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Mayor Jim Watson addresses the media following the June 12 election of a Liberal majority in Ontario.
Surprise Liberal majority good for Ottawa: mayor Laura Mueller laura.mueller@metroland.com
News - Mayor Jim Watson wasn’t expecting a majority government to be elected in the June 12 provincial election, but he said the Liberal win bodes well for the city’s major projects. “I think it’s a strong vote of encouragement and support for the City of Ottawa’s major priorities: cleaning up the Ottawa River and continuing on with our lightrail plans,” Watson said. The mayor, a former Liberal provincial cabinet minister, said he is confident the government will make good on their promises to fund those projects. “They understand cities and I’m obviously relieved to have a willing partner to continue cleaning up the Ottawa River and expanding light rail to the east, to the west and to the south.” The mayor wasn’t on board with every local Liberal proposal. He rejected an idea from re-elected Ottawa Centre MPP Yasir Naqvi to include citizen members on the city committee that makes land-use planning decisions. “To me, that’s not a workable solution,” Wat-
son said. “At the end of the day, council has to be accountable and responsible for land-use planning decisions. It becomes a pretty slippery slope as to who you put on these boards ... You could always be accused that you’re putting pro-development or antidevelopment people (on the committee).” Watson said the current planning process works “relatively well,” although there are community frustrations from time to time. At least voters can hold municipal politicians to account for their decisions by refusing to re-elect them, Watson said, which wouldn’t be the case with citizen members. The city did add citizen members to several bodies such as the transit commission and health board in this term of council, but Watson said those roles have less opportunity for bias. The Liberals haven’t been keen on another local priority: uploading the cost of maintaining highway 174 to the province. Watson said he’s like to shift that cost off the backs of Ottawa taxpayers, but it’s a lower priority than continuing the upload of social security and court costs to
the province. “My position is until that upload agreement ends in 2018 and the upload is finished, then we should start negotiating with the province for other uploads and highway 174 would be one of those locally. The mayor said the Progressive Conservatives and leader Tim Hudak made a misstep by expressing reluctance to fund the city’s light-rail plans, at least right away, Watson said. “I think Mr. Hudak misjudged the mood, not only in Ottawa but around the province, when it came to the 100,000 job cuts,” Watson said. Ottawa has seen signifi-
cant job cuts from the federal public service. “That resonated, certainly,” he said. The rural-urban political divide that was more pronounced in other regions during this election was diminished in Ottawa, Watson said. While PCs Jack MacLaren and Lisa MacLeod kept their ridings of Carleton-Mississippi Mills and Nepean-Carleton, Northumberland-Quinte West turfed a PC MPP in favour of Liberal Lou Rinaldi. “I don’t think it’s as big a divide as perhaps it was in the last election (when) the Liberals were pretty much shut out of rural Ontario,” Watson said.
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