Thursday, 13 August 2026

A splakin' and a spawlin'

Five Years, No Root Cause: The Confederation Line's Bearing Problem

A rail system, a wheel bearing, and two French companies who still can't agree on why it keeps failing.

Ward 13 Accountability Series · peterkarwacki.blogspot.com

Every time Ottawa's Confederation Line goes down, the explanation eventually lands on the same part: the bearing that connects a wheel to its axle. It happened in 2021. It happened again in 2023, shutting the entire line for nearly a month. It happened again this past January. Five years in, the people responsible for the trains — the manufacturer, the maintainer, and the City — still haven't agreed on why.

Here's what's actually on the record.

The part, and who built it

Ottawa's LRVs are Alstom's Citadis Spirit, a model designed specifically for the Confederation Line and mounted on what Alstom calls an Iponam bogie. Each axle carries two wheel hubs and two cartridge roller bearing assemblies, held together by a large locking nut. According to the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, that cartridge assembly was designed and manufactured by Texelis, a French company based in Limoges, built to Alstom's specification and shipped to Canada for installation.

Both companies are French. Both signed off on the design. Neither has fully owned the failure.

A recurring problem, not a one-off

September 2019 Stage 1 of the Confederation Line opens. Ottawa is the first city in North America — and one of the first anywhere — to operate the Citadis Spirit.

August 8, 2021 An axle bearing fails on an out-of-service train near Tunney's Pasture, dislodging a wheel. The TSB's investigation traces it to an undetected loosening of the locking nut holding the cartridge assembly together — a bolt that had moved by fractions of a millimetre. The TSB also flags a design gap: there was no wayside or onboard system monitoring bearing temperature, so an overheating bearing could fail without anyone noticing.

September 19, 2021 A second derailment, this time with 12 passengers aboard, near Tremblay station. The province calls a public inquiry.

July 2022 More trains pulled from service over unusual vibrations. Maintainers find a damaged wheel hub — the same family of failure as 2021.

July 17 – August 14, 2023 The entire line shuts down for nearly a month after a routine inspection turns up another bearing problem. Investigators later describe it as "bearing play" — the bearing had gone loose. During the inquiry, Alstom and Texelis jointly argue the stress came from excessive pressure going around the Confederation Line's sharpest curves — track design, not the part itself. The City doesn't fully accept that.

Fall 2023 – 2024 Alstom commits to a full redesign of the wheel bearing assembly, publicly called a "final fix." City staff are told to expect years of design and testing.

May 2024 Alstom quietly walks away from the redesign. Instead, the company points back to the wheel-rail interface — recommending higher-strength rail on curves, gauge-face lubrication, railhead reprofiling, and ballast strengthening. The City doesn't accept that reversal either, and formally tells Alstom to resume the axle work. Alstom and RTG still have not agreed on what caused the original failure.

January 21, 2026 A spalling issue turns up in the cartridge bearing assemblies. OC Transpo pulls every train with an axle logging more than 100,000 km from service for maintenance.

Failures by year

Laid out by year, the pattern is hard to read as anything but recurring — not a single bad batch of parts, but a fault line that keeps reopening.

What the experts have said

A former director of rail investigations at the TSB put a number on how unusual this is: bearings like these are typically designed for a minimum ten-year service life before failure. Ottawa's started failing inside two.

The TSB's own comparison is worth sitting with. Other cities run Alstom vehicles on similar cartridge assemblies with far fewer defects — Paris and Istanbul among them. What's different in Ottawa, per the TSB, is that our trains are longer, heavier, and carry more passengers at higher speed than those systems, on a bearing cartridge that stayed the same size. A University of Ottawa mechanical engineering professor who reviewed the City's 2023 "root cause review" made a similar point more bluntly: the trains got bigger and heavier, but nobody scaled up the part that has to carry that load — and even a report titled "Root Cause Review" never actually named one.

Not a manufacturing-defect story. A design and accountability story.

