Oh No! , LRT Woe!

WARD 13 — RIDEAU-ROCKCLIFFE ST-LAURENT STATION FILE

The Bypass Nobody's Proposed

Every mayoral candidate is asking the city to be honest about the St-Laurent shutdown. None of them — and not our own councillor — is asking whether there's a way around it.

Ottawa's own tendering documents now assume it: to fix the ceiling over the tracks at St-Laurent station, the Confederation Line will need to close there completely, in both directions, for five to six weeks — on top of nine to ten weeks of single-track closures before that. The city says construction is probably still two years off. But the plan is already on paper, and the corridor it runs through is one this city spent over a decade telling people to move to specifically because the train was there.

01 / THE FAILUREWhat's actually wrong

St-Laurent's tunnel was built in the 1980s for buses and repurposed for LRT in 2019 without ever being brought up to a comparable standard. Concrete began chipping badly enough to be logged as "severe" as early as 2020. Some of those flagged repairs weren't made until chunks of concrete actually landed on the tracks in January 2024. In May 2024, inspectors found ceiling panels held up by metal framing described as "detached" and "heavily corroded," directly over the platform where riders stand — a discovery that hadn't been caught because the ceiling had gone unchecked since a single inspection in February 2023. A 2025 review added expired expansion joints, one replaced in 2023 at 37 years old, well past its rated life.

A Stantec report commissioned by the city, dated April 2026, says the tunnel now poses a serious and ongoing risk to riders, staff, and the trains themselves. That report sat unreleased for months until a mayoral candidate found it in a subscription tendering portal and brought it to CBC.

Stantec-proposed lower-level closure schedule

Total project duration11–13 months

Single-track closures9–10 weeks

Each direction platform closure4–5 weeks

Full dual-track closure (both directions down)5–6 weeks

Design completion (target)Dec 2027

Construction completion (target)Dec 2029

This city has a well-documented pattern of major infrastructure projects running over budget and behind schedule. The original Confederation Line opened more than 15 months late. Stage 2 has already climbed past $5 billion with repeated contingency top-ups and multi-year delays on the Trillium Line and the east and west extensions. Other high-profile files — the new central library among them — have roughly doubled in cost while slipping a year or more. What reason do residents have to treat the 11–13 month St-Laurent timeline and the December 2029 target as firm rather than optimistic starting points?

02 / THE PROMISEBuilt on the premise of the train

St-Laurent has been a designated Transit-Oriented Development zone since city council approved the plan in 2012. The city has spent the years since actively upzoning around it: a nearly 1,770-unit, six-tower approval southwest of the station in 2025, a 30-storey mixed-use tower proposed along the boulevard in early 2026, both justified in planning documents on the grounds of proximity to rapid transit. People bought and rented in that corridor, some of them recently, on the understanding that the train made a car optional. That was the pitch. The station is the infrastructure the pitch depended on.

03 / THE SILENCEEveryone's talking except the one person representing this ward

Three mayoral candidates went on record within hours of the CBC story. Jeff Leiper, who surfaced the report, called out the city for sitting on it since April without warning residents. Neil Saravanamuttoo called it a breach of public trust and said it shows a city hall that treats residents as an afterthought. Alex Lawson said it fits a pattern of the city letting infrastructure "fall into disrepair" while withholding word of it. All three said they'd release reports like this the moment they land, not months later.

I've seen no statement from Councillor Rawlson King on this — not to CBC, not through his own channels. This is his ward. His constituents are the ones who'll lose the station for six weeks straight. As of publication

04 / THE ASKWhat nobody else has put on the table

The candidates who've spoken up are asking for transparency — tell residents sooner, don't bury the report. That's necessary, but it isn't sufficient. Transparency about a six-week shutdown is not the same as a plan to reduce what that shutdown costs the people who live through it. Nobody has asked the actual engineering question: is there a way to physically route around the failed section of tunnel while it's being fixed, instead of just replacing the train with buses and hoping the schedule holds?

FIG. 1 — CONFEDERATION LINE, CYRVILLE TO TREMBLAY. ST-LAURENT SITS DIRECTLY ATOP THE 417 CROSSING — THE SAME PINCH POINT NOW FAILING STRUCTURALLY.

