I worry about the competence of people running OC Transpo | Opinion

OTTAWA - June 8, 2026-- OC Transpo HQ on St. Laurent Blvd in Ottawa. Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia

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The latest Ottawa auditor general’s report on OC Transpo is quite the catalogue of managerial incompetence. The question is whether the appointment of new general manager Rick Leary is a sufficient fix.

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The focus of Auditor General Nathalie Gougeon’s report is the city’s New Ways to Bus plan, which took effect last year. It will come as no surprise to bus riders that the plan was a flop, based on outdated data and overly optimistic assumptions about the service level beleaguered OC Transpo could provide.

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Transit general manager Renée Amilcar promised riders “a more reliable and efficient system.” Instead, they got something closer to No Ways to Bus.

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File photo of New Ways to Bus signs from April 2025 Photo by Tony Caldwell /POSTMEDIA

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Conceptually, the plan crafted by former transit boss Amilcar and her staff made sense. Bus routes should have been adjusted to accommodate light rail service and changed to beef up the most important routes and make better connections between buses and rail.

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Much has been made of service changes that eliminated $10 million in costs, but the change was small relative to the budget. The city will still spend $419 million on bus service this year, $11 million more than it did in 2025.

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Despite rider dissatisfaction, the new bus service model could still have been defended if the decisions behind it had been based on thoughtful policies and realistic assumptions. They weren’t and that’s the fundamental problem.

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The AG found that OC Transpo lacked a way to assess competing priorities. Was the goal the greatest possible service volume or a smaller, more reliable service? What was realistically possible given the delayed arrival of new electric buses and consequent fleet shortages?

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The basic policy documents that lay out the parameters for service hadn’t been significantly updated since 2005, the auditor found. Transpo was using grossly out of date standards for acceptable distance from bus service and cost share split between riders and taxpayers.

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The overall impression is of a lackadaisical approach to management. It’s a perception bolstered by another audit earlier this year that found the OC Transpo management positions filled by candidates who didn’t meet the minimum requirements for their jobs but were chosen anyway.

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To be fair, significant external factors contributed to the failure of New Ways to Bus. Electric buses ordered by the city did not arrive when expected. That meant the city had to rely on aging diesel buses far longer than anticipated. Even though there were known issues with unreliable bus schedules, Transpo didn’t have enough buses to fix the problem.

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The biggest challenge of all was the litany of problems that afflicted Ottawa’s new LRT. Perhaps staff were so busy struggling with LRT issues that they didn’t have time to do their basic jobs properly on the bus side.