There's a version of this story that's simpler and less accurate: bad parts from a sketchy supplier. That's not what the record shows. Alstom and Texelis are both established French rail manufacturers with long track records elsewhere. What went wrong in Ottawa looks less like a defective part and more like a system — vehicle, track curvature, restraining rail placement, and passenger load — that was never fully reconciled to each other, and a five-year dispute between the manufacturer and the operator over whose job it is to fix that.

That distinction matters for what residents should actually be asking their council for. It's not "find a better supplier." It's: who is responsible for reconciling vehicle design against track design when the two don't agree, and why did it take a public inquiry and five years to get a straight answer on where the fault lines are?

Where things stand

Question	Status
Root cause identified?	No — disputed between Alstom/Texelis (track/wheel-rail interface) and the City (wants axle redesign resumed)
Axle redesign ("final fix")	Abandoned by Alstom in May 2024; City has asked for it to resume
Restraining rail adjustments	Completed at several curve locations, millimetre-scale shifts
Most recent bearing incident	January 21, 2026 — spalling found, high-mileage axles pulled fleet-wide
Independent monitoring for bearing temperature	Flagged as absent by the TSB in 2021; status of any fix not confirmed in public reporting reviewed here

What I'd want confirmed

Has a bearing-temperature monitoring system — the gap the TSB flagged in 2021 — actually been installed fleet-wide, and when?
Has the axle redesign the City asked Alstom to resume in 2024 actually restarted, and on what timeline?
What was the specific cause of the January 2026 spalling, and is it the same failure mode as 2021 and 2023, or a new one?
Has anyone — the City, Alstom, or an independent body — published a single document that reconciles the competing "track design" and "vehicle design" theories, rather than each party pointing at the other?

Ottawa spent nearly two decades and well over a billion dollars building this system. Five years after opening day, the two companies responsible for its most safety-critical moving part still can't agree on why it keeps breaking. That's not acceptable.

King Newsletter KINGO

Ward XIII Newsletter BINGO

Rideau Rockcliffe Ward Newsletter BINGO

A bingo card built from Councillor King's weekly newsletter

I went back through several months of the councillor's newsletters to build this properly. It turns out the "politician speak" playbook doesn't just show up at podiums — it shows up weekly, in your inbox, in a very consistent rotation of moves: event attendance, program-launch filler, road-closure notices, self-credited "wins," and the occasional line that sounds like accountability but isn't attached to anything checkable. Here's the card.

How to play

Open the next Ward newsletter (or pull up last week's).
Mark a square every time you spot the pattern — the exact wording varies week to week, but the move repeats.
Five in a row: you've spotted the format.
Full card: ask yourself how many of the squares told you something you could actually act on, verify, or hold him to a year from now.

K	I	N	G	O
"I enjoyed / was pleased to attend..." (event recap, no substance)	"Great turnout for..." (photo-op filler)	Road closure / construction notice (recycled almost verbatim week to week)	Program registration deadline reminder (not his program, just relaying it)	"Meaningful steps forward" or "significant decision" (vague self-praise)
"A position I championed during budget deliberations" (self-credit, no vote record shown)	"As I told [media outlet] this week..." (quoting himself)	FREE Zero mention of the St-Laurent tunnel, again	New City program launch announced as if it's his own initiative	Bursary / grant deadline reminder (informational, not political)
"The data has answered that" (asserted, not shown)	Volunteer/community event plug with no ward-specific news attached	Waste collection / curbside schedule update	Tree planting / Plant Your Place program update	Crime Stoppers / general OPS reporting reminder
"Fundamentally change how we..." (institutional-scale claim, no metric)	Consultation/open house notice with no mention of past consultation outcomes	Anniversary of a past announcement, re-announced	Committee update with no vote breakdown	Newsletter ends without a single number you could check
A genuinely useful piece of ward info (yes, it happens — mark it anyway)	"I look forward to..." (non-commitment dressed as commitment)	Multiple past newsletters recapped in one issue (padding)	A City-wide program presented as Ward 13 news	No mention of LRT oversight, OPS Board findings, or Lansdowne 2.0

Built from an actual read-through of his newsletters — not a hypothetical.

