#485 Two candidates - two different approaches

Different Skills, Different People, Different Approach

A fresh look at what Rideau-Rockcliffe needs to move forward.

When looking at the landscape of Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe), one thing is clear: anyone putting their name on a ballot cares about this community. Both Rawlson King and I want what is best for Rideau-Rockcliffe. We both want safe neighborhoods, reliable infrastructure, strong community services, and a ward that reflects the rich diversity of its residents, from Manor Park and Rockcliffe Park to Overbrook, Carson Grove, and Wateridge.

However, agreeing on the destination doesn't mean taking the same road. How we address civic challenges, measure progress, and deliver results depends heavily on our perspective, background, and strategy. It comes down to a fundamental reality: Different Skills, Different People, Different Approach.

The Core Choice: Wanting good outcomes for Ward 13 is universal. Delivering them requires the right analytical toolkit, active problem-solving, and a pragmatic focus on critical regional infrastructure.

Comparing the Perspectives & Key Policies

To help illustrate how our styles, policies, and strategies differ, here is a breakdown of what each of us brings to the table for Ward 13:

Focus Area	Incumbent Approach (Rawlson King)	My Approach (Peter Karwacki)
Proposed East End Crossing (Kettle Island Bridge)	Opposes the project due to concerns over localized neighborhood traffic impacts, shifting heavy transit load onto eastern roads, and environmental disruption.	Strongly supports the project as a fundamentally necessary piece of regional infrastructure that will more safely and permanently divert heavy industrial truck traffic off downtown streets like King Edward.
Background & Skill Set	Governance, policy communication, and traditional municipal administration.	Skilled CEO, project manager and Technical analysis, structured problem-solving, and operational scrutiny.
Public Transit & Infrastructure	Managing existing service lines and broad municipal policy directives.	Granular route analysis (e.g., OC Transpo Routes 12, 19, 6/7 reliability), flood mitigation, and active transit design.
Local Economy & Safety	Policy frameworks and high-level initiative oversight.	Data-driven economic tracking, practical support for local corridors, and direct community safety solutions.
Problem-Solving Philosophy	Process-oriented, incremental policy adjustments through municipal committee systems.	Results-driven, transparent metrics, actionable timelines, and direct accountable engagement.

A Strategy Built on Rigor and Decisive Infrastructure Action

Rideau-Rockcliffe faces unique, complex infrastructure and social demands. From managing major arterial corridors like St. Laurent and Montreal Road to ensuring our stormwater resilience keeps pace with changing weather, we cannot rely solely on standard administrative processes or avoid tough decisions on major projects.

Our contrast on the proposed East End Interprovincial Crossing is a prime example. Opposition to an east end bridge ignores the broader regional reality—we cannot fix downtown congestion, improve pedestrian safety, or remove heavy diesel trucks from urban cores without building the necessary physical bypass route. Building a 6th bridge crossing, paired with long-term network planning like a southern connector, is essential for Ottawa's future growth and safety.

My approach is rooted in direct, hands-on analysis. Whether it is advocating for vital infrastructure like the Kettle Island crossing, auditing local bus reliability, evaluating low-speed feeder transit options, or tackling neighborhood-level drainage issues, I look at municipal challenges through a lens of functionality and practical engineering. It isn't just about initiating studies or delaying hard decisions; it's about delivering real, lasting infrastructure that serves Rideau-Rockcliffe and the city as a whole.

Respecting your representative doesn't mean settling for the status quo. As we look ahead to October, the decision for Ward 13 isn't about intent—it's about execution. We need different skills, a different perspective, and a fresh approach to build a stronger, more resilient community.

Let's keep the conversation going. Where do you stand on the east end bridge, and what infrastructure fixes do you want to see prioritized in Ward 13?

Different Skills, Different People, Different Approach

A fresh look at what Rideau-Rockcliffe needs to move forward.

When looking at the landscape of Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe), one thing is clear: anyone putting their name on a ballot cares about this community. Both Rawlson King and I want what is best for Rideau-Rockcliffe. We both want safe neighborhoods, reliable infrastructure, strong community services, and a ward that reflects the rich diversity of its residents, from Manor Park and Rockcliffe Park to Overbrook, Carson Grove, and Wateridge.

However, agreeing on the destination doesn't mean taking the same road. How we address civic challenges, measure progress, and deliver results depends heavily on our perspective, background, and strategy. It comes down to a fundamental reality: Different Skills, Different People, Different Approach.

The Core Choice: Wanting good outcomes for Ward 13 is universal. Delivering them requires the right analytical toolkit, active problem-solving, and a pragmatic focus on infrastructure and service delivery.

