Ottawa 2025 budget day: Council looks to further roll back seniors’ transit fare increase

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It’s been four months since Mayor Mark Sutcliffe began preparing residents for a difficult 2025 budget.

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“It is not an exaggeration to say Ottawa is facing a financial crisis,” Sutcliffe told reporters in a special briefing in August, when many residents were lounging by a lake on summer holidays. “And I want to be clear that it’s a crisis that is not of our own making.”

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That crisis comes to a head Dec. 11 as city council debates and votes on Ottawa’s nearly $5-billion budget.

On that hot August day when Sutcliffe launched his “Fairness for Ottawa” campaign, saying the federal and provincial governments weren’t paying their fair share of the city’s costs and warning warning that the soaring cost of transit alone could mean a seven per cent hike in property taxes.

That worse case scenario, of course, didn’t come to pass. In September, council backed Sutcliffe’s plan to hold the tax increase to 2.9 per cent, excluding the cost of transit. Add in OC Transpo and its projected $120-million operating deficit, and the tax increase will be to 3.9 per cent.

It’s OC Transpo’s plan to put much of that burden on transit users, with a five-per-cent fare increase and steep $120-per-cent increase in the cost of a senior’s transit pass.

Reeling back those increases has been a focus around the council table. More than three dozen speakers gave members of the transit commission an earful about those moves in recent weeks. Hearing those complaints, the transit commission pushed back against the draft budget, proposing in late November to reduce the seniors’ fare increase from $108 to $78.50 and reinstate free rides for seniors on Wednesdays.

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Councillors tried to take even more of the hard edge off those increases, by going further at the final budget debate.

A lengthy motion, introduced by Coun. Tim Tierney makes transit free for seniors on Sundays and Wednesdays, and holds the senior’s monthly pass rate at $49 until Feb. 1, when it would rise to $58.25 — the same as the discounted UPass for university students.

The two measures would cost $414,000 and $1.105 million, respectively.

Council is also asking for a comprehensive review of how OC Transpo fares and discount rates are calculated, including comparing them to transit fares in other municipalities.

The five-per-cent fare increase will push a single adult fare on OC Transpo to $4, when paying by card, significantly higher than other Canadian cities. An adult fare in Toronto is $3.35, in Montreal $3.75, in Calgary $3.70, in Edmonton $3.50 and in Vancouver $3.20.

Tierney said councillors on a working committee on transit had worked collectively to come up with the amendments to the budget.

“We all put a little water in our wine,” he said. “This is, I won’t sugar coat it, a senior’s budget. It also helps us project to the future. We had some very heated discussions, but we’ve come up with a great motion.”

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The price of a discounted fare is a significant issue for OC Transpo. Two-thirds of those riding buses and trains in the city are riding on some sort of discounted fare, said Coun. Glen Gower, chair of the transit commission.

Overall, just 34 per cent of OC Transpo’s operating costs are paid for with fare revenue, with 60 per cent of the cost coming from property taxes, a ratio that Gower said is the lowest in the country.

“Something is out of whack,” he said. “If you think that this year’s budget is difficult, just wait until next year… and the year after that, and the year after that.”

In his opening remarks Wednesday, Sutcliffe said that the debate around transit was missing the point of his Fairness for Ottawa campaign.

“As everybody knows, the toughest part of the 2025 budget is transit,” Sutcliffe said. “And I have to admit there’s one part of this process that’s left me a little bit frustrated.

“Over the past four weeks we’ve been talking about how much our residents can and should contribute to the cost of transit when we should be talking about how much other levels of government can and should be contributing to public transit in Ottawa,” Sutcliffe said.

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“We’ve been talking about the right transit levy, the right adult fare, how large the discount should be for student use and seniors, whereas we should be talking about how the federal and provincial governments are still not paying their fair share.”

Sutcliffe noted that the transit budget is increasing to “historic levels” with an 11 per cent increase from the year before and that despite the operating deficit, transit service has not been cut.

Sutcliffe pointed to recent announcements that the higher levels of government will pay in full for a $3.4-billion transit project in Hamilton and the federal government ponying up $1 billion for public transit in Toronto.

The provincial government has said that it will help Ottawa if the federal government does. Sutcliffe says he’s been talking continually with Kanata-Carlton MP Jenna Sudds, minister of families, children and social development and the ranking minister for Ottawa and a former city councillor, who said she will help the city’s budget challenges.

“These are very positive signs,” Sutcliffe said.

Councillors approved the Ottawa Police Service budget, which rises by 4.4 per cent from a year ago, with 2.9 per cent of that coming from a tax increase and the remaining 1.5 per cent coming from the growth in Ottawa’s assessment base. The budget, which passed despite five “nay” votes from councillors, adds 50 new employees of whom 22 will be sworn police officers.

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The budget includes a new mounted unit and police helicopter — both of which will be paid for with provincial money.

The budget provides for a $388-million budget, an increase in policing costs that will add about $20 to a typical resident’s property tax bill.

More to come…

How councillors voted

Some votes for individual parts of the budget came down to split vote. Here’s how your councillor voted on those sections:

Ottawa Police Service budget, passed 18-5

Those for: Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, Coun. Matt Luloff, Coun. Laura Dudas, Coun. David Hill, Coun. Cathy Curry, Coun. Clarke Kelly, Coun. Glen Gower, Coun. Sean Devine, Coun. Jessica Bradley, Coun. Tim Tierney, Coun. Stéphanie Plante, Coun. Riley Brockington, Coun. Marty Carr, Coun. George Darouze, Coun. David Brown, Coun. Steve Desroches, Coun. Allan Hubley, and Wilson Lo.

Those against: Coun. Theresa Kavanagh, Coun. Laine Johnson, Coun. Rawlson King, Coun. Jeff Leiper, and Coun. Shawn Menard.

Didn’t vote: Coun. Ariel Troster, and Coun. Catherine Kitts.

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