Jeff Leiper: How I would get Ottawa back on track as mayor | Opinion

My son doesn’t live in Ottawa anymore. I would love for him to come back.

I think a lot of parents across this city know that feeling. You raise your kids here, they go to school here, play in the local park, take the bus to their first job. You hope that, when they grow up, Ottawa will be the place where they build their career and family.

They deserve a city with high standards and a reasonable cost of living.

That’s why my vision is for a City Hall that’s focused on making regular life better for regular people. Buses that come on time. Rush hours that get moving. Apartments your kid can afford so they can live four minutes away from mom and dad, not four hours away. Community centres, libraries and pools you can use because the city takes care of them. Safe streets. And a thriving cultural scene.

Instead, under Mark Sutcliffe, we’re aiming low and pricing high.

He’s making decisions that benefit his inner circle, even when those decisions cost the rest of us.

Just look at his Lansdowne 2.0 mess. Instead of a proper tendering process, Sutcliffe took by-invitation-only bids from insiders. Now we’re on the hook for more than $400 million.

Housing is increasingly out of reach. Our kids can’t imagine saving for a house when rent gobbles up their paycheque. Sutcliffe missed his housing and affordable housing targets every year he’s been mayor, and as a result, Premier Doug Ford withheld tens of millions of dollars from Ottawa — money we need.

Getting around the city takes longer than it should because of Sutcliffe’s deep transit cuts and traffic congestion. Anyone who used to take the 95 knows what I mean. It wasn’t perfect, but you could get on a bus in Orléans, Barrhaven, or the west end and get downtown. For workers, it meant saving money on parking. For a lot of young folks, it gave them independence.

And families in growing communities are waiting for the roads, parks, recreation facilities, and other services they need to catch up.

A municipal budget is not just a spreadsheet. It is a statement about whose time matters, whose neighbourhood matters, whose wallet matters, and whose future matters.

Ottawa can be a city that works for everyday people: for the nurse finishing a night shift, the student rushing to class, the parent racing to daycare pickup and the senior walking downtown.

For the next generation, we can build enough housing to make it an easy choice to stay and build a life here. As mayor, I’ll start with 1,500 affordable homes and focus the housing strategy on the needs of young families, not the developers.

As mayor, I’ll undo Sutcliffe’s transit cuts. When we make buses and trains arrive on time, we’ll earn riders back. Fewer people driving or taking an Uber will ease congestion.

I’ll end Sutcliffe’s return-to-office mandates and put pressure on the federal and provincial governments to end theirs, too. Wherever we can offer flexible work arrangements, we will. It’ll make Ottawa and employer of choice and save workers from paying for transit or gas money, parking, lunch and longer daycare hours.

I’ll also establish joint municipal-federal satellite offices in Kanata, Orléans, Barrhaven and the south end, so fewer workers need to go all the way downtown every day.

For every dollar I increase the police budget, I’ll add another dollar to a program like ANCHOR so we’re rushing help to people struggling with mental health or addictions, getting them off the street.

And as mayor, I’ll catch up with growth in Barrhaven, Kanata and Orléans instead of asking families to wait years for the community centres, roads and stormwater infrastructure and services they need (and are already paying for).

I want my son — and all our kids — to look at Ottawa and see a reason to make this incredible city home.

That is the Ottawa I want to build as mayor: a city that works for you, for your family, for your neighbourhood.

Ottawa is not on the right track. But we can be.

Jeff Leiper is a candidate for Mayor of Ottawa.

The Ottawa Citizen asked the four leading candidates for mayor to explain, in their own words, what they plan to do if they win the election. These op-eds will be published one per day this week, so stay tuned to read more.

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