To be clear about the scale of that ask: St-Laurent and Tremblay stations sit about 1.4 kilometres apart, and the reason there's no existing route between them is that the LRT crosses Highway 417 underground right at St-Laurent — the very crossing that's now structurally compromised. A temporary bypass, whether an elevated guideway alongside the highway or a dedicated busway/pedestrian structure, is a real civil engineering undertaking constrained by the 417 right-of-way, utilities, and approvals. It is not a weekend project. I'm not pretending otherwise.

• Near-term: a real bus-bridging plan, not a vague one. The city's default during past St-Laurent closures has been R1 shuttle buses between Hurdman and Blair. Riders have already said for years that OC Transpo communicates disruptions badly. Before the 5–6 week full closure hits, the city should commit publicly to specific shuttle frequency, capacity, and reliability targets — published in advance, not announced after the fact — so residents can plan around something more concrete than “replacement service will be provided.”
• Longer-term: cost out a temporary bypass structure and put the number in public. Nobody at the city has studied, or at least published, whether a temporary route around the compromised crossing is feasible or what it would cost against 11–13 months of degraded east-end transit. Given that this corridor was deliberately built up around the promise of this train, the city owes it to those residents to at least know the number before defaulting to buses again.

Study the bypass option, publish the number, and give riders a real bridging plan before defaulting to another multi-week R1 replacement.

Where this stands This isn't a costed commitment — it's a demand that the option be studied and the results published, the same transparency standard other candidates are already asking for on the Stantec report itself. If the number comes back too high, residents deserve to see that too. What they don't deserve is a city that never even asked the question, a councillor who hasn't asked it either, and another project whose optimistic timeline quietly expands the way so many others have.

WARD 13 CAMPAIGN FILE — ST-LAURENT STATION — DRAFT FOR REVIEW

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Note:

If your councillor's response is merely "something needs to be done". Maybe you need to vote differently?

This time around, inform yourselves, vote differently, vote wisely. Vote for Peter Karwacki for Rideau Rockcliffe.

Compare and Contrast Karwacki and King

The Shape of the Comparison: Two Very Different Records in Rideau Rockcliffe Ward XIII

Rideau-Rockcliffe voters have a straightforward choice on the ballot this October: incumbent Rawlson King, seeking a third term, against challenger Peter Karwacki, running for a third time. Both records span three decades. What’s worth looking at isn’t just the length of each record, but its shape — because the shape tells you what kind of judgment each candidate brings to council.

Dimension	Rawlson King	Peter Karwacki
Overall shape	A single political track upward Linear progression through communications, civic boards, and council.	Broad, technical, executive, repeatedly tested Wide base of operational leadership, deep technical work, independent advocacy, and multiple challenges for the same seat.
Education	Journalism and law at Carleton; master’s in communication.	B.Sc. (Biology) and post-graduate diploma in Business Administration from Lakehead University.
Core professional career	20+ years in communications and high-tech market research Steady climb through community-association presidency, resource-centre board, gallery presidency	15 years as hospital CEO / Administrator and financial director in Northern Ontario — full responsibility for budgets, boards, hiring/firing, strategic planning, policy, and public relations 13 years at Cognos and IBM (no stint): database, programming, financial OLAP models, business-intelligence applications, and sample projects for customers and education programs Federal project-management roles (Health Canada, CBSA, Export Development Canada, Natural Resources Canada) Independent consulting practice built around benchmarking and performance measurement; Managing Director, PeerMetrics
Council / elected experience	Six years on Ottawa City Council: committee member → committee chair → Deputy Mayor. Seeking third term.	Elected school-board trustee (early 1980s). Ran for this exact Ward 13 seat in the 2019 by-election, 2022 general election, and now 2026 — without incumbency advantage.
Independent / civic leadership beyond institutions	Primarily board and association roles that feed into institutional standing.	River preservation leadership: founding / past president of Les Amis de la rivière Kipawa; past president of Whitewater Ontario Technical papers on cumulative effects of dam projects; judicial and advocacy efforts to protect navigability (Laniel Dam) and free-flowing reaches against diversion schemes Long-term defense of whitewater habitat and public access
Primary working instinct	Communications and consensus-building: “How do we explain this decision, and who needs to be brought on side?”	Executive accountability + technical measurement + structural protection: “What does the data actually say? Does the report hold up to independent verification before the money moves? Are we protecting the underlying asset — budget line or free-flowing river — for the long term?”
Orientation toward institutions	Builds relationships and institutional standing; rewarded with increasing formal responsibility.	Audits performance, benchmarks against peers, and has repeatedly tested the same seat from outside incumbency. Certified PMP and trained data analyst.