Play to win this time

The generic "politician speak" card works anywhere. This one is specific: it's a content audit disguised as a bingo card. If you fill five in a row most weeks, that's not bad luck — that's a format. Community associations, tree distributions, and waste collection dates are genuinely useful, and I've marked a square for that too, because credit where it's due. But count how many squares in a typical issue are about something you could verify a year from now, versus something that just sounds nice for thirty seconds.

Play along with the next issue when it lands. If you fill a card, send it to me — I'll publish the best ones.

— Peter Karwacki, candidatw, Rideau Rockcliffe Ward

For entertainment purposes.

#418 OPS - Trust but verify!

#418 OPS — Trust But Verify

When we elect local leaders, we hand over a lot of power. We trust them to pass laws, spend our tax dollars, and manage public safety. But as voters, how do we make sure that power isn't abused?

It comes down to an old phrase: "Trust, but verify." We should have faith that our institutions want to do a good job — but we still need independent tools to double-check the actual work. In Ottawa, there's no place this matters more than the Ottawa Police Service (OPS).

Trusting the police doesn't mean handing them a blank cheque. Real safety means everyday residents get to check the receipts — and as your councillor, that's a job I'll take seriously.

How "Trust But Verify" Should Work in Ottawa Policing

We need police to keep our neighbourhoods safe, but the community has to actively monitor how that authority gets used. Here's how trust and verification should balance out:

The Trust (what we expect)	The Verification (how we double-check)
Honest accounts — we rely on officer testimony about what happened during a crisis or arrest.	Body-worn cameras — full frontline rollout should give us an objective video record, not officers' word alone.
Good behaviour — we expect the service to act professionally and clean up misconduct internally.	Independent watchdogs — outside bodies like Ontario's Inspectorate of Policing need to review complaints without OPS marking its own homework.
Responsible spending — we trust police to manage a massive municipal budget efficiently.	Auditor General reports — independent financial audits are how we catch overruns before they become the norm.
Fair treatment — we rely on officers to police every Ottawa neighbourhood equally.	Race-based data — public data portals need to keep publishing this so outside analysts, not just OPS, can verify fairness.

Why This Matters to You as a Voter

Democracy only works when the public stays informed. Trust without verification risks corruption and wasted spending. Verification without any trust breaks down public safety altogether — the goal is both at once.

When you vote this October, look closely at how candidates talk about the police budget and oversight. Are they offering you blind trust, or are they committed to strengthening the independent tools that let you verify the truth for yourself?

That's the standard I'm holding myself to in Rideau-Rockcliffe.

Vote for Peter Karwacki for Ward 13.

#417 Inside the Black Box

Regular Audit of the Police Black Box | Peter Karwacki for Ward 13

Municipal Transparency · Reading time: 4 min

Regular Audit of the Police Black Box

Blind spots and millions overspent: the case for regular, independent audits of the Ottawa Police

Peter Karwacki · Candidate for City Council, Rideau-Rockcliffe · Thursday, 13 August 2026

🎥 Watch the video accompanying this post — add a one-line description of what's in the clip before publishing.

Trust in public institutions relies entirely on transparency. When a public agency handles an annual budget of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, we expect every single penny to be accounted for. Yet recent findings show the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) and its civilian oversight board are operating with real financial blind spots. To restore public trust and ensure fiscal responsibility, the City of Ottawa should mandate regular, independent third-party financial and operational audits of our police force.

The Breakdown of Civilian Oversight

For years, the public was told that the Ottawa Police Services Board (OPSB) kept the force in check. That claim took a hit in October 2025, when a small claims court found the board had improperly restricted residents critical of police from speaking at its meetings — arbitrarily exercising its discretion in a way that infringed their Charter rights. The court awarded damages to two of the plaintiffs, Robin Browne of 613-819 Black Hub and Jeffrey Bradley of the Crime and Punishment Education Project.^[1]

To be clear about what's proven and what's my own inference: the ruling establishes that the board mishandled public criticism at its meetings. It doesn't by itself prove the board is failing at financial oversight — those are two different functions. My view is that a board willing to bend its own procedural rules to limit uncomfortable scrutiny is not the board I'd trust to aggressively question the department's internal spending. That's my judgment call, not something the court decided.

