Jim Watson, Candidate for Mayor
Address to the Rotary Club of Ottawa

An Affordable City: Economic Development

April 26, 2010

Check Against Delivery

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Hello everyone.

I am delighted to be invited by the Rotary Club to speak about the future of our City. I am grateful to have this opportunity to share some thoughts with you about the economy and how our municipal government can help.

A few days ago, I was joined by over 600 people at my campaign launch at the Ukrainian Church Hall. At that event, I outlined the themes and values that would underpin my campaign. I spoke about the need for us to strengthen our commitment to being a “caring City” – a commitment which the Rotary Club shares as a central value.

And Rotarians do more than “talk about” being a caring city, they actually invest in the idea through their good works. Such as their commitment to the Youth Drug Rehabilitation Centre or the Rotary home in South Ottawa.

The other themes I addressed in addition to a Caring City were:
A Greener City; A Safer City; A Dynamic City and an Affordable City.

Today I want to outline part of my plan for an Affordable City under the topic of Economic Development. If we are successful in creating a more focused and effective Economic Development strategy, our city, through an expanded tax base, becomes a more affordable and welcoming city for both property taxpayers and business owners. One of the overriding reasons why we need to refocus and redouble our efforts in Economic Development is because for too many years we have relied too heavily on the Federal public service to create jobs. There is a fairly good possibility that in order to deal with the Federal government’s sizable deficit, downsizing of the public service may be facing our community sooner than later. We must prepare for this possibility, and better diversify our economy.

The city is currently undertaking a so-called “refresh” of its Economic Development strategy. While I applaud the initiative, today I want to share some practical ideas with you about the role of municipal government in economic development – a role that is often overlooked or misunderstood. Make no mistake about it - City Hall is critical to creating the conditions for economic health and prosperity.

Neither the federal nor provincial governments are preoccupied with the nitty-gritty of Ottawa’s economic dynamism - they have responsibility for the bigger picture. They also have greater levers they can put into action. It is our Mayor and civic leaders who are responsible for setting the tone, for taking these concerns to heart and for setting the course for action.

Currently, Ottawa ranks ninth in Canada when it comes to Small Business Growth. Why is this rate of growth in Ottawa two and a half times smaller than Toronto and less than half that of Guelph? Because we aren’t setting clear goals and making them happen. Ottawa has a rich base of assets, many under valued and often taken for granted:
• Universities: Ottawa U, Carleton, St. Paul’s
• Leading colleges like Algonquin and La Cité
• The National Research Council and other federal government labs
• A hugely experienced and skilled set of high technology workers
• A world leading Government Services sector
• Growing green technology expertise
• Rich linguistic and cultural diversity
• A strong tourism sector powered by our beautiful capital city

All of these assets are a great place to start. They form the core of a reliable supply of skilled workers and access to creative new ideas for products and services. But they are the raw materials of success, not a guarantee: Assets like these are not unique and indeed exist in different mixes in many places.

Our challenge is to develop these assets into a new spirit of ambition and teamwork, to set goals that people can understand and get behind. And I mean clear goals – like:
• Attracting a new ‘anchor’ company or head office in each of our targeted sectors
• Increasing growth amongst our small and medium sized enterprises, and
• Increasing the number of visitors to Ottawa

So let me talk about the steps we must take to translate our assets into a strong and prosperous future.

First, I would build on our reputation as one of the great places to study.

So many people fall in love with Ottawa when they move here to enroll in higher education. In fact, it was Carleton University that attracted me to Ottawa in the first place. I want Ottawa to take its place as a leading education destination. Ontario is adding some 20,000 new places for students to pursue post-secondary education and will work to attract talented international students from around the world to help build our economy and spark recovery. Let’s make sure that Ottawa attracts this new growth in education and invites as many of these international students as possible to study right here.

Local government can do a lot to ensure we are a top education destination. I will push some simple and concrete initiatives to make that happen:
• We’ll partner with local business to take on the challenge of creating thousands of new student co-op positions – making Ottawa a leader in co-op education.
• We’ll Co-invest in the marketing of Ottawa abroad to attract foreign students.

In addition to these steps, I will invite our education partners back to a common economic development table. I will renew and refocus The Ottawa Partnership or TOP. Sadly, over the past few years, TOP has been allowed to drift to the point it is no longer even functioning, and has been shut down with not a bang, but a whimper. Remember why TOP was created:

• Too many economic development agencies pulling in too many directions
• Too much process for the sake of it
• Too much conflict and acrimony where we should have been mobilized by a common cause.

TOP was created to harness the sharpest minds in the city and to develop strategies for growing Ottawa’s economy. The common table that brings economic development leaders together has, over the last three years, been allowed to drift apart and disintegrate. I will change that by resuming the active role of Mayor in Co-Chairing TOP along with a no-nonsense private sector leader. We must adopt a team approach to attracting, retaining and growing businesses in our City.