Why the shape matters more than the length

Both candidates have put in the years. The question for voters isn’t who has “more experience” — it’s which kind of experience you want sitting across the table when a $400-million infrastructure report or a transit oversight question lands on the council agenda.

Ward 13 has had the first kind of instinct on council for six years. Whether it wants to add the second kind — hospital-CEO-level operational accountability, multi-year technical analytics at Cognos/IBM, project-management discipline, benchmarking, and proven willingness to defend structural integrity (including rivers) when it is inconvenient — is what’s actually on the ballot in October.

Peter Karwacki is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and trained data analyst running for Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe) on a platform of structural accountability, open data, and infrastructure oversight — with a stated one-term commitment.

W-XIII Real Estate Sales

Rideau-Rockcliffe Housing Market – Prior Year Comparables (mid-2026 vs 2025)

City-Wide Ottawa (June)

Metric	2026	2025	Change
Average Sale Price	$733,648	$723,152	+1.3%
Homes Sold	1,518	1,602	−4.9%
Months of Inventory	3.3	≈2.7–2.8	Higher

Sub-Areas (Trailing ~12 Months)

Area	Avg Price 2026	Avg Price Prior/2025	Price Change	Sales 2026	Sales Prior	DOM 2026 vs Prior
Rockcliffe Park	$2,442,688	≈$2.20M (2025)	+11% to +30%*	16	19	60 vs 41
New Edinburgh / Lindenlea	≈$960k–$979k	$983,420 (2025)	≈ −1% to +7%	63–68	70–72	≈29–31 vs 33
Overbrook	$640,261	$652,228 (2025)	−8.2%	94	72	30 vs 36
CFB Rockcliffe / Wateridge	$633,808	≈$675k / $613k (2025)	−6.2%	71	79	40 vs 33

*Large % swings in Rockcliffe due to low volume and high-end sale mix. Data as of early–mid 2026 reports.

Achieving the Art of the possible

Ward 13 · Rideau-Rockcliffe · Campaign Blog

Decorum Isn't Manners. It's Infrastructure.

Ottawa is about to get a new mayor and, in many wards, a wave of new councillors. That turnover is an opportunity; but only if the people walking into City Hall in November understand what they're actually inheriting.

They're inheriting a police services board that, according to its own chief, doesn't have robust auditing of database access. They're inheriting an LRT extension still slipping timelines years after "fixed." They're inheriting a Lansdowne 2.0 debt load north of $16 million a year serviced against promises that taxpayers would carry none of the risk. They're inheriting a consolidated balance sheet with billions in liabilities that live off the books; an OMERS shortfall, an infrastructure gap in the double digits of billions, a utility whose own liabilities never show up in the city's official numbers. And they're inheriting a 311 system where a single data-integrity failure closed more than 120,000 tickets in six days without anyone flagging it as a governance problem.

None of that gets fixed by a council that spends its first year relitigating personalities, settling scores from the campaign, or performing outrage for a two-minute clip. It gets fixed by a council that can sit in a room, disagree on substance, and still do the work.

That's what decorum actually means in this context. Not politeness for its own sake; the capacity to hold institutions accountable without the process collapsing into theatre. Ottawa’s has had plenty of both this in the 2022 term: strong words at the podium, resignations framed as accountability, and very little in the way of follow-through once the cameras were off. The last OPS Board chair to resign did so vouching for the board's competence. Eighteen months later, an independent workplace investigations office had been quietly wound down and the Auditor General found the board's own reporting inaccurate. Strong words did not survive contact with the actual record.

A council that wants to be taken seriously in a term with this much to fix needs a different posture:

Disagree on the record, not around it. The public deserves to see committee votes and floor debates that actually engage with evidence; not statements crafted for a press release while the substantive positioning happens elsewhere.

Treat oversight as a job, not a talking point. You cannot call for stronger transit oversight for years and never sit on the Transit Commission or the Light Rail Subcommittee. Decorum includes doing the unglamorous committee work that oversight actually requires.

Let data close arguments instead of opening new ones. When a chief says database-access auditing "isn't robust," that's not a talking point to be managed; it's a gap to be closed, with a plan and a timeline. The same goes for liabilities, for the infrastructure gap, for crime clearance rates that have fallen even as headline numbers get debated. Bring the numbers. Argue about what they mean, not whether they're inconvenient.

