Meet the candidates in Ottawa South

Good morning and Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope you all have something special planned for your partner. A reminder that February 15 is the last day there will be no tax at restaurants. I’m sure I saved a few hundred dollars thanks to the tax holiday, but there will be less eating out for me after Saturday. Everything is just getting too expensive.  

Today the Lookout is introducing you to the candidates running in Ottawa South. While it’s a strong Liberal riding, the NDP have been showing climbing results in past elections. 

OC Transpo is finding itself in hot water after the city’s auditor general found that trainers for drivers on the Trillium line light rail system lacked the required experience. Also in transit news, the Lookout sat down with Kanata Coun. Cathy Curry to talk about future light rail plans for her community. She says the system would be a game changer. 

Let’s get to it! 

— Charlie Senack, managing editor

[email protected] 

X: @Charlie_Senack

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WEATHER

Friday: -7 🌡️ -16 | ☀️ 

Saturday: -10 🌡️ -13 | ❄️ (2.7 cm)

Sunday: -9 🌡️ -14 | ❄️ (17.9 cm)

Monday: -12 🌡️ -19 | ☁️ 

NUMBERS

🚘️ Around 40: The number of crashes between 7 p.m. and 11 a.m. on Wednesday and Thursday that Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) East Region dealt with. Thankfull,y there were no serious injuries. [CityNews]

🔥 13: The number of fires in seven days that Ottawa firefighters had to put out. [Ottawa Citizen]

PROVINCIAL ELECTION

Meet the candidates running in Ottawa South

Expect the same: The riding of Ottawa South is a strong one for the Liberals. Incumbent MPP John Fraser has held it since 2013, and before that, it was represented by former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. In fact, it’s been Liberal since McGuinty’s father won it over from the PCs back in 1987. 

By the numbers: It’s unlikely to change hands when voters head to the polls on Feb. 27, though the NDP is showing increasing support. They took only 12 per cent of the vote in 2015 compared to 27 per cent in 2018 when they came in third place to the PCs by only about 1,000 votes. 

• In the most recent 2022 election, NDP candidate Morgan Gay managed to come in second place with 23 per cent of the vote. He lost with a little over 8,600 fewer votes than the incumbent Liberals. 

Gay is running for the NDP in Ottawa South again, where he will be going up against Fraser, who has served various stints as interim Ontario Liberal party leader. Jan Gao was declared as the PC candidate and Nira Dookeran is running for the Greens. The New Blue Party will also have Alex Perrier’s name on the ballot. 

The Ottawa Lookout contacted the three main party candidates to learn more about why they are running. Answers have been edited for length and clarity. 

John Fraser - Liberal (incumbent) 

Background:  Before serving as the riding representative himself, Fraser worked as a constituency assistant for McGuinty for 14 years. Before that, he spent 18 years managing small- and medium-sized local businesses. Under the Kathleen Wynne-led Liberal government, Fraser served as the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care. This will be his fifth provincial election. 

Healthcare: “Every hospital in this city expanded when we were in government. You can take a look at Roger’s House at CHEO, the expansions of the Max Keeping Wing, or look at the Ottawa Hospital with the regional cancer wing or the critical care at the Queensway Carleton. But there is more work to be done. Our hospitals are overcrowded right now and our ERs are under stress. 

More than 21,000 people in Ottawa South don't have a family doctor. That's one in six people. If you don't have a family doctor, it's very hard to be healthy. It's very hard to have a chronic disease that you haven't discovered yet. It's hard to get a referral. We need to get these basics right and that includes more team-based care and bringing nurse practitioners under OHIP. The only option they have right now if they open a clinic is to bill privately. They are providing primary care and they should be covered. A lady I met at the door last night said she just spent a week in a hospital and was in six different beds. That's not acceptable. 

For foreign training physicians, we need to be more fully aggressive with what's called the Practice Ready Program. It’s something we had until 2018, when the government cancelled it and then brought it back last year. There are thousands of foreign-trained physicians who could work in this practice.”

Affordability and housing: “I know this city has been trying to do some things municipality with renovictions, but we as a province need to do more as well. We need to have a balance. You have to be fair to landlords, but you have to be fair to tenants so that they don't suffer."

Nearby at Abbotsford, they're looking to build some more units, which are affordable for seniors. In terms of ODSP, Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie just made a commitment to double it, which will help a lot of people who are on that fixed income be able to afford the place they live and be able to eat and some other things. 

