City council should adopt a just, green budget
City council should lay out a just, green budget, Daniel Buckles writes.
The pandemic and the multiple challenges to the economy it has created place us all on a razor’s edge. The old normal is now out of reach, and a new normal is yet to be defined. In response, governments and organizations around the world have picked up on good practices in humanitarian disaster relief and risk reduction and applied them to the current challenge of building back better from the COVID-19 disaster.
“Build Back Better” has even become the new campaign slogan for Joe Biden’s campaign, an antidote to “Make America Great Again” and an update to Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can.” What would Build Back Better look like for Ottawa and its municipal budget?
Steps taken so far are not encouraging. Under the direction of Mayor Jim Watson, the city’s planning department and finance services department have outlined solutions to the $192-million municipal deficit forecast, two-thirds of which is due to transit income shortfalls (according to the proposal presented at a June 24 council meeting).
The proposal includes a cut of 80 per cent to a $2.6-million budget to launch Ottawa’s climate plan that would have been funded in 2020 through the Hydro Ottawa dividend (earnings from renewable energy). It significantly curtails the summer student program, places part-time employees on leave, cancels crossing guard support for the fall period, and redirects funds from the parking reserve. The biggest gap is covered by pausing transit capital projects. Collectively, the cuts, deferral of expenditures and use of the sizable city reserves add up to a significant exercise in public policy.
Fortunately, a recent announcement by the federal government may reduce or even eliminate the city’s operating deficit, rendering the exercise irrelevant. But what does the city’s deficit proposal say about its priorities, and the process for making policy that builds back better?
Principled guidance could offer much more, beyond protecting the status quo. Many governments and organizations, in Canada and elsewhere, offer powerful principles for building back better from the COVID-19 crisis. These often focus on putting people’s health and well-being first and addressing the underlying conditions of racism and exclusion that create and exacerbate vulnerabilities in the first place. The Black Lives Matter movement, and a new resolve to confront systemic racism directed at Indigenous people in Canada, have helped focus attention on achieving more equitable health, employment and educational outcomes for racialized and vulnerable populations.
Another prominent criterion, supported by the federal government, is the extent to which stimulus funds support a rapid transition out of fossil fuel dependency. This is buoyed by detailed evidence showing that investments in a renewable energy transition have demonstrably more positive impacts on job creation than investments that prolong dependency on fossil fuels.
Principles consistent with a just and green recovery are already reflected in the city’s recent climate emergency and housing and homelessness emergency declarations. They offer guidance, as does the equity and inclusion lens created by the city manager to help departments be consistent and coherent in the delivery of city services.
Other recent decisions by council also point the way ahead. For example, the top priority defined in the draft Transportation Master Plan is to reduce automobile dependency. It signals a direction for the city’s future, and offers a criterion council can use now and in the next budget for rational, transparent and transformative decision making.
Logically, cuts and deferrals should fall hardest on programs and projects already diverging from or incompatible with the realities we must confront and the future we want. Otherwise, councillors will have missed a significant opportunity to show leadership at this decisive time in history, and to signal to both provincial and federal governments where its priorities lie. Only then can the city expect to leverage its own modest resources to secure available and planned federal and provincial stimulus funds.
Authenticity of intention matters to funders, and to the residents of Ottawa. The current guidance is not good enough.