Comparing the Perspectives

To help illustrate how our styles and strategies differ, here is a breakdown of what each of us brings to the table for Ward 13:

Focus Area	Incumbent Approach (Rawlson King)	My Approach (Peter Karwacki)
Background & Skill Set	Governance, policy communication, and traditional municipal administration.	The same plus Technical analysis, structured problem-solving, and operational scrutiny.
Public Transit & Infrastructure	Managing existing service lines and broad municipal policy directives.	Granular route analysis (e.g., OC Transpo Routes 12, 19, 6/7 reliability), flood mitigation, and active transit design.
Local Economy & Safety	Policy frameworks and high-level initiative oversight.	Data-driven economic tracking, practical support for local corridors, and direct community safety solutions.
Problem-Solving Philosophy	Process-oriented, incremental policy adjustments through municipal committee systems.	Results-driven, transparent metrics, actionable timelines, and direct accountable engagement.

A Strategy Built on Rigor and Action

Rideau-Rockcliffe faces unique, complex infrastructure and social demands. From managing arterial corridors like St. Laurent and Montreal Road to ensuring our stormwater resilience keeps pace with changing weather, we cannot rely solely on standard administrative processes.

My approach is rooted in direct, hands-on analysis. Whether it is auditing local bus reliability, evaluating low-speed feeder transit options, or tackling neighborhood-level drainage issues, I look at municipal challenges through a lens of functionality and practical engineering. It isn't just about initiating studies or passing motions; it's about making sure the end product works for the resident waiting at the bus stop or dealing with local traffic bottlenecking.

Respecting your representative doesn't mean settling for the status quo. As we look ahead to October, the decision for Ward 13 isn't about intent—it's about execution. We need different skills, a different perspective, and a fresh approach to build a stronger, more resilient community.

Let's keep the conversation going. What infrastructure or service fixes do you want to see prioritized in Ward 13?

#484 Housing- Boardwalk or Baltic Avenue?

 

Housing, Homelessness, and Intensification: Where I Stand

Peter Karwacki · Ward 13 candidate · Rideau-Rockcliffe

Every candidate says housing is a priority. That's not a position, it's a mood. Here's the actual record, the actual numbers, and what I'd do with them.

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Homelessness: What's the plan?

The City already has a plan — the 10-Year Housing and Homelessness Plan (2020–2030), targeting 5,700 to 8,500 affordable and supportive units. 

Three years in, roughly 466 had been completed.  That's a plan quietly failing in public, with nobody at the council table treating the shortfall as the emergency it is.

I'm interested in why the existing one is underperforming and what gets fixed:

1. Publish the gap, not just the goal. A quarterly public dashboard comparing units promised, units funded, and units actually delivered — the same discipline I've pushed on LRT oversight and on the City's liabilities. If staff can track a $9.5-million tunnel repair timeline, it can track this.
2. Treat supportive housing as infrastructure, not a social file. Fast-track approvals for supportive and transitional housing the way the City fast-tracks projects it actually wants built. Right now the process timeline for supportive housing is indistinguishable from a market condo — that's a choice.
3. Stop treating shelter beds as the finish line. Emergency shelter capacity is a symptom response. The actual fix is permanent supportive housing with wraparound services, and the City's own numbers show we're building it at a fraction of the rate we said we would.
4. Find the money the way I've found it elsewhere. The City has shown it can locate hundreds of millions for cost overruns — Lansdowne 2.0's $419-million vote, the landfill purchased at $95 million against a $23-million estimate. A council that can find that kind of money for a stadium redevelopment can find a fraction of it for supportive housing, if the priority is real. 

Affordable Housing: Construction and timeline

The Auditor General has already done the math nobody wants to say out loud: reaching the City's own 5,000-unit affordable housing goal requires an estimated $188.4 million in City investment and $376.7 million in federal and provincial funding still to be secured. 

The federal Housing Accelerator Fund brought $176.3 million to the table. That's real money, but on the AG's own numbers it still leaves a gap in the hundreds of millions.

My approach:

• Itemize the gap publicly, the way I've itemized "What Ottawa Owes" on liabilities. Residents deserve to see the funding shortfall broken down by source — City capital, federal, provincial, private non-profit — not buried in a budget line that says "housing" and moves on.
• Timeline: within the first year, push for a revised, honest public target tied to capital actually committed, not the aspirational number from 2020 that the City is currently missing by an order of magnitude. A target nobody is on pace to hit isn't a plan, it's a talking point.
• Use the leverage a councillor actually has — site-plan approvals, surplus City land disposition, and the Housing Accelerator Fund conditions — to require non-profit and co-op partners get priority access to City-owned land, rather than land sitting as a line item while the waitlist (roughly 12,000 households) grows.
• Tie it to what I already know about capital delivery. I've spent this campaign asking why infrastructure gets approved without the servicing capacity behind it actually confirmed (see: Blair Road). Affordable housing has the mirror problem — funding gets announced without a delivery mechanism that's actually been stress-tested. Same discipline, same fix: don't announce the number until you can show the path to it.

Intensification: Is 60% realistic?

