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Once you get past Parliament Hill and the national monuments, is Ottawa just another Canadian city with a bad transit system, or does the capital have a unique place on the national stage?
It’s a question worth asking in light of the government’s decision to allow cities to bid for the national portrait gallery. If it can just as easily be built in Edmonton as Ottawa, why can’t other national cultural institutions? Or even federal jobs? And what does that say about Ottawa’s place on the national landscape?
Add that uncertainty to our infrastructure problems—sewage floating down the Ottawa River as a result of a badly outdated waste treatment system, trucks clogging downtown arteries, an aging and inefficient transit system—and you have a national capital with an identity crisis. Ottawa needs infrastructure dollars, true. But it also needs a confidence boost.
How do you do that? By making things work better in the nation’s capital. And that may require a change in perspective.
A federal election is a good time to think about what works and what doesn’t in Ottawa. Many of the issues that are local to Ottawa residents are also national: bridges, transit and sewage all involve the federal government in some way. And, like many issues involving infrastructure in Ottawa, they are all dysfunctional in their own ways.
Transit is the best example. While other cities move ahead with transit systems designed for the 21st century, Ottawa’s is mired in political paralysis. It has become an election issue because building transit in the nation’s capital, like almost everything else, involves multi-levels of government—municipal, mainly, but also provincial and federal for funding. The current rail plan also involves National Capital Commission property and that adds another level of bureaucracy.
Yet while Ottawa works toward a modern transit system, buses from Gatineau sit idling in downtown. Although the national capital is one region, it operates as two solitudes on the Ottawa River and that creates imbalances and inefficiencies.
How can that be fixed?
Many countries contain their national capitals in federal districts that have a different status from other cities. Washington, in the District of Columbia, is the example most Canadians are familiar with. It was created in 1790 through an article of the U.S. Constitution. It is run by a mayor and council and is directly reportable to congress. As a result, planning the infrastructure of the U.S. capital is streamlined and doesn’t require representatives of a handful of levels of government sitting around a table to agree. As a district, Washington also has a special prominence in the American system, not just one of many cities vying for cultural institutions and sewage dollars.
Washington was a planned city. Ottawa, on the other hand, already existed as a wild lumber town when it became the compromise choice for Canada’s capital. It wasn’t a compromise that was embraced by many politicians or public servants from other parts of Canada.
As David L. Gordon wrote in the Canadian Journal of Urban Research in 2002: “Perhaps another reason why no plan was prepared for the new capital was that few of the legislators cared for the place. They dragged their heels on the bills to build the Parliament buildings, under-funding the project and then stopping the work when the money ran out.”
Sound familiar?
It could be that Ottawa has never really come out from under this inferiority complex. It’s easy to feel that way lately amid crumbling infrastructure and a political sentiment that seems aimed at making sure the capital doesn’t get too big for its boots.
So what about a federal district—a District of Ottawa?
The idea has been tossed around from time to time, but admittedly has never caught on. “It’s not going anywhere,” acknowledged University of Ottawa political science professor Caroline Andrew. Neither Ontario nor Quebec would be willing to cede territory, she noted. “I don’t see any sign of federal interest to push this—there’s no appetite for the federal capital as some sort of important place or model of urban life on the part of the government.”
Still, there may be lessons from the way other countries run their capitals. Why should infrastructure questions affecting the entire region be made on just one side of the river or the other? Ottawa’s transit system should include a loop to bring government workers to Ottawa from the Quebec side and Ottawa workers to government jobs in Quebec. The federal government—or, perhaps a District of Ottawa infrastructure body—has a role to play in making that happen.
There is, similarly, little point in upgrading storm sewer systems in Ottawa if Gatineau’s remain antiquated and vice versa.
While the National Capital Commission has a role in planning the ceremonial spaces of the capital, there is a need for a body to plan and carry out infrastructure building. Rail lines and sewers alone won’t tackle what some see as Ottawa’s eroding prominence on the national stage, but they are a start.
Elizabeth Payne is a member of the Citizen’s editorial board.
E-mail: epayne@thecitizen.canwest.com
(C) Ottawa Citizen