Deachman: How Ottawa Liberal MPs are ducking Mayor Sutcliffe’s ‘fairness’ appeal

It’s been more than six weeks since Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe launched his “Fairness for Ottawa” campaign, in which he presses the provincial and federal governments for a larger slice of their fiscal pies.

City councillors quickly joined the mayor’s crusade, but so far, local Liberal MPs (except for Jenna Sudds) have been quiet about it. And when I asked them last week for their positions on the matter, they banded together to provide an emailed statement filled with clichéd bromides but bereft of any real substance. We — their constituents — deserve more than banal truisms.

We’ll get to those in a minute, but first a recap for people who’ve been in a coma since early August: That’s when the mayor said Ottawa is being short-shrifted, citing, for one, the growing inequity between what Ottawa’s taxpayers are paying for public transit and and the province’s and feds’ shares. The original three-way equal split in terms of paying for LRT, he said, now skews to 56 per cent from the city, with the other levels of government splitting the remaining 44 per cent. The province’s Financial Accountability Office, meanwhile, noted that Toronto-area residents benefited from per-capita transit subsidies of $191 in 2022-23, while Ottawans’ level was just $60. And that gap is expected to widen.

Sutcliffe also raised the fact that we planned and built the LRT in no small part to accommodate the federal office workers who are now hardly using it, turning the whole thing into a bottomless money pit.

Additionally, he pointed to what he called the inadequacy and unfairness of the feds’ payments-in-lieu-of-taxes, or PILTs, system, by which the federal government, exempt from remitting property taxes on its vast real estate holdings in Ottawa, purportedly makes the city whole. Only it doesn’t, as it’s the feds, not the city, who decide how much to pay. The shortfall over the last five years alone, according to Sutcliffe, has amounted to about $100 million. Meanwhile, federal office buildings are closing or empty, threatening whatever vibrancy the downtown core ever had.

I feel it’s disingenuous of Sutcliffe to claim, as he’s done, that the city is blameless in all this, but he’s right that Ottawa deserves a little more love from its governing, um, partners, and that it needs help.

Which brings us back to the local Liberal MPs.

Sutcliffe’s initial campaign sparked a swift reaction from Kanata-Carleton MP Jenna Sudds, Ottawa’s only federal cabinet minister. While her response contained the expected platitudes (“ … I will always advocate and work for the best interest of Ottawa residents … ”) and examples of the “unprecedented” levels of federal funding for housing, her underlying message was that Ottawa’s residents expect their taxes to be managed well and wisely spent, and the city was falling short in that department. “We at the federal level take this responsibility seriously,” she wrote, “especially at a time when the people of Ottawa are watching their pocketbook, and the City of Ottawa is not exempt from this responsibility either.”

In other words, get your own house in order before you come knocking on our door, pal. It was a burn, but at least Sudds took a stand.

So what about the other local MPs? Where do Chandra Arya, Mona Fortier, Marie-France Lalonde, David McGuinty, Yasir Naqvi and Anita Vandenbeld stand on the issue? Will they take up the mantle on behalf of the mayor and the residents they represent? Or do they lean into the Sudds camp, saying city government must pull up its socks?

I sent an email to each of the six to ask just that. “Can you tell me where, as an Ottawa-area MP, you stand on the issue?” I inquired. “Will you take up and champion the causes identified by the mayor, and if so, how do you plan to do so? And if not, why not?”

It didn’t take long to get a response — although I was surprised it came from Sudds’s office, and was sent on behalf of all the local Liberal MPs, including Glengarry-Prescott-Russell’s Francis Drouin.

“The Ottawa Liberal Caucus is united in its commitment to ensuring Ottawa and the people who call it home thrive,” it read. “We have listened to Mayor Sutcliffe’s concerns and are diligently working to find fiscally responsible solutions that prioritize the best interests of those we represent. On behalf of the Ottawa Caucus, Minister Jenna Sudds remains in constant communication with the mayor.”

The sunshine didn’t stop there. “We are proud of our partnership with the City of Ottawa,” it continued, “and are working in a collaborative way to ensure best quality of life for our residents and businesses.”

In other words … well, you get the idea. I felt as if I were listing to a Bell recording (“Your call is important to us”) or reading something generated by ChatGPT.

Then again, maybe I was.

Curious, I plugged my letter to the MPs into the AI program and asked for a response that fails to take a position yet sounds positive. This is what I received:

“Thank you for your inquiry regarding Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s concerns about federal support for Ottawa. It’s clear that these issues are of great importance to our community, and I appreciate the opportunity to discuss them.

“I believe it’s essential to foster open dialogue between all levels of government to address the needs of our city effectively. Mayor Sutcliffe has raised valid points that warrant attention, and I am glad to see that local leadership is actively advocating for Ottawa.

“As an Ottawa-area MP, I am committed to listening to the perspectives of both our city leaders and constituents. Collaborating on solutions that benefit Ottawa is a priority, and I look forward to engaging with all stakeholders involved to explore the best ways forward.

“Thank you for shedding light on these critical issues, and I hope to continue this conversation as we work together for the future of Ottawa.”

It was a little dispiriting to note that the ChatGPT response actually had a bit more meat on its bones than did the group email I got from the Ottawa MP caucus. ChatGPT at least explicitly stated that it felt the mayor’s points are valid and merit attention.

But we didn’t vote for ChatGPT. We voted for politicians who we expect to have opinions on matters that concern us, and who will share those thoughts and their plans to address them, whatever they might be. We needn’t agree with their points of view, and they needn’t agree with the mayor, but if they can’t at least share their views, why should we elect them to office in the first place?

[email protected]