The City's Official Plan sets a 60-per-cent intensification target for growth in established areas by 2046, alongside a 1,281-hectare urban boundary expansion approved back in 2021. Is it realistic? On the numbers, it's aggressive but not fantasy — Ottawa needs to accommodate roughly 400,000 more people and close to 195,000 new homes over the plan horizon, and every serious housing economist will tell you sprawl-only growth is the more fiscally reckless option, not the safer one. Every kilometre of new pipe, road, and hydro line built outward is a long-term liability the City is signing residents up for without a matching revenue plan — which is exactly the kind of unfunded commitment I've spent this campaign flagging on other files.

So: realistic as a direction, yes. Realistic as currently resourced, no — because a target is not a delivery mechanism. The gap isn't the number, it's what's supposed to make the number happen: transit capacity, servicing capacity, and community infrastructure keeping pace with the density being approved. I've already documented what happens when growth outruns infrastructure — two federal science hubs landing on Blair Road with no public capacity study, a data-centre queue at 86 percent of the city's average electrical load with no allocation rule. Intensification without the same rigour is the same mistake in a residential jacket.

What I'd push for: every intensification approval in Ward 13 should come with a public capacity check — water, sewer, hydro, transit, school space — not as a bureaucratic afterthought, but as a condition published alongside the approval, the same way I've asked the City to do it for Blair Road and the Aviation Parkway corridor.

Zoning: Would you push for more changes?

The January 2026 zoning overhaul — four units as-of-right on every serviced lot, three-storey height permissions nearly everywhere, parking minimums eliminated — was overdue and I supported the direction. Council got that one right, unanimously, for once.

But "as-of-right" density only works if the "right" part is backed by actual capacity, and that's where I'd push next:

1. Pair further zoning liberalization with infrastructure disclosure, not silence. If a neighbourhood is being opened up to fourplexes, residents deserve to know whether the water and sewer mains under their street were sized for that load, the same way I've asked for Blair Road.
2. Push to extend as-of-right permissions closer to transit corridors and along main streets, where the City's own 15-minute-neighbourhood goals depend on it — the January bylaw was a floor, not a ceiling.
3. Fix the missing middle between fourplex and highrise. Ottawa still makes it hard to build the six-to-twelve-unit low-rise apartment building that used to be normal in neighbourhoods like this one before 2008-era zoning locked it out. That's the next zoning fight, and it's a quieter one than height limits but probably a bigger lever on actual supply.
4. Track it. Council passed a sweeping bylaw and then, true to form, hasn't built a public way to see whether it's actually producing units faster. I'd ask for that dashboard the same way I've asked for one on affordable housing.

Official Plan changes: Should the City use the province's new power?

The province, through Bill 60, has expanded ministerial authority and started delegating certain official-plan-amendment approvals to municipalities ahead of the standard review cycle — particularly around transit station areas. The question isn't whether the City can use that power before the mandatory five-year review. It's whether it uses it as a shortcut around scrutiny or as a tool applied with the same discipline it's supposed to have anyway.

My position: yes, use it — but only with the same conditions I've argued for on every other file where speed and oversight are in tension. An early amendment that unlocks housing near a transit station without a servicing capacity fight and a multi-year appeal process is a genuine win. An early amendment used to wave through a project that hasn't been checked against water, sewer, and hydro capacity is the Blair Road problem wearing a housing hat.

The condition I'd attach: any use of the early-amendment power gets a public capacity and infrastructure disclosure attached to it, the same standard I want applied to zoning and intensification approvals generally. Speed without disclosure isn't efficiency. It's just moving the accountability gap further from public view.

Other: What else is in the platform?

• Preserve what already exists. Every new unit announcement gets attention; losses to renoviction, deconversion, or aging co-op stock falling out of affordability don't. A councillor's job includes protecting the affordable units the City already has, not just chasing ribbon-cuttings for new ones.
• Federal-municipal coordination on land. Rideau-Rockcliffe sits next to significant federal landholdings — NCC parkway lands, the NRC Montreal Road campus, CMHC's own headquarters. CMHC is the national housing agency; if there's federal surplus land in this ward that could support affordable or supportive housing, I want that question asked publicly, the same way I've asked what's actually under Blair Road.
• Ward 13-specific renter data drives the ask. In Overbrook alone, roughly 26 percent of renters are in core housing need. That's not an abstract citywide statistic — it's a number that should be attached directly to how Ward 13's council vote gets used at the table, including on projects like Lansdowne where hundreds of millions moved through council without that comparison being made explicit.
• Data-centre and large-load electrical capacity ties directly into housing delivery. If Hydro Ottawa's queue is already at 86 percent of average system load with no allocation rule for who pays for network upgrades, that's not a side issue — it's a direct constraint on whether new housing intensification actually gets the electrical capacity it needs, on a timeline that matches the zoning permissions already granted.

This time around, inform yourselves. Vote differently. Vote wisely.

