Larry O’Brien

This week’s joint Transit and Corporate Services Committee decision to let staff produce a white paper on the creation of an independent commission was a good one. 

The choice was between paying an outside consulting company $150,000 to tell us what we already know and letting our management do its thing.

I am happy that we did not waste tax payer’s dollars when our own professional staff can create the necessary white paper to frame the transit governance debate later this year. The debate will centre on the governance of the transit services in Ottawa and whether or not we should create an independent authority to better manage the organization.

Examples of independent authorities in Ottawa include the Ottawa Airport Authority, Ottawa Hydro, Ottawa Police Services Board and Ottawa Housing Corporation to name a few. The debate will not just be about economic efficiency; it will also be about how Council adequately reflects the needs of the City. Can an independent authority be expected to be accountable to the Citizens in the way Council does?  This is a good question but seeing that both customer satisfaction and financial performance has been dropping for the last five years, it is time we had this debate and improved on both.

The sad truth is we need to improve every aspect of transit from governance to maintenance of our fleet.  I think an outside authority is the right answer because it will enable the City to bring in outside experts to sit on the board to help management make the right long-term choices for transit in Ottawa.

This approach works well with Hydro Ottawa where Councillors and outsiders work together to give the CEO both practical and political feed back and advice.  Quite frankly the sad state of the current organization is a result of both poor management and inadequate Council leadership over the past ten years and it needs to change.

This week at Council we will be debating this again and I look forward to its approval.