Separate structural failure from individual blame; most of the time. Most of what's broken in this city is a structural problem: incentives, funding formulas, ward boundaries that concentrate voting power in ways that don't match where growth and strain actually are. A council that spends its energy chasing individual villains will miss the fixes that actually change outcomes. But structural focus isn't an excuse to let genuine failures of judgment go unaddressed either; decorum cuts both ways.

Commit to sunset reviews, not permanent positions. Every major liability decision, every big capital commitment, should come with a built-in point where council has to look at it again with fresh eyes and current numbers. That's a decorum issue too: the discipline to admit a prior decision needs revisiting, without treating that as a defeat.

None of this is about lowering the temperature for its own sake. Ottawa's problems are serious enough that they deserve a council capable of sustained, adversarial, evidence-based work; the kind that doesn't burn itself out in the first six months on grievance and instead spends four years actually closing the gaps it inherited.

The mess didn't accumulate because people were too polite. It accumulated because too much of the last several terms was spent on statements instead of follow-through. A new council that wants a different result should start by deciding what decorum is actually for.

Ward 13 · Rideau-Rockcliffe · Campaign Blog

Even the Councillor Everyone Wanted Gone Was Right About This One

Rick Chiarelli's name doesn't come up in Ottawa politics without the context that ended his career: a year-long integrity commissioner investigation that found he had subjected staff to repeated, serious harassment, followed by council voting to strip his pay and duties, followed by more complainants and more findings after that. There's no rehabilitating that record, and no reason to try. It was serious misconduct, independently investigated and independently confirmed.

But on March 6, 2019, sitting on a council that voted 19–3 to hand SNC-Lavalin a $1.6-billion contract to extend the Trillium Line, Chiarelli was one of the three votes against. He was right, and it's worth asking why, because the reason has nothing to do with his character and everything to do with a habit council should have kept.

The bid in question had failed the technical evaluation for the project — twice. Council wasn't told that. When Coun. Diane Deans pressed staff directly on whether SNC-Lavalin had cleared the minimum threshold, she was told she couldn't have that information, and arguably shouldn't be asking for it. An earlier motion to delay the vote by two weeks, just to allow more time to review the report, failed. Council approved the largest capital project in the city's history without the one piece of information that would have told them whether the winning bid was actually qualified to win.

The auditor general later found that staff followed the process correctly and weren't the ones who broke any rule. That's arguably worse, not better: the process itself was built to let this happen, and it took three votes out of twenty-two to say so out loud before the fact.

This is the part of the story that gets lost when a vote gets remembered only through the lens of who cast it. Diane Deans and Shawn Menard voting no is unsurprising — consistent with their broader records on procurement scrutiny. Chiarelli voting no fits no such narrative, and that's exactly the point. A no vote grounded in "we don't have the information to say yes" doesn't require the voter to be admirable. It requires the claim to be true. In this case it was: the information genuinely wasn't there, and the bid genuinely hadn't passed.

Ottawa's incoming council is going to face the same test repeatedly — not on this file, but on the next one, and the one after that. The instinct to sort every vote by who's popular, who's controversial, who's likeable is exactly the instinct that let a $1.6-billion contract sail through on a 19–3 vote while the people asking the hardest questions got told to stop asking. Evaluating a position on its merits, independent of who's making it, is not a nicety. It's the only way procurement failures like this one get caught before the money is spent instead of years after.

None of this is an argument for rehabilitating anyone's record based on a single vote. It's an argument for keeping the two questions separate: what someone did, and whether what they said on a given Wednesday afternoon happened to be true. Council conflated those questions in October 2020 when it debated Chiarelli's conduct, understandably and correctly. It had already conflated them in reverse eighteen months earlier, when the loudest objections to a flawed process came from voices council had reason to dismiss — and dismissed them anyway, at a cost of $1.6 billion and years of downstream construction delays.

A council that wants better procurement outcomes next term should get comfortable with an uncomfortable habit: taking an argument seriously regardless of who's making it, and holding people accountable for their conduct regardless of whether they happened to be right about something else. Both things can be true in the same council term. Ottawa's recent history shows what happens when they get treated as mutually exclusive.