Vote Peter Karwacki for Rideau-Rockcliffe.

peterkarwacki.blogspot.com

#483 No Crosswalks after 7 years

 

https://youtube.com/shorts/fiyJ1nXKX1s?feature=shared

Two Parkways, No Beacon

Rideau-Rockcliffe is bordered, cut through, and in places defined by two federal parkways: the Aviation Parkway and the Sir George-Étienne Cartier Parkway. Both are fast roads — 60 km/h posted limits, wide sightlines, minimal pedestrian infrastructure — and both cross paths with places where people on foot have no real choice but to cross them. Neither has a pedestrian-activated flashing beacon. As far as the public record shows, none has ever been installed anywhere in the ward over the past seven years while King has been in office.

That's not a coincidence. It's a jurisdiction problem, and it's worth being precise about why.

Aviation Parkway at La Cité collégiale

Aviation Parkway runs along the eastern edge of Manor Park and Wateridge Village, past La Cité collégiale, the Montfort Hospital, and CMHC's national headquarters — three of the largest single trip-generators in the ward. Students, hospital staff, patients and visitors, and federal employees all have reason to cross this road daily. The Manor Park Community Association said as much directly in its own submission to the City's Transportation Master Plan update: safe pedestrian and cyclist access in this corridor is effectively non-existent, and the area's transit and pedestrian pressures are only going to grow as Wateridge Village build-out continues and Hemlock Road reopens east of Aviation.

A rapid-flashing beacon crossing near La Cité isn't a nice-to-have. It's infrastructure that should have been paired with the growth this council has already approved around it.

With the plans for the new East End Crossing progressing these kinds of improvements are essential. Your councillor must be imaginative, proactive and strident.

Birch and the Sir George-Étienne Cartier Parkway

Further west, the Sir George-Étienne Cartier Parkway runs along the Ottawa River through New Edinburgh and Rockcliffe Park, connecting to some of the ward's most-used recreational pathway and cycling links. The intersection at Birch has a documented collision history — it's shown up in traffic incident logs going back years — on a stretch where pedestrians and cyclists moving between the river pathway network and the neighbourhood have to cross a 60 km/h federal road with no beacon, and in many stretches, no signal at all.

Why nothing has been built

Both parkways are owned and maintained by the National Capital Commission, not the City of Ottawa. That matters, because it means a city councillor can't simply direct staff to install a beacon at either location — it requires the City to formally request it, and the NCC to agree to fund and build it on federal land. That's a real constraint. 

It's also exactly the kind of file where a councillor's job is to be the one pushing that request forward, publicly, on the record, year after year, until it happens.

I haven't found any public evidence — in newsletters, committee minutes, or the councillor's own detailed self-reported achievements list, which is otherwise granular enough to itemize individual stop signs and bus shelters — that this advocacy has happened for either location. That's the gap. Not that the City unilaterally failed to build something it never had sole authority to build, but that the file doesn't appear to have been actively pushed with the one partner who could actually build it.

The Aviation Parkway file just stopped being theoretical

Aviation Parkway isn't just a corridor with a pedestrian-safety gap — it's the proposed western landing point for the sixth interprovincial crossing at Kettle Island. That project is no longer a shelved 2013 idea. The NCC's Board approved an updated Long-Term Integrated Interprovincial Crossings Plan in November 2025, and Public Services and Procurement Canada opened a public comment period on the project's Initial Project Description on September 1, 2026, as part of the formal federal impact assessment process. A second round of design consultations is expected before the end of this year.

That timeline matters for the crossing at La Cité specifically. If the bridge proceeds, Aviation Parkway is where truck and commuter volume from a new river crossing would land before continuing south — the same stretch that already has no safe pedestrian crossing near one of the ward's largest trip generators. Montfort Hospital raised this exact concern more than a decade ago, warning that added traffic on Aviation Parkway could delay ambulances. Whatever anyone thinks of the bridge itself, the corridor's pedestrian and emergency-access mitigation needs don't disappear if the file moves forward without them being negotiated in.

This is the part of the file that actually requires a councillor's attention right now: not relitigating whether the bridge should exist, but making sure that if it advances, Ward 13's terms — including a pedestrian crossing at La Cité — are on the table during this comment period, not asked for after the design is locked. An opposition-only position doesn't get you a seat at that table. A council that overrides ward-level objections 16-9 has shown it will build regardless; the leverage is in shaping mitigation now, while PSPC and the NCC are still collecting input, not in relitigating the premise after the fact.

What I'd do differently

This is a jurisdictional-coordination problem, and it needs a structural fix, not a press release. That means:

1. A formal, public City request to the NCC to conduct pedestrian-volume and collision-history reviews at both locations, using the same warrant criteria the City already applies to its own PXO program.
2. Tying that request explicitly to approved growth — Wateridge Village, Manor Park intensification — so it's framed as a condition of development the NCC has already been a partner to, not a discretionary ask.
3. Publishing the status of that request, and any NCC response, so residents can see whether the file is moving or stalled — rather than finding out only when construction crews show up, or don't.
4. Submitting the Aviation Parkway crossing explicitly as mitigation input during PSPC's current Initial Project Description comment period — the file is open right now, not hypothetically down the road.