We need to help first-time homebuyers and seniors who are downsizing by eliminating the land transfer tax. We are also commuting to take the HST off of the provincial portion of the tax off home heating electricity.”

Transit and uploading the LRT to the province: “It will free up about $100 million for the city, which is pretty substantial. The Liberals are also commuting to funding Phase 3 out to Barrhaven, Kanata and Stittsville. 

What makes our plan different is we’ve committed to a connection between Rockland and Orleans by making the road more usable with a High Occupancy Vehicle lane or, eventually a HOV bus lane. Unless we build this you are not going to get public transportation coming into the city to use light rail. It will better utilize the transit system that we’ve built.”

Favorite restaurant and hangout spot: “Sala Thai Cuisine is my go-to. There’s also a lot of good shawarma. My favourite is probably Cedars. They have a store in the riding which hasn’t made it for a while, but there is also one nearby on Bank Street in Old Ottawa South. I’ll say this, Ottawa South is the Shawarma Capital in Ottawa. 

For fun, I go to Grasshopper Hill a lot. I have a two-and-a-half-year-old black lab Kealey who I walk every day. It’s near Kilborn and has the Pleasant Park Woods in the back. It’s like if the few dog packs where you can go off leash.”

Morgan Gay - NDP

Background: Gay has called Ottawa South home for 18 years and is a board member of the Alta Vista Community Association. Professionally he works as a negotiator with the Public Service Alliance of Canada, fighting for fair wages and working conditions. Gay is also a board member of the Heron Emergency Food Bank. 

Transit: “First off, I think most folks would agree in our city that the transit is pretty shambolic. One of the main reasons for that is it is not funded in the same way that other municipalities are funded in Ontario. Frankly, Ottawa gets the short end of the stick. Toronto is almost three times the funding that we receive for transit in Ottawa. 

Instead of uploading the LRT to the province, we believe in a 50/50 cost-sharing split. Metrolink has not proven to be reliable in terms of its administration of transit, and quite frankly, it's top-heavy. They spend a lot of money on senior executives and they don't spend the money where they need to, which is on transit itself.”

Healthcare: “The system is a disaster and what we need to do is properly invest in health care and we're not doing that right now. First and foremost, we have thousands and thousands of people in this community who don't even have a family doctor. We need to streamline the process for people who have medical training from elsewhere in the world.

I was talking to somebody recently in our community who is like a surgeon in Syria and has not been given the opportunity to practice here in Canada, because of paperwork. 

We need to be looking at expanding community health hubs that we see opening in Ontario. We have one on Bank Street. We also need to get for-profit healthcare out of our system.“

Education: “My wife teaches students with special needs and the funding is being cut. The Ottawa Carleton District School Board is having to restructure because there's not enough funding. So they're cutting programs, and the programs they're cutting are for the students who have special needs. It's a disaster. It's a crisis in our schools. 

Class sizes are huge. People are leaving the profession because of burnout. There are 40 kids in the class. It does not make any sense. The NDP has a plan to put over 800 million dollars a year into schools to fix this backlog, and also we need higher educators and support staff in the schools because we don't have enough now.“

Affordable housing: ”We have a housing crisis in Ottawa South. We were housing homeless folks, initially in the Jim Durrell Recreation Centre, and we've had to move those people over to the community centre on Heron Road. What we need is more co-op housing, more subsidized housing, and we're not doing that now. 

I was really active as a member of our community association when the Herongate crisis happened under the Liberals. It was the largest eviction in Canada, mass eviction. It was basically a renoviction. We need to put an end to that.”

Favorite restaurant and hangout spot: “I love fresh fish. The Pelican Grill over on Bank Street has a local draft beer on tap, so it’s among my favourites. 

I love outdoor winter sports, and one of the lovely things about being in Ottawa is there are so many places to go. I spend a lot of time on the Rideau Winter Trail. We’ve donated to it every year.”

Jan Gao - Progressive Conservative 

The Lookout reached out to GAO multiple times for an interview but did not hear back ahead of publication. 

• According to the PC party website: “Gao brings years of professional expertise and a strong commitment to her community. A longtime resident of Ottawa South, she has lived in the riding for over 23 years and has a deep understanding of the issues that matter most to local families. With a master’s degree in public administration from Queen’s University and an accomplished career in consulting and corporate leadership, Jan is ready to deliver results for the people of Ottawa South.”

