13/11/2024
Investing in What Matters, Fighting for Affordability
Good morning.
When I travel around our wonderful city, I’m fortunate to meet so many of the terrific residents of Ottawa. What I’ve been hearing from a lot of people is that they’re anxious right now. Ils s'inquiètent de l'augmentation des coûts. They’re worried about rising costs. They’re nervous about the economy and global political uncertainty. They’re concerned that some things just don’t work as well as they used to.
Rising costs are hurting everyone. I spoke recently with a couple who were really hoping that interest rates would drop so they could purchase their first home. They were also worried about whether they would be able to afford hockey for their kids. I’ve chatted with federal public servants who worry about the prospect of layoffs in the future. I was talking with a business owner on the weekend who said he's worried his numbers will be down slightly this year because his customers are tightening their budgets.
In a time like this, Ottawa residents expect their elected leaders to do what they’re doing. Like families across our city, we have to manage our resources very, very carefully right now. We have to make tough decisions. We have to keep our costs under control and save money wherever we can. Nous devons maîtriser nos coûts et faire des économies partout où nous le pouvons. But we also have to invest in our greatest priorities.
We have to support and sustain critical services to protect safety, reliability, and affordability. Our residents expect us to invest in what matters. And they also expect that we fight on their behalf to keep things affordable. We have to strike a balance. Nous devons trouver un équilibre. I can tell you, in the current circumstances, that’s not easy.
I said almost a year ago, after we passed the 2024 budget, that the 2025 budget would be a tough one. And it has been. Nous faisons face à des défis financiers importants. Like our residents, we’re facing rising costs. Our transit system still hasn’t recovered after the pandemic. Notre système de transport en commun ne s'est toujours pas remis de la pandémie. And, as I’ve been speaking about regularly since the summer, we are not getting our fair share of funding from other levels of government. Nous ne recevons pas notre juste part de financement des autres niveaux de gouvernement. In the face of those challenges, we must strike the right balance. This budget is a balanced approach to our residents’ needs. Ce budget propose une approche équilibrée, répondant aux besoins de nos résidents.
First of all, it invests significantly in the core priorities that matter most to our residents: Public safety, public transit, roads and sidewalks, housing, and supporting the most vulnerable. Ensuite, il maintient les augmentations de taxes aussi basses que possible. It keeps tax increases as low as possible, to ensure we are not adding to the financial pressures our residents are already facing. It continues to live up to our objective of building a safer, more reliable, more affordable city.
Just before I get into a few highlights, let me address the Fairness for Ottawa campaign. Where do we stand on the campaign? What impact will that have on our budget?I want to thank residents for their support of the campaign. I’ve been encouraged by many people to continue to advocate on behalf of our city. I want to remind everyone what the Fairness for Ottawa campaign is about. It’s about the long-term structural deficits we are facing in our city’s finances. Il s'agit de la crise financière systémique. It’s about the systemic financial crisis being faced by municipalities, but particularly by Ottawa because of our unique circumstances. So even if we get some help with next year’s budget, that doesn’t mean we’ve reached the finish line. The fairness campaign is going to continue until the systemic, structural issues are resolved. La campagne pour l'équité va continuer tant que les problèmes systémiques et structurels ne seront pas résolus.
So, obviously I’m not standing here with cheques from the other two levels of government. I can tell you, however, that we’re making progress. I hope there will be more news in the coming weeks. And that progress informs our decisions about transit, which I’ll get into in a few minutes. That help from other levels of government remains absolutely critical to respond to our systemic financial pressures. Mais cette aide des autres niveaux de gouvernement reste absolument essentielle. There will be a detailed presentation on the 2025 budget this morning at city council.
But I will go through some the highlights now, as we invest in what matters most, and fight for affordability:
First, we are investing in public safety. There’s nothing more important than emergency services being available when we need them. Il n'y a rien de plus important que d'avoir des services d'urgence disponibles lorsque nous en avons besoin. I’m grateful to every member of our police, fire, and paramedic departments and I want to support their work as much as possible. To increase service and improve response times, this budget provides the funding to hire 50 new police officers, to support the new district policing model. In addition, we will hire 23 new paramedics, to increase service and reduce the impact of offload delays. We will also hire 22 new firefighters and 10 new bylaw officers to respond to growth in the community. That’s more than 100 new emergency responders in our city. Cela représente plus de 100 nouveaux intervenants d'urgence dans notre ville.