None of this requires waiting for a full council term to pass. It requires someone willing to put the ask on paper and keep it in front of the NCC until there's an answer.

— Peter Karwacki, candidate for Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe)

This one is in Ward 12! You can be sure King would take credit fot it.*

(Rideau-Rockcliffe us Ward 13)*

https://peterkarwacki.blogspot.com/2019/02/peter-karwacki-pmp-80-ontario-street.html?m=0

#482 Voters are using my blog and campaign page

Last 30 days alone

Wondering what to read?

Durable, high-performing categories (strong in both 30 day and lifetime timeframes)

• Transit/LRT: #241 "How Council Votes" (331 lifetime, 81 of those in the last 30 days — ~25%) and #256 "Choo-choo" (311 lifetime, 75 recent — ~24%) are still pulling fresh readers a long time after publishing. This is my strongest sustained category.
• Meta/identity pieces: #250 "This is not a popularity contest" (661 lifetime, 94 recent — ~14%) and the Rideau-Rockcliffe intro piece (453 lifetime, 74 recent — ~16%) keep earning steady trickle traffic. These read like pieces people find later, not just day-one spikes.
• #112 "Wards and Lans..." is my best all-rounder — 922 lifetime AND still the #1 post in the last 30 days (137). Whatever that piece does (ward boundaries + Lansdowne), it's both a big draw and still climbing.

High-momentum newer posts (strong 30-day, not yet in lifetime top 20) #379 "Priorities-macro," #370 "Self Driving Bus," #394 "Enjoy Yourself!," #401 (the Scream parody), #422 "Hold the Line," #448 "Ward 13 Connect," #463 "Incumbents Win" — none of these crack the all-time top 20, meaning most or all of their views are happening right now. That's genuine current momentum, not residual traffic from an old post. Worth noting the self-driving bus piece backs up the transit pattern above, and the satire piece (Scream/"zzzz") suggests lighter, visual, meme-adjacent content is landing too.

Structural, not strategic "Issues and Stances" (1.07k), "#1 INFO," and "What I bring to the table" are almost certainly pinned/nav-linked pages rather than organically discovered posts — they're my reference anchors, not a content pattern to replicate.

Notably absent from both lists my OPS/policing, AI-governance, and financial-liabilities deep dives (the pieces that  take the most research time) don't show up prominently in either the 30-day or lifetime top tier. That doesn't mean skip them — they're likely doing credibility/substance work for voters who dig deeper or for media pickup — but I don't expect them to be my traffic drivers.

Bottom line for the stretch to October: I will lean into transit coverage and campaign-identity/meta pieces — they're my only categories proven to keep earning readers well after publication — while keeping the investigative accountability pieces in the mix as depth/credibility anchors rather than growth engines. The self-driving-bus and Scream-parody results also suggest there's room for a lighter, more visual post mixed in periodically without diluting the substance.

Definitely voters and bots are looking at my campaign page as it has 4755 views.

 https://peterkarwacki.blogspot.com/p/peter-karwacki-for-rideau-rockcliffe.html?m=1

For lifetime views

#481 The Juice is worth the Squeeze

Ward 13 · Rideau-Rockcliffe · Accountability Brief

Peter Karwacki · September 2, 2026

#482 They Ordered the Buses. They Forgot the Chargers.

Council heard 1,075 megawatts and answered with a planning framework for 2027. That is not gravity. That is delay with letterhead.

Ottawa already knows this pattern. The city ordered electric buses and then discovered the hard part was not the purchase order. It was the garages, the transformers, the software, and the depot power. The fleet target ran ahead of the chargers. In June, a software fault at St. Laurent left 133 electric buses undercharged overnight. Riders got a scramble. Council got another “we will review our contingencies.”

The large-load queue is the same move at city scale. And it is worse.

A Saturday scramble is not a grid event

In June, Hydro Ottawa’s CEO told council the truth in plain numbers. Thirty-four large-load projects. 1,075 megawatts. Eighty-six percent of last year’s average system load. About 60 percent data centres. Another 17 percent public institutions, including national defence. Four out of five want to hook up within two years. He said the utility is being asked to build, in two or three years, what took 110 years.

Council lauded the utility. Someone asked about short household outages. Then the room moved on. That is the tell. They heard a reliability complaint from a living room and missed a load class that can leave the system by the gigawatt when a line blinks.

Last month a U.S. grid operator watched about 3,800 megawatts of data-centre load transfer to on-site generation after a cleared 230 kV fault in northern Virginia. The fault was normal. The load was not. Visibility, measurement, ramping, ride-through — those four words are the standard of care in 2026. FERC told NERC to write enforceable computational-load rules by December 31. Ontario’s IESO posted technical requirements in May and is amending them now. Hydro Ottawa already filed comments.