Latest provincial election stories

• Meet the provincial election candidates in the battle ground of Nepean

• Meet the provincial election candidates in Kanata-Carleton

• Doug Ford commits to uploading Ottawa LRT system to province

• Q&A: Ontario Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie discusses platform for Ottawa

THE AGENDA

🏗️ City council passed a motion to speed up building shelters throughout urban Ottawa. The new policy impacts all of Ottawa, except rural areas, and would shorten the time needed to build by bypassing administrative processes. Coun. Leiper noted that in many cases, public opposition has little impact because councillors must follow policies in the official planning documents. Only Riverside South Findlay Creek Coun. Steve Desroches and Barrhaven East Coun. Wilson Lo voted against it. [CBC]

🚕 With Canadians shunning American-made goods because of the threat of tariffs, the head of the company that owns Blue Line, Capital and Westway cab companies says people should consider boycotting American ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft. [Ottawa Citizen]

🏥 That building under construction at the Civic campus of The Ottawa Hospital isn’t the building itself, but the parking garage. It will still be a while before the projected cost and design will be revealed. It’s unclear if the $2.8 billion cost and 2028 opening will hold in the coming years. The process is different than normal, dubbed a “progressive public-private partnership,” which allows more companies to bid on projects rather than traditional public-private partnerships where cost overruns are the norm. [CBC]

Snow storm

❄️ Luckily the city escaped what could’ve been a much worse storm. Most of the snow hit last night, with 32 centimetres falling in total. The last snowfall this big was 47.8 centimetres on Jan. 17 2022.

❌ Canada Post suspended delivery, and the city said that normal cleanup operations are taking longer than expected. Meanwhile, school buses were not operating, but schools remained open. The severe weather service plan was also initiated by the city. [Ottawa Citizen]

🚍️ Speaking of buses, around 100 buses were stuck in the snow on Thursday. Around 65 per cent of articulated buses were mostly pulled from service — they have severe challenges with the snow — but some that were running got stuck. One other good thing about moving to electric buses in the future is that they have better traction due to the weight of the battery. [CTV]

♻️ You still have to take your waste out this week. The city says the storm is not expected to impact pickup this week.

CITY

Trainers for Ottawa’s LRT Trillium line lacked required experience, says auditor general

Ooops!: A new audit shows light rail instructors hired to train the new operators for Ottawa’s Line 2 and Line 4 did not have the “expected experience and training” required for operation of the diesel powered trains. 

OC Transpo general manager René Amilcar said despite the hiccup, the trains are safe to ride, and all issues were addressed before the Trillium Lime was launched for public use in early January. 

• “The system is safe, and all operators have been properly trained. Most of the issues have already been resolved, including completing all planned hours of training and reviewing the training files for these operators, controllers and instructors,” said Amilcar, according to CTV.  “I do not want this investigation to weaken anyone’s confidence in the safety of our transit system.”

So what went wrong? The Canadian Rail Operating Rules state that on-job training instructors for diesel operations must complete more than two years of service as a locomotive engineer, including at least three months of service in the area where they’re training. That was not done. Many were hired because of their experience on the previous Trillium Line. 

• “This could have had an impact on the quality of the instruction provided to the operators responsible for operating the diesel trains. We further found incomplete training records for the diesel rail operators, controllers and instructors. We understand from management that all required training was completed, and training records were updated before revenue service commenced,” a portion of the report read. 

Biassed exams: The auditor general reviewed videos which showed some instructors failed to follow protocol during exams administered by TransitNext. In some cases, they gave hints to the trainees and allowed the trainees to talk with one another and copy each other's work. 

Relief it was caught: Kanata Coun. Cathy Curry, who chairs the audit committee, told the Lookout this is one of the reasons why having an auditor general is beneficial for the city. She believes OC Transpo has learned from its mistakes and will do better in the future. 

• “I know general manager Amilcar made a comment that they now have learned quite a lot from this and how they need to go about making sure of their record keeping and checking qualifications. This has been a learning opportunity for everyone,” said Curry. 

Mixed opinions over future upload of Ottawa’s light rail transit system to the province 

Election season means many campaign promises. After ignoring Ottawa’s transit needs for years, last week, the Progressive Conservative Party announced it would upload the city’s troubled light rail system to the province if re-elected. It’s a commitment also made by the Ontario Liberals. 

The news was welcomed by Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and city councillors, who said such a move would free up funds for other transit-related expenses and infrastructure needs, too. But OC Transpo’s union feels differently. 