A few weeks ago I saw a story on CTV about how the City of Cornwall has all three levels of government and the private sector working in unison to attract business leads that are paying off. Yet, here in Ottawa, our economic approach is scattered at best. For instance, how do the massive Airport lands or Federal and NCC land holdings fit into our economic development strategy? How can we use zoning and land use planning to further our economic development strategy?

In addition, we have several chambers of commerce, an economic development branch at City Hall plus an external Agency we fund called OCRI. How many of you know what OCRI stands for, let alone what it does? In fact they do some incredible work, but it’s not as well known as it needs to be. I will work with OCRI and the private sector to re-brand and reposition the organization.

Let’s start with something as simple and important as a new name - “Invest Ottawa” – straightforward and direct. The job of any economic agency is to attract investments that will create jobs. We must also refocus this agency to its core business – attracting and growing private sector jobs to help diversify our economy away from its heavy reliance on government jobs.

No other City is as fortunate as Ottawa when it comes to the international networking opportunities our embassies offer our City.

Over 120 embassies and high commissions are located right here and as Mayor I will work with these foreign embassies and Canada’s representatives around the world to develop and build business opportunities for our entrepreneurs.

Let me now turn to our small business community. For too long the voices of small business have been ignored and as Mayor I intend to change that too.

To start the change, I will establish a Council of Business Improvement Areas (CBIA’s) and meet regularly with the leaders of our entrepreneurial community to make their projects, my projects. A good example of the disconnect between City Hall and the small business community is the tremendously negative impact sewer and road projects have on some of our main streets like Bank and Preston.
The dozens of businesses that were adversely affected or were shut down by these projects is well known.

The 55-day bus strike also had a debilitating impact on businesses, their customers and employees. And what was the city’s strategy? A marketing campaign to get people back on the buses eight (8) months after the strike! All too often the concerns of small business, and the barriers they face, are ignored or simply pushed to the backburner. They have not been a priority for City Hall, and this is a serious problem. When we ignore their voices, we only hold ourselves back:
• The carpenter who buys a half double and sets about renovating it to improve things for his family and create an income property only to be confronted by process and planners and paperwork until he gives up in disgust.
• Or the business owner who needs to expand quickly to take on new orders – faced with 10-12 months just to secure her permits and frustrated as opportunity passes by.
• Or the small infill developer who is trying to do what our official plan says we wish him to do by creating a small condo or rental block out of an urban lot - sandbagged at committee - his money now locked in land nobody will touch.

These stories are too common and it is crippling our entrepreneurial spirit. I will work with you to change that - plain and simple. Small businesses and shop owners will have an accessible Mayor - one who will fight for them. We are going to set standards for turn-around times in planning and building permits and we are going to make them stick. And if times are not met, then fees would be waived or significantly reduced as a recognition that the City has failed.
That will require a major shift in mentality and a concerted effort. Imagine the change in culture for the City to start ticketing ITSELF when it fails to meet its own service standards? To the skeptics I say – watch me.

I have practical experience when it comes to service guarantees. When I was Minister of Consumer and Business Services, I initiated the Province’s first ever money- back guarantee for birth certificates. After suffering through massive backlogs and delays, we overhauled the system and allowed residents to apply online. We provided them with a money back guarantee if they didn’t receive their birth certificate within 15 business days. And this customer friendly approach surpassed our 99% success rate last year.

I am determined to ensure that Ottawa is the easiest city in the country to be an entrepreneur. We must start by getting the City to do its job - providing basic services promptly and properly. Average people shouldn’t need a planning consultant to get things done. The red tape City Hall has amassed over the years needs serious redress and it is going to happen under my leadership.

While I am on the subject of planning let me pause for a moment on a “small-c” conservative principle: It is time to stand up for our official plan. We have an urban boundary for good reasons - quality of life and fiscal prudence. Civic leaders will always be under pressure to expand the urban boundary but we need to have the strength to see the bigger picture here: Extending services and expanding road networks to these new areas comes at great cost:
• Quality of life: more time sitting in traffic jams instead of sitting at the dinner table.
• Cost to wallets: more sewers, yet higher water rates. Wider roads and yet bigger taxes.
• Cost to our environment – a less green, less livable city.

We decided on an official plan that calls for more development where services exist. Our Official Plan can’t be Official unless it has a champion in our Mayor. It will again.

I want to turn now to another area of opportunity in creating a greener, more prosperous community – our hydro utility
.
What a waste the last few years have been when it comes to Hydro Ottawa, and the lack of coordinated approach the city has shown towards this important asset. It is a powerful tool that belongs to us as City taxpayers. It provides most of us with the energy we use to do laundry, heat our homes and run our small businesses. Our Hydro has hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets and a strong, growing rate base. But there is little creativity being shown by City Hall to leverage our hydro assets to foster economic development.

