Ottawa facing stiff competition in search for next chief planner

Ontario’s three biggest cities are all on the hunt for a top bureaucrat who can lead them through the challenge of meeting aggressive housing targets, during a time when experts say hiring and retaining top talent is keeping municipal leaders up at night. 

Ottawa began its search for a new general manager of planning at the end of 2022, but failed to find a good fit in its first national search. Now it’s trying again. 

Between scouting efforts, the city shook up its bureaucracy with a new strategic initiative department that’s meant to relieve some of the pressure heaped on planning chiefs from higher levels of government. 

But with Toronto and Hamilton embarking on their own searches, experts say competition will be stiff — and the pressure on interim chiefs nearly unbearable. 

A limited talent pool

The chief planner bears the weight of meeting mandated growth targets while ensuring a sustainable approach.

That has meant tense and time-consuming negotiations with both provincial and federal governments, along with a proposed major overhaul to the rules that govern development. 

“It’s such an important position right now when you think about mandates from the province around local governments needing to do their part and building more homes,” explained Stacy Hushion, vice-president of consultancy firm StrategyCorp’s government relations and management consulting division.

“But at the same time, there’s a limited pool of talent.” 

Wendy Stephanson, Ottawa’s city manager, is keenly aware of that challenge and said municipalities and private companies share the same pressures. 

“It’s everywhere,” she told reporters earlier this year. “Everybody has to look at how they’re recruiting.” 

Chief planners facing ‘perfect storm’ 

Freed from the need to lead strategic negotiations, Ottawa’s newly reshaped planning department is now “laser focused” on traditional city building, Stephanson said. 

The city’s planners have not only faced intense public scrutiny on major developments, including a subdivision planned far from the urban boundary and the second phase of the struggling Lansdowne Park public-private partnership, but must also navigate a constantly shifting policy environment.  

Stephanson describes an environment where housing directives change almost weekly — or what Lindsay Jones, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario’s director of policy and government relations, calls a “perfect storm.” 

It “says a lot” that Ottawa and other cities have had to reorganize departments to meet external demands, she said. 

“It’s been really a combination of these long-term, long-standing structural issues that are the result of downloading in the 1990s, but then combined with the incredible growth pressures that municipalities are now being asked to support,” Jones explained.

Ottawa-based housing policy researcher Carolyn Whitzman likewise said it’s “a very confusing landscape” for planners, particularly in smaller municipalities. 

How to attract talent

With the city adjusting to wave after wave of provincial legislation, managers have long been bracing for another major shift: the “grey tsunami.” 

Retirements have forced substantial change, with Ottawa seeing a rapid and ongoing turnover in upper management. Hushion doesn’t see that changing. 

“[Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System] data shows that tens of thousands of municipal employees are on track to retire anywhere between this year, over the next three years,” she said. 

Many are now poaching from other municipalities, added David Arbuckle, who heads the Association of Municipal Managers, Clerks and Treasurers of Ontario.  

They agree the shift will require two things: a new and more flexible approach to recruitment, and a plan to better support staff with the chops to become future leaders. 

While the public service was one thought of as a career for “lifers,” Arbuckle said a generational shift has changed the long-term outlook of staff. So has an increasingly toxic discourse that’s seen people move from attacking politicians to targeting the rank and file. 

“Sometimes there’s a blurring of the line between those roles. And then we’ve also seen a decline in civil discourse, more confrontation, more hostility towards municipal staff, primarily from the public,” he said. 

“That has really caused current staff to question their role. Is that something they want to be a part of?” 

Flexibility in the fishbowl

Hushion, who leads an annual survey of chief administrative officers across Ontario, said municipal staff worked diligently throughout the pandemic to ensure lights stayed on, garbage was picked up and toilets flushed, and “that took a toll.” 

While municipalities have been considered “notoriously slow to change,” Hushion said there has been an acknowledgement that there needs to be creative solutions to retain people long thought of as “lifers.” 

She said staff need to target areas that contribute to burnout, including the “fishbowl” atmosphere and need for flexible working conditions, along with providing competitive salaries. 

The city’s efforts to break down silos between departments will expose staff to more program areas and help retain institutional knowledge, said Stephanson. 

“Somebody else can move into another role, learn and grow specifically around the strategic projects area,” she explained. “You might go off to a new job because you’ve got new tools in your toolkit, or you might go back to your old job, bring those things with you.”

The experiment is already showing signs of progress, with the interim chief of the new strategic initiatives department, Ryan Perrault, set to take over for the retiring general manager of emergency services. 

Stephanson said the focus is on stabilizing the reshuffled departments, with the recruitment process for a new planning chief set to continue through the fall. 

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