• “Metrolinx is no different than the Consortium used in Ottawa – it’s a Private Public Partnership (P3) model where a Consortium of private companies do the work and maintain the transit service for 30 years for healthy profits and no accountability,” a news release said, according to CTV.

Line 1 is currently managed by Rideau Transit Group (RTG), a consortium consisting of ACS Infrastructure Canada, EllisDon, and SNC-Lavalin. ATU says handing the line off to another P3 would not change the countless issues riders have faced.  

“When there’s an issue like a mechanical failure or service delays, transit riders and all Ottawans don’t remember that a private consortium (RTG) was awarded a 30-year contract to build and maintain the LRT, instead OC Transpo workers get the brunt of public anger about the unreliable and potentially dangerous rail service – when in fact they are just the operators trying to move people to their destinations,” said ATU Local 279 President Noah Vineberg in the release.

It would be a big win for Kanata, says Curry

Councillor Curry said light rail is the biggest project the city has ever invested in, and it’s faced challenges with low ridership caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain shortages. She also has a wish list of where some of those freed-up costs could be spent. 

“I'd like to see it go back into our transportation system and roads. We need more different types of active transportation in Canada. We have sidewalks crumbling paths crumbling,” said Curry. “We have this amazing opportunity to have our old rail line become a multi-use pathway for cyclists and walkers.” 

Curry also noted she’d like to see a return of express buses and more options for students heading to college and university. 

Could it keep the Sens at the Canadian Tire Centre? Another component of the PC and Liberal plans is the eventual future expansion of Stage 3 LRT out to Kanata, Barrhaven, and Stittsville. There is lots of debate over if the Barrhaven expansion is needed, but Curry said it would be a game changer for her community. 

“It would be at Eagleson and Terry Fox and then up to Stittsville right by the Canadian Tire Centre. I've had people ask if this changes at all the plans for the Ottawa Senators (and their move to LeBreton Flats). I haven't had that conversation with anybody right now involved, but it is something to think about,” she said. 

It would also mean a benefit to the Kanata Tech Business Park, the largest tech park in all of Canada. It’s home to over 540 companies that produce almost 14 billion GDP for Canada.  

“We have trouble getting students from UOttawa and Carleton out to the tech park for their internships. We’d be able to say to companies we have a great transit system and students can come from all over the city. People could move here from other countries and know that they would be able to live wherever they wanted and get quick transit to their jobs in the tech park,” said Curry. 

Igloofest Gatineau | Place des Festivals Zibi | Feb. 13-15, 7 pm | Tickets starting at $39

What Are We? by 613RnB | Club SAW, 67 Nicholas Street | Feb. 14, 7 pm | Tickets $33

frican Day on the Hill | Collège La Cité, 801 Aviation Parkway | Feb. 15 | Free

African Day on the Hill | LaCité, Excentricité | Feb. 15, 5 pm | Tickets $50

Laugh Lounge Pro Comedy Nights | 61 York St. | Every Friday and Saturday, 8:30 pm | From $25.50

Carivibe Rum & Food Fest | Shenkman Arts Centre, 245 Centrum Boulevard | Feb. 15, 2 pm | Tickets $25 to $49

Winterlude: Diefenbunker Winter Carnival | Outdoor Rink, Huntley Community Association, 108 Juanita Avenue | Feb. 15, 12:30 pm | Free

Kids DIY Terrarium Workshop | Aquatopia Water Garden Conservatory, 2710 March Road | Feb. 15, 10 am | Tickets $55

Family Day Weekend at the National Gallery of Ottawa | Feb. 15-17 | Learn more

Maple Tree Tapping Event | Feb. 15, 9 am-12 pm | Learn more

Orleans Comic Book & Novelty Show | Place d'Orléans, 110 Place d'Orléans Drive | Feb. 16, 10 am | Free

Snowshoes Under the Stars | Gatineau Park, Chelsea/Wakefield, Québec | Mar. 28, 7 pm | Tickets $25

IMAGE OF THE DAY

Sometime cute came out of the storm!

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHTS

• Uhhh, that’s not where that bobcat goes… [Reddit]

• Here’s a time-lapse of the snow over the evening and into the morning. [Reddit]

• The NAC’s Controlled Damage, about Viola Desmon’s story, is getting rave reviews. [Apt613]

• What are the best cheap eats in the city? Our food editor dishes on his favourites.

• Want to discover new places to eat in Ottawa? Subscribe to Capital Eats, our newsletter breaking down the best restaurants in the city, with real reviews and no clickbait

WORDLE

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