City lacks vision, leadership on budget
Status quo approach misses Ottawa's real priorities, writes
Today, in a packed agenda before they settle down for the summer, Ottawa councillors are geared to vote on a motion that will set the stage for the next budget.
The motion before councillors seeks to set out the parameters by which the city will be able to raise revenue for specific services, in particular the police, public health, libraries and transit.
Just as it has been for the past decade since Jim Watson has been mayor, most budget increases will not change and are set at around three per cent — and that is exactly the problem.
Last fall, as representatives of the Ottawa Coalition for a People's Budget, a coalition of 18 grassroots organizations from across the city, we wrote an op-ed signalling the need for change when it came to how our city spends and raises its revenue. Since then and since the subsequent approval of yet another status quo budget, things have not gotten any better.
Homelessness has risen by 67 per cent in Ottawa; the price of rent continues to skyrocket; essential neighbourhood transit routes have been unnecessarily cut; and opioid overdose deaths have almost tripled since 2017. If things have not gotten any better, why are the mayor and city council continuing to consider a budget that is not in the least bit reflective of the realities and multiple crises we face?
Instead of pushing money to essential services that need it, the budget directions motion to be debated and most likely approved today by council continues an age-old Ottawa tradition of unchecked austerity for public services and continued endless revenue for road expansion, programs that benefit the wealthy and privileged and, of course, the ever-bloated police budget.
It seems as if our budget and our city council are frozen in time or have suffered from a case of collective amnesia and live in a world where there is no climate crisis; where 150 people don't sleep on the street every night in our city; and where there was no massive unrest and popular upheaval against continued investments in a policing system that criminalizes and marginalizes low-income people and people of colour.
However, it is not a case of forgetfulness or simple indifference but rather a display of callous disregard for the residents of Ottawa and an utter lack of vision by an outof-touch, detached-from-reality city council.
This was particularly evident during a meeting earlier this month at the city's finance and economic development committee when city staff called a process known as “participatory budgeting” bad practice. Participatory budgeting is a process whereby residents have a direct say in how a certain portion of a city's budget gets spent. The model has been used in cities such as Barcelona and Reykjavik with great success.
If councillors really are committed to “building back better” in the aftermath of this harrowing pandemic, it is abundantly clear that they cannot continue to approve budget directions that are not grounded in reality. And our reality demands nothing short of a bold vision.