Asset Management - what to do

The City's Books Have Two Kinds of Debt: The Kind You Can See, and the Kind You Can't

A plain-language look at Ottawa's finances — and three steps to make them harder to hide.

The visible kind is the loans the city has taken out — that number gets reported, and by itself it doesn't look alarming.

The kind you can't see easily is everything the city already owes but hasn't put on the main bill yet: things like closing old landfills safely, cleaning up contaminated land, and — the big one — keeping roads, pipes, and buildings in good repair. The city has a plan for all of this, but the plan isn't fully funded. That gap is a real cost. It's just not written on the page most people look at.

Here's what I think needs to happen, in order:

1. Show people the real number

Right now, the full picture exists — it's in the city's books — but it's buried in technical reports nobody reads. Step one is simple: put the true cost of what we owe, including the stuff we're deferring, in front of council and the public in plain terms. You can't fix a problem everyone's allowed to pretend doesn't exist.

2. Make it a running scoreboard, not a one-time report

A single number is easy to shrug off. What matters is whether the gap is growing or shrinking year over year. I want that comparison published every single budget, automatically — so if a council lets the gap widen, everyone can see it happening in real time, not find out five years later when a pipe bursts or a rec centre closes.

3. Attach real consequences

Once people can see the gap clearly and see it every year, the next step is a rule: if the funding for road repairs, pipes, or buildings falls below a safe level, the city has to publicly explain how and when it'll fix that — not just note it and move on. That part takes a full council to agree to, not one person. But you can't get there without the first two steps making the case first.

The short version: you can't manage what you can't see, you can't hold anyone accountable for a trend you're only shown once, and you can't force a fix without first proving, repeatedly, that the problem is real and getting worse. Transparency isn't the whole fix — but it's the thing that makes a real fix possible.

Peter Karwacki — Candidate for Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe)

Ottawa's Hidden Garden

Ottawa’s Hidden Liabilities

When off-balance-sheet commitments for the library, LRT, Lansdowne, flooding infrastructure and the new hospital are folded in, the picture is no longer rosy.

July 27, 2026 · Analysis based on the City of Ottawa’s 2025 Consolidated Financial Statements and subsequent project updates through mid-2026

At December 31, 2025 the City reported $8.98 billion in total liabilities and $4.86 billion in net debt. Those figures already rose more than $1 billion in a single year. But they capture only what public-sector accounting rules require to be recognized today.

Large contractual construction commitments, multi-decade P3 maintenance obligations, approved-but-not-yet-issued debt, and high-profile political asks sit largely or entirely off the balance sheet. When those are brought into view, the true claim on future tax and rate revenues looks substantially heavier.

The core point: The accumulated surplus of ~$20.5 billion is real — but it is locked inside roads, pipes, rails and buildings. Cash and future revenue capacity are what service the debt and the commitments. Off-balance-sheet items compete for exactly that capacity.

1. On-Balance vs. Off-Balance Reality

Reported Liabilities vs. Approximate Additional Commitments

Off-balance estimate aggregates remaining capital-works commitments (~$1.7 B), residual Stage 2 LRT construction & long-term maintenance tails, Lansdowne debt still to be issued, Ādisōke residual, hospital ask, and known climate/flood resilience pressures. Long-term P3 service payments stretch decades and are only partially captured.

2. The Five Projects That Matter Most

Ādisōke Central Library

Original budget concept ~$175 million. By early 2026 the approved figure sat near $334 million. A further $18.5 million request (City share $11.5 million, largely new debt) pushed the total toward $352–353 million. Construction is ~85 % complete but the schedule has not stabilized; latest indications point to December 2026 with no firm public opening date.

Once open, new operating costs (staffing, facility operations, programming) will hit the annual budget. Those ongoing costs and any further overruns remain largely off-balance today.

Ādisōke Cost Escalation

Original concept → current approved trajectory (City + federal shares combined)

Transit – Stage 2 LRT

The program has grown past $5 billion. Trillium Line is in service and its P3 liability (~$129 million) is now on the books, to be repaid over 27 years at a high effective rate. Confederation Line east and west extensions still carry hundreds of millions in remaining construction commitments that the City must settle upon substantial completion.

Far larger are the multi-decade maintenance, lifecycle and availability payments for the combined Stage 1 + Stage 2 system. These cash obligations stretch 27–30 years and are only partially recognized as liabilities today. Contingency top-ups for oversight, claims and delays continue.