Ottawa’s shareholder did not put four words on the record. It put a dividend on the calendar.

The shareholder cashes one bill. Households pay the other.

Council is the sole shareholder of Hydro Ottawa. This year the dividend is $22.1 million. Useful money. Also a conflict if nobody asks the only sentence that belongs at that table:

Who pays for the studies, the wires, and the backup capacity if a campus is interruptible in practice and firm on the invoice?

Households already ate a distribution increase the Ontario Energy Board cut back on affordability grounds. Hydro Ottawa wanted more. The regulator said 16 percent in one year was not just and reasonable. The rest of the five-year ask is still coming back, year by year. Growth is the justification. Growth without an allocation rule is a cost-shift with better branding.

What council did instead

In August, council unanimously passed a motion to write a data-centre assessment framework and bring it back in 2027. Staff will flag hyperscale applications over 50 megawatts. Councillors may then consider an interim control bylaw. The mover said the motion was not anti-data-centre. Correct. It was also not a connection standard.

Zoning is not ride-through. An environmental checklist is not a ramp limit. A heads-up on a site plan is not a public queue. A framework next year is how you order the buses and hope the chargers arrive.

One councillor moved the planning file. That is more than silence. It is still the wrong instrument for the risk. Land use decides where a building sits. It does not decide whether the hall stays on through a voltage dip, or whether Overbrook pays for the study that says it can.

Ward 13’s voice on the file

Councillor King sits on Finance and Corporate Services and on Environment and Climate Change — the two committees closest to the utility, the rate file, and the climate-energy overlap. His office can produce a Hydro webinar on derecho recovery, a newsletter on outage restoration, and a full calendar of events. Capital Pride made the channels. The 1,075 megawatt queue did not.

Events are not oversight. Attendance is not a connection standard. A capacity-plan bullet in a ward letter is not a position on cost-shift. If there is a committee question on IESO computational-load rules as they apply to Hydro Ottawa’s distribution connections, put it on the table. If there is a public sentence on who pays, produce it. Until then, mute is the record.

Gravity, in four lines

Before the next large computational load is approved for connection in this city:

1. Publish the queue. Every large load above a stated threshold: megawatts, location class, status. National-defence sites can be described without a street address.
2. Confirm the rules apply here. IESO computational-load requirements — models, forecasts, ramp behaviour, ride-through — bind distribution-connected halls in Ottawa, not only transmission-connected ones.
3. Write the allocation rule. Study costs and network upgrades for these loads do not default to the residential class.
4. One sentence from the shareholder. Does council connect first and write rules later, or the other way around? “The IESO will handle it” is only an answer with dates attached. “We do not know yet” is also a record. Silence is not a third option.

A bus that will not start ruins a morning. A load that vanishes in the same millisecond as its neighbours is how a “small” fault becomes a city problem. Council owns the utility. Ward 13 lives on the same winter peak and the same bill. The juice is only worth the squeeze if someone is honest about the squeeze.

I read staff reports for a living. This file is not mysterious. It is unanswered.

This time around, inform yourselves. Vote differently. Vote wisely.

Vote Peter Karwacki for Rideau-Rockcliffe.

peterkarwacki.blogspot.com

Campaign Video
https://youtu.be/zBxbnuPAazE

Ward 13 · Rideau-Rockcliffe · Accountability Brief

Peter Karwacki · Ward 13 · September 2, 2026

Nobody in this race is talking about this. Not the incumbent. Not the local coverage of Ward 13. The queue is already large enough to nearly double Ottawa’s draw, and the connection rules are being written while council treats Hydro Ottawa’s annual report as a dividend photo.

Last week a U.S. grid operator put it in writing: large computer loads do not get a hookup until they can be seen, measured, ramped, and held on the system through a disturbance. That is not anti-data-centre. It is what you do when a load can vanish by the gigawatt because a line fault blinked.

Four conditions, in English

Visibility. Tell the operator what the facility is and how it will behave tomorrow and in real time. You cannot plan a grid you cannot see.

Phasor measurement. Put high-resolution, time-synced meters on the site so a trip is a dataset, not a surprise.

Ramping. Do not let a campus jump tens of megawatts in seconds during ordinary operation. A 200 MW hall that slams on is a supply-demand problem, not a billing problem.

Ride-through. Stay connected through a normal voltage or frequency dip. If every hall cuts to diesel at the same millisecond, the “small” fault becomes a city problem.

Those four words — visibility, measurement, ramping, ride-through — are the standard of care in 2026. PJM just watched about 3,800 MW of data-centre load drop in northern Virginia after a 230 kV fault. NERC has already documented earlier events near 1,500 MW. FERC has ordered enforceable computational-load standards by December 31, 2026. Texas already has ride-through rules in force. Ontario’s IESO published technical requirements in May and is running stakeholder amendments this month. Hydro Ottawa has already filed comments.

