections.
Sudds, 39, is a big name in Kanata North, too. She was the founding executive director of the Kanata North Business Association, sticking up for economic development opportunities in the west end, and many of her files took her to city hall. She won the municipal election with 46.68 per cent of the total vote and 1,664 more votes than second-place finisher Muirhead.
When current Kanata North Coun. Marianne Wilkinson revealed last March that she wouldn’t seek re-election in the October municipal vote, she immediately backed Sudds’s candidacy.
Now, the economist who’s originally from Niagara Falls is poised to become a politician in Canada’s capital.
“This was never in the plans,” Sudds said. “As a kid, I always assumed I was going to work in the public service and be an economist and that’s what I set out to do, but to me this is all about community building. I guess it comes with the title of politician, which I’ll happily accept, but really this is about community building to me.”
During the week of this interview, Sudds was preparing for an out-of-town trip for her other big commitment: being a sports mom.
Two of her three daughters, Riley, 12, and Brynn, 7, play in the Kanata Girls Minor Hockey program and Ryan, 11, is a figure skater at the March Kanata Skating Club.
Sudds did her undergraduate degree in economics at Brock University in St. Catharines and moved to Ottawa when she graduated in 2001 with her boyfriend, now husband, Tim McDonald, who’s a custom home designer. She accepted a job with the Canadian Revenue Agency and did her master’s degree in economics at Carleton University while working for the federal agency.
“We bought our first house in 2002 in Kanata South and we loved Ottawa. We knew this is where our careers were going to be. It was a no-brainer, to be honest,” Sudds said, quickly adding, “after we adjusted to the winters.”
The family now lives on Whitemarsh Crescent, just outside the Kanata North boundary, in West Carleton-March ward.
Sudds comes to city hall determined to get better transit options for Kanata North residents and workers. She emphasized that the suburb’s technology industry is on a huge upswing.
“There certainly was a boom and then a fairly significant bust, but where we are now, from an employment perspective and a growth perspective of the technology community, we actually have a larger base now than we’ve ever had of both companies and employees, which is evidenced by the traffic on March Road and Carling Avenue every day,” Sudds said.
Improving transit in Kanata North just isn’t about getting LRT extended to the ward as quickly as possible, Sudds said. It’s also about improving bus service for workers and making sure the road conditions are up to snuff.
Residents, meanwhile, are irked by the reliability of buses and the efficiency of bus routes, she said.
Sudds said there’s “huge disappointment” in Kanata that LRT won’t be extended to the suburb sooner than 2031. That’s the year earmarked in the current transportation master plan, which is due for a refresh, but only if the next council wants the transit plan updated. An environmental assessment has already plotted the LRT route through Kanata and estimated the cost at $1.85 billion.
“The tough work that needs to happen now, of course, is to be able to secure the funding to continue it out to Kanata,” Sudds said.
Do Kanata residents feel like city hall hasn’t given their community a fair shake?
“They sure do,” Sudds said. “Couple the lack of commitment of LRT to Kanata with bus service that’s not working, and there is a lot of frustration in our community that we haven’t been able to solve this problem.”
Kanata North is growing by thousands of homes and the ward already has problems with traffic congestion, she said.
“Thinking about how we are growing as a community and what that is going to mean on our roads, we have a lot of work to do,” she said.