The Proof Is in the Numbers

On the financial side, we don't have to speculate — the City's independent Auditor General, Nathalie Gougeon, already did the work. Her May 2026 audit of OPS project management found gaps serious enough to raise real questions about value for money:^[2]

The district policing overrun: A project to decentralize OPS operations into four zones started with a budget of $600,000. That figure was later revised up to $2.2 million — and OPS has now spent $5.2 million on it, nearly nine times the original estimate.
Unreliable reporting to the board: The audit found a December 2025 report to the OPSB contained inaccuracies, including outdated budget figures for the force's body-worn camera rollout — a project expected to cost roughly $30 million.
Obsolete staffing models: A separate 2025 audit found OPS deployment targets date back roughly 30 years and haven't been updated to reflect Ottawa's population growth or current call volumes.

The District Policing Budget, in Three Numbers

Original estimate vs. revised estimate vs. actual spend to date

Initial estimate

$0.6M

Revised estimate

$2.2M

Actual spent

$5.2M

The district policing pilot's budget moved twice before landing nearly 9× above its original estimate — without the kind of checkpoint that would have flagged the growth as it happened. Source: Office of the Auditor General, OPS project management audit, May 2026.^[2]

It's Not Just Project Budgets

The same pattern shows up outside project spending, too. At a June 2026 OPSB meeting, Chief Eric Stubbs told the board that Ottawa police run hundreds of database searches every day, and while some auditing of that access exists, he described it plainly: "it's not robust."^[3] That's the head of the force saying, in his own words, that the system meant to catch officers misusing confidential databases isn't equipped to do the job.

This isn't a hard technology problem — anomaly detection on access logs is a solved, off-the-shelf capability. What's missing is prioritization and funding, not know-how. That gap tracks with the board's own safe workplace program budget, which has been cut from $8.2 million when it was committed in 2022 down to $5.4 million today. Put the project overruns, the unreliable reporting to the board, and an admittedly under-built audit trail for database access together, and you get the same conclusion three different ways: OPS oversight is not something the force can be left to build on its own timeline.

No More Grading Their Own Homework

When a powerful institution self-reports its data and controls who gets to question it, public accountability suffers. The Ottawa Police Service shouldn't be marking its own work. We need to move away from reactive, one-off reviews that only look backward after the damage is done.

The ask: City Council should tie future police budget increases to a clear rule — mandatory, annual, independent financial and operational audits, conducted by outside experts and reported publicly on a fixed schedule.

Our community's safety, and our tax dollars, depend on it.

Posted by Peter Karwacki, PMP · Candidate, Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe)

References

CBC News, "Court rules Ottawa's police board violated critics' freedom of expression," Nov. 2025 (small claims court ruling issued Oct. 30, 2025).
CBC News, "Audit finds Ottawa police projects lack proper budgets, oversight," May 12, 2026 (Office of the Auditor General, City of Ottawa).
CBC News, "Frank talk on Ottawa police misconduct dominates 1st in-person board meeting in years," June 2026 (OPSB meeting remarks by Chief Eric Stubbs).

#416 Whistle blowers - do we support them enough?

The Secret Squirrel

The People We Need Most Are the Ones We Protect Least

Every accountability story I've written on this blog — the 311 bulk-closure of over 123,000 tickets, the Ottawa Police Services Board's "not robust" admission on database-misuse auditing, the St-Laurent LRT tunnel's ignored 2020 inspection findings — has a common thread running underneath it that rarely makes the headline: somewhere, someone inside the system knew something wasn't right before it became public. Most of the time, that person says nothing. And when you look at what happens to the ones who do, it's hard to blame them.

What the sacrifice actually looks like

We tend to think of whistleblowing as an act of courage in the abstract — a noble idea. In practice, it's a specific, calculated risk: career destruction, legal jeopardy, and social isolation, taken on by an individual on behalf of people who will mostly never know their name. Daniel Ellsberg didn't know in 1971 that the Pentagon Papers would eventually make him a celebrated figure — he faced life in prison at the time he acted. Karen Silkwood never lived to see her allegations about nuclear plant safety taken seriously. Closer to home, Prince Edward Island's Holmes, Nicholson, and Tentko came forward with evidence of corruption in an immigrant investor program and, according to CBC reporting, saw their courage "destroy their lives" rather than get rewarded for it.