Last year while Ottawa Hydro was installing smart meters to enable a greener, more modern power infrastructure an important decision faced the Mayor and City Hall. It had come time to replace our aging water meters with the same type of smart infrastructure. Instead of working together to combine one unitary smart meter system, the City embarked on its own, completely incompatible program for “smart” water meters. Let me tell you that the process and decisions taken in this instance were anything but “smart.” This is exactly the kind of investment that we should be looking to leverage the possibilities of working collaboratively – and it was a missed opportunity.

But that’s just one of many missed opportunities; right now, look at the Ontario Government’s Green Energy and Economy Act. This is a massive chance to generate new revenue for the City of Ottawa and for Ottawa Hydro. How long have we been lamenting the lack of revenue sources outside the property tax base that are open to municipalities? Well here we can move to create those revenues to lighten the load on property taxpayers. And the current city leadership has been asleep at the Hydro switch.

Small places with no utility to leverage into action have been moving. All across Ontario municipalities have done a lot more than we have to capitalize on the opportunities. They have been able to attract green jobs and green investment by getting multiple 10 MEGA WATT solar farms into gear. Companies are coming to Ontario and creating jobs. They are going to communities that are on the move, investing and reaping the rewards. What has Ottawa done to pursue major solar investment? Very little.

Even on rooftop solar, the leadership is just not there. In the last Budget the City presided over an allotment sufficient to create two 5 kW installations on City buildings. Now I am sorry but that would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad. There are homeowners between here and the Queensway with more solar generation than that already installed on their roof and turning meters.

As your Mayor I guarantee you we will be making hay out of the shining sun. We will move on these initiatives quickly, creating new revenue to offset tax pressure and getting our fair share of the Green Energy and Economy Act. We need to immediately move forward on 40 to 50 megawatts of solar power as a good starting point. This will put us on the path of producing clean, green power right here at home.
We will use that leadership to get production of solar equipment here in Ottawa, and ensure our colleges and universities have the programs to train solar and wind technicians, installers and entrepreneurs. At the same time we will strengthen our financial balance sheet as a City and create a significant new source of revenue.

The final economic development priority I want to talk about today is about tourism and celebrating the 150th anniversary of confederation.
We will make our Nation’s 150th birthday an event to be remembered, and Ottawa will be the place to be. No leaving this just to the NCC. As the Capital of one of the greatest countries in the world we will rally around making our city THE destination. Just as Vancouver did with the Olympics, and Toronto will with the Pan Am games. Ottawa should be the epicenter for the celebration.

We must strive to attract every major convention, national and international event we can find to make 2017 Ottawa’s year. That would include attracting:
• The wildly popular outdoor NHL Winter Classic
• The Grey Cup
• The Junos
• The Genies
• And major national and international conferences and trade shows.

Tourism is a vital driver in our City – creating between 15,000 to 20,000 jobs and $1.2 billion in economic development – but one that is almost totally taken for granted. We are the only major city in Canada that provides absolutely nothing to help run our tourism agency, even though Tourism is the number 3 job-creator in Ottawa. Visitors choose from a long list of destinations with plenty of appeal - so we have to do more to ensure our local prosperity than was once required.

We need to focus on developing special events to draw more visitors here. Building on the achievements of Winterlude, Bluesfest and the Chamber Music festival, civic leadership must do more to build similar successes. Under my leadership, municipal government will be an active partner helping to grow community events and trumpet them to visitors.

Indeed, we have shown this to be possible when Ottawa became home to the world’s largest minor hockey tournament in the Bell Capital Cup. Now we will do the same thing with soccer in June and ultimate frisbee in September. These events bring families to Ottawa from all over the world and we will work to grow their quality and size.

Beyond the events and attractions, Ottawa has an increasingly diverse and multi-cultural community. Diverse communities need to be engaged and harnessed. By doing so we can open business and economic ties to some of the fastest growing economies in the world like China and India. Our community is strong with connections that bind us to one another but also to people around the world anxious to do business, visit and invest here. We need to reach out to the world with a concerted effort.

As Mayor I will form that partnership to reach across the world and open doors, as I have done when I was President of the Canadian Tourism Commission. And these ideas are just the start – I will continue meeting with business and community leaders in the coming months to involve them in the ongoing development of the City’s economic development strategy.

I look forward to working with you as we move to:

• Boost our tourism industry;
• Promote the City as an education destination;
• Recommit the City to a teamwork approach to economic development;
• Streamline the red tape and bureaucracy for our small businesses – the engines of job growth
• Rebrand OCRI into Invest Ottawa and refocus the agency’s core mandate on economic diversification;
• Leverage our Hydro assets to create green jobs here in Ottawa

Ladies and gentlemen, I ask for your support today as we commit to the urgent task of creating jobs and growing prosperity for our community.

Let’s make that “Job # 1” for the next four years.

Thank you.