MISO’s rules do not bind Hunt Club Road. They tell you what “connect first, write rules later” looks like from the other side of a blackout.

What Ottawa has instead

Thirty-four large-load projects in the Hydro Ottawa queue. 1,075 MW. 86 percent of last year’s average system load. About 60 percent of that ask is data centres; another 17 percent is public institutions. CEO Bryce Conrad told council in June this is a century of growth being requested in two or three years. He also said the requestors are not Amazon, Microsoft, or Meta — smaller firms, some in generative AI, plus government demand including national defence.

None of the 34 sites are named in public. There is no resident-facing day-ahead forecast. There is no public ride-through standard attached to the local queue. There is a rate case, and there is a dividend. Households will pay one. Council cashes the other.

Cost-shift is the sentence that belongs at the council table. Who pays for the studies, the wires, and the backup capacity if a campus is interruptible in practice and firm on the invoice? Council is the sole shareholder of Hydro Ottawa. That is a shareholder question. It is also a Ward 13 question. This ward lives with the same grid, the same winter peak, and the same bill.

The silence

Councillor King sits on Finance and Corporate Services and on Environment and Climate Change — the two committees closest to the utility, the rate file, and the climate-energy overlap. I could find no newsletter item, public statement, or social post from him on the 1,075 MW queue, the Hydro Ottawa rate case, IESO computational-load rules, or ride-through. Capital Pride made the channels. The meter did not.

Events are not oversight. Attendance is not a connection standard.

What I would put on the record

Before the next large computational load is approved for connection in this city:

1. A public list of queued large loads above a stated threshold, with MW, location class, and status. National-defence sites can be described without a street address.
2. Confirmation that IESO computational-load requirements — models, forecasts, ramp behaviour, ride-through — apply to distribution-connected halls in Ottawa, not only to transmission-connected ones.
3. A written allocation rule: study costs and network upgrades for these loads do not default to the residential class.
4. One public sentence from the shareholder — council — on whether Hydro Ottawa will connect first and write rules later, or the other way around.

If the answer is “the IESO will handle it,” say that on the record and attach the dates. If the answer is “we do not know yet,” that is also a record. Silence is not a third option when the queue is already 86 percent of the city’s average load.

I read staff reports for a living. This file is not mysterious. It is unanswered.

This time around, inform yourselves. Vote differently. Vote wisely.

Vote Peter Karwacki for Rideau-Rockcliffe.

peterkarwacki.blogspot.com

#480 After seven years

Campaign Video (2019)
https://youtu.be/zBxbnuPAazE

Campaign video (2026)

The defining issue: east end crossing

apologies for the sound quality

https://youtube.com/shorts/7i6lrbEkthI?feature=shared

Peter Karwacki · Ward 13 · September 2, 2026

“King seeking a third term, same challenger as last time.” While accurate its also incomplete.

Sixteen other people ran in 2019 when the chair was empty. Most of them did not come back once the chair was occupied but I did. In 2022 I finished third with 716 votes, 6.8 percent. King took 80 percent. I am running again in a two-person race against an incumbent. Why?

Persistence or a failure to update? I am simply doing my civic duty. And so should you!

What have the last seven years produced.

Anti Racism?

A Secretariat was created and staffed. Consultation occurred with the Community Anti-Racism Advisory Table and racialized residents. Institutional infrastructure exists. Infrastructure, however, is not evidence of impact. Three years later, “we built a data process” remains the main answer to “what changed,” and that process has yet to show the public positive trend reports.

LRT

King has called for stronger oversight. Across his tenure he has never sat once on the Transit Commission or the Light Rail Subcommittee — the two bodies where that oversight actually lives. The St-Laurent tunnel, in this ward, had urgent inspection findings in 2020. The 2022 follow-up was skipped. Repair is still years out. Pre-tender estimate sits around $9.5 million. Knowing a tunnel needs fixing is awareness. King has been mute on the issue of the repairs and repair timeline that will affect this ward. Scheduling the fix is the job. On the judicial-inquiry vote he was right to vote in favour but since then he has been virtually invisible except in his own promo shots.

Police Services Board

King sat on the board and resigned in 2022, vouching for its competence on his way out. Then the independent workplace investigations office created in 2022 was shut down in 2023 without board consultation. Members found out the day of their meeting. In May 2026 the Auditor General found OPS reporting to the board contained inaccuracies. The auditor’s word was “vague.” The safe-workplace budget went from $8.2 million to $5.4 million. I will not quit. He did. That is not a personality contest. It is what happens when the unglamorous part of oversight arrives.

Lansdowne and more

Council voted 15–10 for a $419 million project. King voted no, citing the Auditor General and speculative revenue. In Overbrook, 26 percent of renters are in core housing need. The question is not whether one no was well-phrased. The question is whether Ward 13’s one vote at a $5 billion table is being used to properly interrogate the next overrun well enough before the contract is signed — the library over run, hospital share over shoot, landfill purchased at $95 million after an estimate closer to $23 million.