I hear often about the state of our roads and sidewalks. I also hear concerns about safety for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists. We have a big city with a lot of transportation infrastructure. So we’re investing a total of $104 million to improve our roads and sidewalks and to improve safety. Nous investissons donc un total de 104 millions de dollars. This includes $89.6 million to repair and resurface roads, $14.2 million in new sidewalks and maintaining existing sidewalks, and $13.7 million to improve the clearing of sidewalks and pathways in the winter season. We will also be investing in upgrading major arteries including Brian Coburn Boulevard in the east and Carp Road in the west.I’ve heard from several members of council about the backlog of intersections that should have traffic signals. We’re adding $20.5 million over the next two years to reduce the backlog by at least one third.
Let’s talk about OC Transpo. Public transit is one of our greatest challenges and one of our most important services. In 2025, we will be making a historic investment in public transit and expanding service dramatically. Le budget d'OC Transpo s'élèvera à huit cents, cinquante-six millions de dollars en 2025. OC Transpo’s budget is rising to $856 million in 2025. That’s $88 million more than 2024, an increase of more than 11 per cent. We are opening two new sections of light rail in the next 12 months. We’re investing in more reliable service. We’re putting more money into ParaTranspo. The budget includes funding for transit priority measures on Innes Road between Blair Road and Navan Road, supporting traffic flow and transit reliability for the eastern communities. I’ll talk more in a moment about how we’ll do that despite the funding shortfalls we’re experiencing.
In Ottawa, we will always look after and support the most vulnerable. We are a community that cares. Nous continuons également à investir dans le logement abordable. This budget allocates more than $30 million to 100-plus non-profit social service agencies to address the root causes of poverty. We’re also continuing to invest in affordable housing, to add to the historic investments we’ve already made with the help of the federal Housing Accelerator Fund and the provincial Building Faster fund. We are responding to food insecurity with an increase in funding for organizations that purchase groceries to support vulnerable residents. We’re also launching a pilot project to help disadvantaged people with their income tax returns, potentially unlocking millions of dollars from other levels of government that will go directly into the hands of vulnerable residents.
We are continuing to invest in quality of life for our residents. We’re going to put money toward recreation, culture, and communities. Nous allons investir dans les loisirs, la culture et les communautés. This includes an investment to advance the refurbishment of Alexander Community Centre, which will move forward in 2026. It also includes more money to advance the Riverside South Community Centre and Recreation Complex. And funds to advance the new Barrhaven Town Centre civic complex.And we’re putting $10 million toward the William Street project as part of the ByWard Market Public Realm plan.
As you know, we recently held Ottawa’s first Rural Summit since 2008, where I worked with rural councillors and residents to discuss the unique needs and contributions of our rural communities. At the summit, we made a series of commitments to ensure we’re providing rural solutions for rural residents. Lors du sommet, nous avons pris une série d'engagements pour nous assurer de fournir des solutions rurales pour les communautés rurales. In the budget, we’re doubling the allocation for ditching and draining infrastructure to address longstanding concerns from rural residents. We’re adding fulltime Fire fighters to Station 81 in Stittsville, to address growing service demands in rural areas. We’re also investing in rural roadways, ensuring they meet the needs of growing rural communities.
As part of the city’s anti-racism strategy, we’re increasing the budget for Black-led youth initiatives. There’s more money to support Indigenous organizations, in partnership with the Ottawa Aboriginal Coalition. So we are investing significantly in our priorities. But I want to underline that despite these and many other historic investments in what matters most, we are going to continue to protect affordability for our residents by keeping the tax increase for 2025 as low as possible.
There are people that have argued we should have much higher tax increases, such as 9 or 10 per cent, like other cities in Ontario and across Canada. I simply don’t agree with that. Keeping taxes low is one of the biggest commitments I made to residents in the 2022 election campaign and we’ve delivered in every budget so far this term. On top of all the other pressures they are facing, our residents simply can’t afford big tax increases. Large tax increases add significantly to inflation. And they don’t just impact property owners. They impact everyone. Ils ont un impact sur tout le monde. They add to the burden of renters, small business owners, and the cost of every product and service. When taxes go up, small businesses pay more, and they have to charge their customers more. Lorsque les taxes augmentent, le loyer augmente. Lorsque les taxes augmentent, les petites entreprises paient davantage et doivent faire payer davantage leurs clients. For example, our research has found that a property tax increase of 1 per cent above inflation actually leads to a rent increase of 9.3 per cent over 10 years.
