Former journalist Joanne Chianello is headed to Ottawa city council as the representative of Kitchissippi Ward with a strong victory Monday night.
She led from the start in a ward that was one of two in the city without an incumbent. Three-term incumbent Jeff Leiper left his seat only to lose his bid for the mayor’s chair.
“I’m feeling a lot of things; joy, relief, the weight of responsibility. I will work everyday to make sure that trust is not misplaced,” Chianello said in her speech at the Newport Restaurant in Westboro.
She said she thinks her experience covering City Hall as a journalist puts her on a solid footing.
“Having that background I think is really helpful in moving forward I think that I have a good understanding of the policies and procedures,” she said. “Procedure is really boring, but it’s the way to make things work, right?”
But she acknowledges that she has a lot to learn.
Chianello said there’s a certain logic to moving into public service from journalism.
“I know for myself … the more you learn about something, the more you are interested in it, right?”
“And I find City Hall fascinating,” she said.
“But exposing the challenges or the problems or what was going wrong, it’s extremely important but it’s not the end goal right? It’s the beginning,” she said.
“The point of it is to make it better and this is a role where it can help not just uncover what’s going wrong but actually work on the solutions to fix it and so that’s what I hope to help do.”
Chianello highlighted a couple of shorter-term priorities. She points to the population increase in her ward and the increased traffic and road safety issues that go along with the growth.
She’s also looking at the western extension of the LRT.
“I would like to get together with my colleagues to the west, OC Transpo management and the mayor’s office to see if we can actually have the contractors for the LRT extension focus on the Confederation Line to Algonquin College,” she said.
“We know that Moody Drive is washed out,” she said. “And so how can we make sure that there’s a lot of focus on getting that western line, which opens Westboro Station, Kitchissippi Station, and to Algonquin College so that we can get people onto the LRT as quickly as possible.”
Chianello covered city hall for the CBC and the Ottawa Citizen for more than 10 years before moving into consulting work, where she was involved in several projects including workforce development projects with Association of Municipalities of Ontario and Toronto’s long-term financial plan. Chianello told the CBC that in Kitchissippi, recreation infrastructure hasn’t kept pace with growth. More broadly, she says transit is the biggest challenge facing the city.
“The city doesn’t work if transit doesn’t work,” she said during her campaign.
Chianello opposes fare increases and said she will work to improve reliability. Additionally, her plan includes year-round free transit for youth and affordable passes for federal public workers. Chianello says making public transit more attractive would reduce traffic in busier areas.
In her campaign, Chianello has received endorsements from Ottawa Centre Liberal MP Yasir Naqvi, NDP MPP Catherine McKenney and Leiper.
She faced three other challengers:
Xavier Commerford, a former entrepreneur and community activist, who was concerned with public transit and affordable housing;