Sidewalks

King’s motion to circumvent planned Manor Park sidewalks lost 16–7. Council’s view was no exemption: we need sidewalks. Fighting a vote you expect to lose looks like local representation but it really is pointless though I realize this is not the electorally expedient thing to say in that ward neighborhood but this is what leadership - not pandering looks like.

Infrastructure Deficit, Hydro, parks, 311, CSOs

The data-centre queue is 86 percent of Hydro Ottawa’s average load. Bathgate and the local parks budget shrink when downtown projects run over. 311 delays and sewer overflows are not dashboards for their own sake.

That is the paper trail. Four hundred-plus posts. Most residents will not read them. That is fine. The test is whether the person asking for your vote can point to specific files, specific votes, and specific gaps — including the ones where the incumbent was right.

What a two-person race costs you

A crowded 2019 ballot was a confusing mess. A two-person contest is quiet and gives voters time to think, discuss, confer and ruminate. Ottawa incumbents win almost all of the time. Turnout sits near 40 percent. Urban wards are 9 of 25. Put those together and you understand why 17 became 2.

I did not quit. My livelihood does not hinge on the October 26 outcome. I am the only challenger. So what if the electorate already chose two times. I do not mind as long as the issues and record are discussed. For example, I say we should lead on the new East End bridge not sit with our arms crossed.  We need to shape the bridge discussion not be shaped by it.

So do not simply take the headline. Take the record. I am an experienced senior manager, data analyst and project specialist. The incumbent is a communicator and career politician.

You do not need seventeen names to have an election. You need residents willing to compare what was delivered with what was said, and to vote as if six in ten neighbours will stay home — they really will.

On October 26, one of the two names on the Ward 13 ballot will be mine.

This time around, inform yourselves. Vote differently. Vote wisely.

Vote Peter Karwacki for Rideau-Rockcliffe.

peterkarwacki.blogspot.com

After seven years, how many of these were installed in Rideau Rockcliffe?  We need them at Cité Collegial and Aviation aa well as Birch and Etienne Pkwy.

# 479 The last two standing

Peter Karwacki · September 2, 2026

#479 Governance or Rubber Stamp? The Real Choice in Ward 13

Every municipal election eventually comes down to a single question: what do you actually expect your city councillor to do when they sit at the committee table?

In Ward 13, that choice is unusually stark this year. It isn't just a difference in priorities; it is a fundamental divide over the function of elected governance itself.

The Generalist Model: Delegating Oversight to the Room

The incumbent, Councillor Rawlson King, represents the classic model of political governance. His background is in communications, market research, and non-profit administration. In council chambers, that translates to a very specific style: framing policy directives, leading social initiatives, attending community functions, and deferring operational complexity to municipal staff and utility executives.

Under this view, a councillor’s job is to trust the professionals. Staff present a high-level framework, the utility offers a briefing, and council signs off. When a crisis hits—whether it is an electric bus fleet idling without sufficient depot charging or a billion-dollar light rail expansion plagued by technical shortcuts—the political response is always the same: express disappointment, order a review, and ask staff to update their contingencies.

We have seen where this model leads. The Ottawa LRT Public Inquiry made it brutally clear what happens when elected officials accept polished staff summaries without the capacity or willingness to interrogate the underlying technical assumptions. Deference is not oversight; it is how multi-million-dollar cost shifts and operational failures get written into the public record without a single dissenting vote.

The Technical Model: Interrogating the Detail Before the Check Is Signed

I read staff reports, infrastructure specifications, and regulatory filings for a living. My background isn't about bragging about credentials—it is about how I approach a desk full of public money and complex risk.

When Hydro Ottawa reports a queue of 34 large-load projects totaling 1,075 megawatts—86 percent of our city’s entire current load—a generalist sees a growth statistic and votes for a dividend. A technical manager looks at the physics and the balance sheet:

• Who pays for the network upgrades if these computational loads disconnect during a grid disturbance?
• Are we enforcing computational ride-through and ramping standards, or are we letting distribution-connected data centers run on residential backup guarantees?
• Why are we relying on a 2027 zoning framework to manage a power system connection that is happening right now?

These are not technical details to be brushed aside until after the failure occurs. They are the core work of governance.

The Ballot Question

If you want a councillor who focuses primarily on ceremonial presence, newsletter calendars, and accepting staff recommendations at face value, you already have one.

If you want a councillor who treats municipal governance as a serious technical audit—who will interrogate the contracts, demand granular data on grid capacity and transit operations, and protect residential ratepayers before the cost-shift becomes permanent—then vote for a change in approach.

This time around, inform yourselves. Vote differently. Vote wisely.

Vote Peter Karwacki for Rideau-Rockcliffe

peterkarwacki.blogspot.com