And I’ll remind everyone that this is a matter of fairness. We can’t keep asking local taxpayers to continue to make up the difference for other levels of government that aren’t paying their fair share. So we are maintaining our commitment to affordability with a 2.9% tax increase for most core city services. Nous maintenons notre engagement en faveur de l'abordabilité avec une augmentation de 2,9 % des impôts pour les services de base de la ville. How are we doing that? It’s not easy.
Given the pressures we’re facing, and that we’re still fighting for our fair share from other levels of government, we have to work extremely hard to achieve that balance. While we wait for more sustainable funding solutions, we’re going to have to do a lot of patchwork and use a lot of duct tape to get through each budget year. Ces solutions ne sont pas toujours idéales. Those solutions aren’t always ideal, and many of them are one-time answers that will help us only in 2025, but in the current climate, that’s what we need to do. As a result, there’s been a lot of difficult work and tough decisions throughout the organization.
We have put in place a hiring pause and a discretionary spending freeze. In addition, the service review team has been working hard and spending a lot of hours meeting with many different departments to find savings and efficiencies. And I’m happy to report that an additional $54 million in savings has been found for the 2025 budget. Une économie supplémentaire de 54 millions de dollars a été trouvée pour le budget de 2025. Cela porte notre total à 208 millions de dollars depuis le début de ce mandat. That brings our total so far this term to $208 million. That’s all money that is being reinvested in our priorities.
I want to thank my colleagues Marty Carr and Cathy Curry for their work on the service review. In addition, we’ve had to make some tough decisions about how we fund transit. As you know, we started this process with a $120-million shortfall in our operating budget. Until we get sustainable operating funds from other levels of government, we’ll have to make some difficult choices.
I want to thank the members of the working group on the long-range financial plan for transit, Councillors Jeff Leiper, Glen Gower, and Tim Tierney. Along with transit and finance staff, we spent more than 100 hours going over a wide range of options. I’ll remind you that the budget direction report suggested we look at:
In our work together, our goal was to protect and sustain our public transit system and find not just immediate answers for the 2025 budget, but long-term solutions to respond to the huge gap in our long-range financial plan. We tried to find a balance between providing sustainable, long-term funding for transit, while respecting the financial pressures faced by both taxpayers and OC Transpo customers. Obviously, no one wants a 75% fare increase or a 37% increase in the transit levy. And nobody wants to see cuts to service. The recommendation of the working group that is included in this budget is this:
These are not easy decisions. We’d rather not increase either fares or the transit levy by higher-than-normal amounts. And we don’t want to have to reduce the discounts we provide. But most of all, we don’t want to see reductions in service. Mais surtout, nous ne voulons pas voir de réductions de service. So, in the absence of sustainable funding from other levels of government, these steps are fundamentally necessary to address the long-term shortfalls in our transit budget and ensure we can continue to provide service at existing and future levels.
This is a balanced approach. And it injects much-needed funds into the transit budget, in a way that impacts not just 2025 but every year after that. Combined, the additional fare and transit levy in the 2025 budget will add approximately $1.5 billion by 2048. Ensemble, l'augmentation des tarifs et de la taxe sur le transport en commun dans le budget de 2025 ajoutera environ 1,5 milliard de dollars d'ici 2048. I recognize that not everyone will agree with fare increases or changes to discounts. And not everyone will agree with the increase in the transit levy. There will be people arguing that OC Transpo customers should pay even more of the cost of service. There will be people arguing that we should freeze or cut fares and that taxpayers should pay more.The working group worked toward a balance. And again, to tackle this enormous challenge without reducing service.