The sacrifice isn't hypothetical, and it isn't rare. It's the default outcome.

Ottawa's own record

This isn't a Washington problem. It's an Ottawa problem, and City Hall has already told us so, in its own words, in its own inquiry.

The Ottawa Light Rail Transit Public Inquiry — the one that found "egregious violations of the public trust" in how the City and Rideau Transit Group handled the Confederation Line's construction and testing — didn't just criticize what happened. Commissioner Hourigan's final report recommended that the province give legal protection to whistleblowers who bring forward concerns about major infrastructure projects. Read that recommendation for what it is: a judicial inquiry into a $2.1-billion transit failure concluded, in effect, that people inside the process likely knew things were going wrong and didn't feel safe saying so. That's not a footnote. That's the inquiry naming the missing piece.

We've seen the same pattern elsewhere in federal Ottawa. In 2023, whistleblowers inside Sustainable Development Technology Canada — the federal foundation funding the cleantech sector — secretly recorded a senior civil servant describing "outright incompetence" internally, because going on the record through normal channels either wasn't safe or wasn't working. Decades earlier, Allan Cutler's disclosures helped expose the federal sponsorship scandal — and he later spent years arguing publicly that Canada's whistleblower law "completely fails to protect those it's supposed to protect."

He wasn't exaggerating. According to reporting on Canada's whistleblower regime, no whistleblower has ever won a case at the federal tribunal that hears reprisal complaints — not once, under any government, on any file. Meanwhile, one international whistleblower-protection expert who has evaluated 60 countries' legal protections rated Canada's law a "tissue paper shield" — the only one of the 60 that failed to meet a single one of his organization's 20 protection criteria.

So when the LRT inquiry recommended legal protection for infrastructure whistleblowers, it wasn't inventing a new problem. It was pointing at a well-documented, decades-old one, in the middle of the biggest capital-project failure in this city's recent history.

Why this matters for how a council actually functions

I've written before about decorum at City Hall — not as a matter of manners, but as working infrastructure for oversight. Whistleblower protection is the other half of that same argument. A council can hold every debate it wants, but if the people closest to a project's problems — the engineer who flags a testing shortcut, the analyst who sees a database going unaudited, the staffer who watches a report get softened before it reaches Council — don't believe they can speak without being destroyed for it, then Council is only ever getting the story that survived the filtering. The LRT inquiry found exactly that kind of filtering happened at the senior staff level. We don't know what didn't reach the inquiry at all.

This is also why "who exposes it" and "who's willing to hear it" have to be treated as one problem, not two. Polling consistently shows the public says it wants whistleblowers protected — one national poll found over 80% of voters wanted stronger protections prioritized, across party lines. But there's a persistent gap between what people say they support and what they actually trust will happen if they speak up: surveys of employees find trust in workplace protection systems averaging barely above the midpoint, and a meaningful share of people who witness wrongdoing choose to stay silent anyway. Public sympathy is not the same thing as a system people can actually rely on. Ottawa's zero-win record at the federal reprisal tribunal is exactly that gap made concrete.

What I'd ask for

Publicly track and report how many disclosures come through the City's existing internal channels each year, and what happens to them — the same way we should be tracking 311 tickets and Auditor General findings, rather than letting the process operate as a black box.
Support the LRT inquiry's own recommendation for stronger legal protection for infrastructure whistleblowers, and ask the City to state clearly what protection currently exists for its own staff and contractors on capital projects, not just what protection is claimed.
Treat an Auditor General finding that a system is "not robust" — as we saw with OPS database-misuse auditing — as a standing invitation for anyone inside that system to come forward, and make clear the City and Council will act on what they hear rather than manage the narrative around it.
Stop treating accountability as something that only happens after a scandal becomes public. The people who could tell us sooner are already there. The question is whether we've built anything that makes it survivable for them to do it.

