Ad Hominem

On Criticism, Fairness, and the Line I Won't Cross

Peter Karwacki — Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe)

I want to be clear about something, because in a race like this it matters as much as any policy position: I am against ad hominem attacks. Full stop.

Attacking a person's character instead of engaging with their record is a cheap move. It doesn't inform voters, it doesn't hold anyone accountable, and it doesn't belong in this campaign — not from me, and not from anyone running against me.

Here's the standard I hold myself to: if a criticism I make wouldn't survive with the name swapped out — if it's really just an attack on who someone is rather than what they did, how they voted, what they said publicly versus what the record shows — then it isn't fair criticism. It's noise, and it doesn't deserve a platform.

I try hard to meet that standard. I don't always get it perfectly right. Writing this much, this often, about committee records, votes, public statements, and institutional outcomes — mistakes happen. Tone slips. A line lands sharper than intended, or reads as personal when it was meant to be about a decision or a pattern of decisions. If that has happened in something I've written, I apologize for it. That's not a hard thing to say, and it shouldn't be treated as one.

But I want to be equally clear about the other side of this: an apology for tone is not a retreat from substance. I will not stop asking why a councillor who repeatedly called for stronger transit oversight never sat on the Transit Commission or the Light Rail Subcommittee. I will not stop asking why a resignation statement vouching for a board's competence hasn't aged well against what the Auditor General later found. I will not stop asking why capital projects get approved on promises that don't hold up, or why service outcomes lag behind the votes and motions meant to produce them. And I will not stop asking why a “renewal” plan for Bathgate Park removes a deteriorated basketball court instead of fixing it — whether residents were actually offered repair as an option, and why a park that needs upgrading comes out of the process with less recreational infrastructure than it started with.

That kind of scrutiny isn't personal. It's the job. It's what residents of Ward 13 deserve from anyone asking for their vote, whether that scrutiny is aimed at an opponent or, if I'm ever in office, aimed right back at me.

So here's where I land: I'm sorry for any instance where criticism crossed from record into person. I'm not sorry, and I won't apologize, for holding this ward's representation to account — on the merits, on the record, in public — right up until the ballots are counted in October.

That's the line. I intend to stay on the right side of it.