Ottawa needs a unifying economic growth plan | Letters to the Editor

Ottawa mayoral candidate Jeff Leiper outside City Hall. Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia

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I’ll vote for Jeff Lieper, if he raises taxes

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It was with great interest that I read of Jeff Lieper’s intention to run for mayor. As he points out, he has significant experience on city council and I have known him to be an involved and effective counsellor – our church is in his ward. His thoughts about what Ottawa needs are bang-on.

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Jeff will have my vote on one condition: he must raise taxes. And I don’t mean the paltry 1-2% we’ve been diddling with for the last number of years and councils, aimed at barely keeping the lights on but getting people re-elected. This is why our infrastructure, roads and sports facilities are crumbling before our eyes and we even contemplate closing facilities while the city is growing. I mean serious increases, like other major cities in Canada. “It will be hard for people” while gas and groceries are high, we will be told. Well, yes. But it has been too easy for too long.

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Our taxes have got to catch up to what our city needs and wants. Mark Sutcliffe has done a good job of finding efficiencies/savings but we are now cutting into muscle and bone; and he seems to have little appetite for the unpleasant task of telling people we have to pay even more to just keep what we have.

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Time to put our money where our mouth is.
Please hear me, Jeff!

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Sharon Moren, Kanata

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Let’s call it ‘Ottawa 2040′: a unifying economic growth plan

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Canada, and Ottawa, have had an infrastructure deficit for far too long. We now have a long-term financial plan for Ottawa, totalling some $10.3 billion, to tackle this deficit through spending on roads, parks, public buildings, water and sewage.

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However, an important complementary plan is missing, or at least so far has not been fully articulated —a long-term growth plan for the city to expand our tax base and provide opportunities for sustained employment and income growth.

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While the provincial and federal governments possess many levers to promote growth, Ottawa’s deep pool of human capital and network of innovators, combined with a revitalized, refocused federal government provide the foundational elements for broad, inclusive, sustained economic growth. Other levels of government understand that Canada has a growth and productivity challenge, underscored by the changing world order and technological revolution we are facing.

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Citizens of Ottawa should know, at the city level, how we are tackling these same challenges through an ambitious growth framework and plan.

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Let’s call it ‘Ottawa 2040’, a unifying economic growth plan that lays out what kind of economy we wish to have by mid-century. Ottawa could strategically leverage its well-known innovation hub to become a globally recognized centre for AI, quantum computing, defence technology and cybersecurity. And it could create conditions through various platforms for small and medium-sized enterprises to start, scale up, innovate and attract talent.

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Closing the infrastructure gap must be part of that long-term growth equation.
But more is needed. We need the vision of a growth plan to complement what is being done at other levels of government through policies and incentives that unleash a ‘can-do’ spirit across both private and public sector players.

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Paul Jenkins, Ottawa

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