The sacrifice whistleblowers make isn't abstract, and it isn't owed to them out of sentiment. It's owed to them because the alternative — waiting for a $2.1-billion inquiry to tell us what someone already knew — is worse, and more expensive, for everyone.

#415 Enforce those bylaws!

Ottawa Already Banned This. It Just Doesn't Enforce It.

Public smoking and vaping — tobacco or cannabis — is already illegal in the places residents are seeing it. The problem isn't a policy gap. It's an enforcement gap.

If you've walked through a Ward 13 park recently, you've probably seen it: adults smoking or vaping openly in public spaces, sometimes with kids nearby. It reads like a policy failure. It isn't. Ottawa's Smoking and Vaping By-law already treats cannabis exactly like tobacco — banned in parks, enclosed public places, patios, market stands, and the common areas of apartment and condo buildings. What's failing isn't the rule. It's the mechanism that's supposed to make the rule real.

What's actually on the books

The by-law is not vague. It applies wherever tobacco smoking is already prohibited, and violations carry a minimum $500 fine — up to $100,000 for a continuing offence. When the city legalized cannabis in 2018, it stood up a dedicated bylaw team specifically to keep smoking out of parks. The legal framework residents are asking for already exists.

Why it doesn't feel that way

Structural gap	What it means in practice
Complaint-driven enforcement	Bylaw officers mostly respond to 311 complaints rather than patrolling. If nobody calls, nothing happens — and most residents don't know reporting is an option, or don't bother.
NCC jurisdictional gap	A large share of Ottawa's riverside parks and pathways — exactly the kind of visible, family-heavy public space driving this complaint — are federal Crown land, outside city bylaw authority entirely.
Capacity vs. volume	A handful of bylaw officers covering complaint volume across the whole city means response, when it comes, is slow or absent.

What a councillor can and can't actually do

Worth being precise about this, because it's easy to promise more than a ward seat controls. Public smoking and vaping in parks, patios, and shared building spaces is municipal — that's the by-law above, and it's where a councillor has real leverage: enforcement funding, NCC coordination, and where complaints get prioritized.

Impaired driving, cannabis or alcohol, is Criminal Code and provincial Highway Traffic Act territory — outside what a city councillor legislates. The honest position is to support existing provincial and federal enforcement, not to claim a lever City Hall doesn't have.

The fix isn't a new ban. It's making the existing one work.

Proactive enforcement in family spaces: direct bylaw capacity toward playgrounds, splash pads, and school-adjacent parks rather than waiting on complaints.
Close the NCC gap: a formal enforcement agreement so federal parkland along the river doesn't sit outside city rules that apply twenty feet away.
Publish the data: 311 complaint volume and bylaw response times for smoking/vaping violations, made public the same way other city operational data should be — so residents can see whether enforcement is actually catching up to complaints, not just whether a rule exists on paper.

Residents aren't asking for a new law. They're asking for the one that's already there to mean something.

Sources: City of Ottawa Smoking and Vaping By-law No. 2019-241; Ottawa Public Health / Smoke-Free Ottawa; CBC News coverage of the City's 2018 park bylaw enforcement team; City of Ottawa 311 smoking/vaping complaint reporting page.

#414 Pendulum swings - we are at the limit

#414 Pendulum Swings — We Are at the Limit

At Donald and North River Road, the western limit of Rideau-Rockcliffe, the message was being communicated to me clearly.

When government safety nets weaken, individuals and communities have to fall back on personal resilience, mutual aid, and local networks to secure their well-being. People respond to these systemic gaps through self-reliance and community cooperation — because no one else is going to do it for them.

The balance between compassionate support and public order is one of the most intense debates in urban policy across North America right now. Most serious frameworks for addressing street-level addiction and homelessness rest on three pillars: housing, treatment, and enforcement. Here's how they're supposed to work together — and where cities keep falling short.

1. Affordable Housing & Supportive Shelter

A stable place to live — often through a "Housing First" model — is the foundational step. Without it, people struggle to maintain sobriety, manage health conditions, or hold down a job. But standard affordable housing alone isn't enough for someone dealing with severe substance use disorder. It has to be paired with on-site case management and social services: supportive housing, not just a roof.