We looked very closely at the discounts we have been providing to school boards for student passes. We have been providing these passes at a loss in the past. And we simply must move toward recovering our costs on these agreements. Et nous devons absolument nous diriger vers la récupération de nos coûts sur ces accords. Otherwise, local taxpayers are subsidizing the cost for another level of government. When we’re not getting our fair share of funding, we can’t pay another government’s share for the cost of transit passes for students. We will continue to have discounted fares for seniors and youth but the discounts won’t be as large as they were in the past. And they will now be more in line with what’s offered in other cities. We were actually giving bigger discounts than many other places. And we will continue to provide the Equipass to support our most vulnerable, including seniors and students. Nothing about that is changing.
I want to emphasize again how much we are investing in transit. Since 2016, the transit budget has increased by 62 per cent. Depuis 2016, le budget du transport en commun a augmenté de 62 %. We continue to expand and improve transit. The transit budget is growing more rapidly than any other department. Some of the solutions in the budget are one-time, patchwork initiatives to cover the gap just in 2025. Which is why in the future, we will need proper, sustainable funding to support transit.
One example that has been talked about by organizations like the Federation of Canadian Municipalities is to take a portion of the HST and provide it to cities.A high-level analysis shows that Ottawa residents pay more than $4.5 billion in HST every year to the provincial and federal governments. That’s an average of close to $10,000 per household, much more than the average property tax bill. And that’s just HST. It doesn’t include income taxes. So you can see how much more the typical household pays to other levels of government compared to the local government. If we were to receive even a small portion of HST in the future, it would provide reliable, sustainable funding for transit and other priorities. Même une petite partie de la TVH à l'avenir fournirait un financement fiable pour les transports en commun et d'autres priorités.
In the absence of that kind of sustainable funding, we have to make tough decisions. I want to be very clear: every single investment in this budget is strategic, necessary, and focused on delivering essential services that directly impact and benefit the people of Ottawa. Chaque investissement dans ce budget est stratégique, nécessaire et axé sur la fourniture de services essentiels qui ont un impact direct et qui profitent aux résidents d'Ottawa.
As part of that strategic approach, we are managing our workforce very carefully. Our city has been growing rapidly, and so have the demands on city services. But our workforce has not been growing at the same rate at all. While the city has grown by over 17%, the workforce has grown by only 12%, meaning we’re absorbing much of the growth within existing resources. And where we’ve hired new people, it’s been to deliver front-line services, and not in administration. This isn’t by accident. It’s the result of a deliberate approach to efficiency and fiscal responsibility. We’re working to keep the team as lean as possible. Our goal is to keep Ottawa running effectively without unnecessary costs. Notre objectif est de maintenir Ottawa en fonctionnement de manière efficace, sans coûts inutiles.
There’s no such thing as a perfect budget. There’s no budget that will make everyone happy. But this budget strikes an important balance. It respects the expectations of our residents to invest in the most important priorities, while also respecting their need that we do not add significant financial pressure to their lives. This budget is a balanced, responsible approach to the challenges we’re facing now. It invests in what matters most, in key priorities like public transit, public safety, housing, roads and infrastructure, and helping the most vulnerable. Il investit dans ce qui compte le plus, dans des priorités clés telles que le transport en commun, la sécurité publique, le logement, les routes et les infrastructures, ainsi que l'aide aux personnes les plus vulnérables.
I understand and respect the challenges our residents are facing. That’s why we must fight for affordability, and keep tax increases as low as possible, so we’re not adding to inflationary pressures on everyone.
We’ve now found more than $200 million in savings. That’s the equivalent of a 10.5% tax increase. We’re taking those savings and reinvesting them in what matters most.
And yes, we’re counting on the federal and provincial governments to do the right thing and support us. As I did last year, I will point out that the task will not get easier with the next budget. Even before tabling the 2025 budget, we have begun work on the 2026 budget. This has been a difficult budget process. Il y a eu beaucoup de décisions difficiles. There have been a lot of tough decisions. But this budget meets our objective of respecting taxpayers during an affordability crisis and funding our priorities. This budget is about meeting the needs of our residents. It’s about balance. It’s about fairness. It’s about investing in priorities. It’s about managing our resources wisely. Ce budget vise à répondre aux besoins de nos résidents. Il s'agit d'un équilibre. Il s'agit de justice. Il s'agit d'investir dans les priorités. Il s'agit de gérer nos ressources de manière prudente.
I want to assure the people of Ottawa that as long as I’m your mayor, I will continue to fight for affordability and invest in what matters most.
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