Public Works – Flooding & Stormwater Resilience

The July 1, 2026 extreme rainfall (thousands of basement floods) exposed capacity and deferred-maintenance gaps. Climate Ready Ottawa and the rate-supported Long-Range Financial Plan already allocate hundreds of millions to drainage, retrofits, flood-plain mapping and resilience work.

Replacement value of the broader water/wastewater/stormwater network has been cited in the tens of billions. Immediate response costs plus the capital upgrades that will follow post-event reviews are only beginning to crystallize. These are classic “known unknowns” that will appear as future debt or rate increases.

Lansdowne 2.0

Total project cost is framed at approximately $419 million. The City presents a “net cost to taxpayers” of roughly $131 million, but the financing plan includes ~$331 million in new debt to be issued later (servicing beginning in the 2030s), plus reserves, debt premiums, Municipal Accommodation Tax increases and partnership cash flows.

Until the debt is issued and construction is complete, the bulk remains an off-balance-sheet commitment. Auditor-general commentary has flagged thin contingency, tariff risk, and revenue assumptions.

Lansdowne 2.0 – Total Cost vs Net Taxpayer Cost vs Debt Still to Be Issued

New Civic Campus – The Ottawa Hospital

The City was asked in 2022 for a local contribution of up to $150 million as part of an estimated ~$700 million local share (original total project ~$2.8 billion). Staff are to bring funding options before the end of the current council term.

As of mid-2026 the main hospital design, final cost and schedule are still being finalized. The parking garage is advancing; the hospital itself is widely expected to slip well into the 2030s. Cost-escalation risk has been publicly noted. This $150 million (or higher) ask is not yet a recorded liability — it is a known, high-profile expectation that will compete with every other capital priority.

3. Putting the Pieces Together

Major Off-Balance & Near-Term Pressures (Illustrative Scale)

Orders of magnitude only. Long-term LRT maintenance tails and full stormwater replacement needs are larger still and extend over decades.

What “folding them in” means in practice:
• Remaining capital-works commitments already total ~$1.7 billion (heavily weighted to 2026).
• Stage 2 residual construction + multi-decade maintenance payments add hundreds of millions to low billions over time.
• Lansdowne debt of ~$331 million is still to be issued.
• Ādisōke residual City share and future operating costs continue to rise.
• The hospital ask of up to $150 million remains outstanding.
• Climate and flood-resilience capital will keep growing after the 2026 event.

None of this is secret. The contractual commitments appear in the notes to the financial statements. Project updates go to committee. What is missing from day-to-day discussion is the cumulative effect: a growing stack of claims on the same limited pool of future tax, rate and development-charge revenue.

Debt-service ratios remain within formal limits today. The accumulated surplus is large. Yet the speed of on-balance growth in 2025, combined with the scale of still-unrecognized or only partially recognized obligations, means the margin for error is thinner than the headline balance-sheet numbers suggest.

The rosy narrative rests on assets that cannot easily be turned into cash and on the assumption that revenues will keep rising fast enough to service everything that has already been promised. Off-balance-sheet commitments test that assumption hardest.

Sources

City of Ottawa Consolidated Financial Statements year ended 31 December 2025 (Audit Committee, June 2026); subsequent Finance & Corporate Services and related committee reports on Ādisōke, Stage 2 LRT, Lansdowne 2.0, Climate Ready Ottawa / stormwater programs, and the Civic Campus local-share request; public project updates through July 2026.

This is an independent analysis. Figures are rounded and drawn from publicly available documents. Long-term P3 maintenance totals and full infrastructure replacement needs are larger than the illustrative bars shown and extend over decades. Always consult the official statements and project reports for precise amounts and disclosures.

ii

Note:

If your councillor's response is merely "something needs to be done". Maybe you need to vote differently?

This time around, inform yourselves, vote differently, vote wisely. Vote for Peter Karwacki for Rideau Rockcliffe.

That's a big IOU

City of Ottawa Liabilities:
The $1 Billion Jump in 2025 Most Residents Missed

On-balance-sheet obligations climbed 13% in a single year. Here’s the full picture — ranked by dollar value — plus the off-balance-sheet commitments that rarely make the headlines.