2. Treatment & Supervised Administration

Harm reduction and medical treatment have to move together:

Supervised sites are meant to prevent fatal overdoses, reduce public drug use, and slow the spread of blood-borne illness — while giving healthcare workers an entry point to connect with people.
Treatment infrastructure — detox beds, long-term rehab, addiction psychiatry — has to be immediately accessible when someone is ready to take that step. Housing and supervised sites only solve part of the equation without it.

3. Clear Public Order Standards & Enforcement

For the model to work for the broader community, boundaries have to be enforced. When real shelter options and safe spaces exist, cities can set and hold clear rules on encampments and open-air drug use in public spaces — parks, transit stations, retail corridors.

But enforcement only works if the first two pillars are actually in place. Police can direct people to shelter and treatment far more effectively when the beds and services exist to receive them. Enforcement without capacity just moves the problem down the block.

Where Cities Keep Getting Stuck

Capacity gaps: Enforcement becomes legally and practically difficult when shelter beds or treatment slots are full — people end up back on the street, and the encampments come back too.
Co-location vs. community impact: Siting treatment and housing facilities means balancing access for clients against real community concerns about safety and business vitality.
Continuity of care: Moving someone from a street-level intervention into long-term recovery takes sustained funding and coordination across healthcare, housing, and justice systems — not a one-time fix.

Government is failing to hold this balance. Look around Rideau-Rockcliffe and you can see it. If you're used to seeing this issue handled one way, this election is a chance to demand something different.

Vote for a safety-first Ottawa. Vote for Peter Karwacki for Rideau-Rockcliffe.

In the meantime — three things residents can do for themselves:

Personal security — set aside emergency funds, keep basic food and water supplies on hand, learn first aid.
Community ties — connect with mutual aid networks, share resources with neighbours, support local community groups.
Adaptability — pick up practical skills, keep essential tools and documents ready, stay prepared to solve problems as they come up.

This election its time to vote differently.

Vote for a drug free Ottawa, a drug user free Ottawa and a safety first Ottawa.

Vote for Peter Karwacki for Rideau Rockcliffe.

Three Pillars of Self-Reliance

1. Personal Security

Save emergency funds for hard times.
Store food and clean water supplies.
Learn first aid and repair skills.

2. Community Ties

Connect with mutual aid networks.
Share resources with your neighbors.
Support local community groups.

3. Adaptability

Learn ways to grow food.
Keep tools and documents ready.
Stay ready to solve problems.

Campaign Video

Thursday, 13 August 2026

Five Years, No Root Cause: The Confederation Line's Bearing Problem

The part, and who built it

A recurring problem, not a one-off

Failures by year

What the experts have said

Not a manufacturing-defect story. A design and accountability story.

Where things stand

What I'd want confirmed

Rideau Rockcliffe Ward Newsletter BINGO

Play to win this time

#418 OPS — Trust But Verify

How "Trust But Verify" Should Work in Ottawa Policing

Why This Matters to You as a Voter

Regular Audit of the Police Black Box

Blind spots and millions overspent: the case for regular, independent audits of the Ottawa Police

The Breakdown of Civilian Oversight

The Proof Is in the Numbers

It's Not Just Project Budgets

No More Grading Their Own Homework

The People We Need Most Are the Ones We Protect Least

What the sacrifice actually looks like

Ottawa's own record

Why this matters for how a council actually functions

What I'd ask for

Ottawa Already Banned This. It Just Doesn't Enforce It.

What's actually on the books

Why it doesn't feel that way

What a councillor can and can't actually do

The fix isn't a new ban. It's making the existing one work.

#414 Pendulum Swings — We Are at the Limit

1. Affordable Housing & Supportive Shelter

2. Treatment & Supervised Administration

3. Clear Public Order Standards & Enforcement

Where Cities Keep Getting Stuck

Three Pillars of Self-Reliance

1. Personal Security

2. Community Ties

3. Adaptability

Peter Karwacki

Rideau-Rockliffe Community Associations

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