Published July 27, 2026 · Based on the City of Ottawa’s audited Consolidated Financial Statements for the year ended December 31, 2025

Most Ottawa residents see their property-tax bill, transit fare, or water rate and move on. Very few open the City’s annual consolidated financial statements. Those statements, presented to Audit Committee in June 2026, reveal a striking fact: total liabilities jumped from $7.93 billion at the end of 2024 to $8.98 billion at the end of 2025 — an increase of roughly $1.05 billion, or 13%, in just one year.

Key takeaway: Net debt (liabilities minus financial assets) rose from $4.11 billion to $4.86 billion. While tangible capital assets still far exceed these obligations, the speed of growth in 2025 was markedly faster than the previous year.

1. Total Liabilities & Net Debt Growth

The chart below shows the sharp step-up in both total liabilities and net debt between 2024 and 2025.

Total Liabilities vs Net Debt (2024–2025)

Source: City of Ottawa Consolidated Statement of Financial Position (dollars in billions)

2. On-Balance-Sheet Liabilities Ranked by Dollar Value (Dec 31, 2025)

All figures below are in millions of dollars. Comparative 2024 values are shown for context.

2025 Liability Breakdown (Largest to Smallest)

Values in $ millions

Rank	Liability	2025 ($M)	2024 ($M)	Change
1	Net long-term debt	3,687	3,371	+316
2	Deferred revenue	1,868	1,613	+255
3	Accounts payable & accrued liabilities	1,575	1,229	+346
4	Employee future benefits & pension agreements	856	802	+54
5	Mortgages payable (mainly OCHC)	637	543	+95
6	Public-private partnership (P3) liability	129	136	–7
7	Asset retirement obligations	87	83	+3
8	Other liabilities	67	74	–7
9	Capital lease obligations	50	58	–8
10	Contaminated sites	22	22	0
	Total Liabilities	8,978	7,931	+1,047

Composition of 2025 Liabilities

Net long-term debt remains the single largest component at 41%

What drove the biggest increases?

• Accounts payable (+$346 M) — Timing of payments and higher operational accruals.
• Net long-term debt (+$316 M) — New issues of ~$488 M (including sustainable debentures and a Canada Infrastructure Bank loan for zero-emission buses) offset by ~$155 M in principal repayments.
• Deferred revenue (+$255 M) — Government funding for housing and childcare received but not yet spent.
• Mortgages payable (+$95 M) — Continued Ottawa Community Housing construction and repair loans.
• Employee future benefits (+$54 M) — Plan amendments for Ottawa Police Services and higher WSIB costs related to certain cancers.

3. Off-Balance-Sheet Commitments & Contingencies

These items do not appear as liabilities on the statement of financial position but represent real future claims on City resources:

Major Off-Balance-Sheet Items (Approximate Totals)

Capital works commitments are multi-year; largest portion falls in 2026

• Future capital works commitments — Approximately $1.67 billion (largest near-term tranche ~$1.46 billion in 2026).
• Loan guarantees — ~$157 million authorized, of which ~$104 million was outstanding.
• Operating lease commitments — Roughly $71 million over the coming years.
• Stage 2 LRT remaining construction & long-term maintenance — Significant residual construction costs plus multi-decade service payments.
• Other — Hydro Ottawa service contracts, ice-rental P3 arrangements, joint-facility commitments (Ādisōke), Lansdowne revitalization agreements, and various legal contingencies.

4. Context & Why It Matters

Debt-service ratios remain comfortably below both provincial limits (25% of own-source revenue) and the City’s stricter internal targets. The overall accumulated surplus rose to about $20.5 billion, supported by strong growth in tangible capital assets (~$25.2 billion). New debt largely funded infrastructure that will serve residents for decades.

Nevertheless, a one-year increase of more than $1 billion in recorded liabilities — plus roughly $1.7 billion in near-term capital commitments — is material. It raises future principal and interest costs, increases sensitivity to interest-rate changes, and underscores the importance of aligning capital plans with sustainable revenue sources (taxes, rates, development charges, and senior-government transfers).

The 2024 increase in total liabilities had been a more modest $198 million. The 2025 jump was more than five times larger. That acceleration is the part most residents have not yet fully appreciated.

Sources

City of Ottawa Consolidated Financial Statements for the year ended December 31, 2025 (presented to Audit Committee, June 19, 2026) and related notes on contingencies, commitments and contractual obligations.

This post is an independent analysis based on publicly available audited financial statements. Figures are rounded for readability. Always refer to the official statements for precise amounts and full disclosures.