Ottawa Governance Scorecard

Impact × Feasibility × Lever — a structural accountability framework

Scoring: Impact and Feasibility rated

1 (low) to 5 (high).

Lever identifies who actually controls the fix — city council/staff, the province, or both jointly.

Items are sorted by Impact × Feasibility, highest first.

#	Reform	Impact	Feasibility	Score	Lever	Why
1	Fix OC Transpo scheduling data before asking for more funding	5	5	25	City	AG found 29% of routes off by 10%+; entirely within staff control, no new legislation needed
2	Publish an audit-recommendation tracking dashboard (implemented / not / aging)	4	5	20	City	Toronto's TTC model already exists to copy; pure transparency, no cost barrier
3	Ward-level service delivery dashboards	4	5	20	City	Data likely already collected internally; publishing it is a policy choice, not a technical one
4	Meet OC Transpo fleet availability commitments	5	3	15	City	Failed on ~half of days reviewed 2023–2026; fixable but requires capital/maintenance investment
5	Multi-year transit funding certainty (vs. per-cycle federal/provincial asks)	4	3	12	Both	City can request it; province and feds control whether it's granted
6	LRT capital contingency framework, publicly auditable	4	3	12	City	Directly answers the Hourigan inquiry's core finding — Council wasn't told testing criteria had been lowered
7	Housing starts vs. approvals timeline reporting	4	3	12	City	Housing affordability polls at 19–20% as top voter issue; metric-level transparency is achievable now
8	Reverse ridership decline with a published recovery plan	4	2	8	City	Trust deficit (11.5M vs 12.4M trips YoY) takes longer to rebuild than to diagnose
9	LRT ownership/upload to Metrolinx with binding service-standard conditions	5	2	10	Province	~$4B in savings on the table, but city has weak leverage over the terms it's offered
10	Push back on Bill 9's high removal threshold for code-of-conduct violations	3	2	6	Province	City can advocate via AMO; the fix itself is entirely a Queen's Park decision
11	Buy Ontario procurement compliance and public reporting	3	4	12	City	Rules are already finalized; this is an execution and transparency task
12	Council response to conservation authority consolidation (36→9)	3	2	6	Province	City can only react to provincial restructuring already in motion
13	Clarify regional/agency governance structure before nominations close	2	2	4	Province	AMO flagged this itself; largely out of city hands and already time-pressured
14	Proactive disclosure / open-data-by-default at the municipal level	4	4	16	City	Direct contrast to provincial FOI-shielding trend (Bill 97); politically low-cost, high-signal
15	Separate legislative vs. administrative accountability clearly in public communication	3	4	12	City	Cost-driven staff decisions (like the bus redesign) get blamed on Council; a communications and governance-literacy fix

Reading the board

Top-left quadrant (do first): #1, #2, #3, #14 — all city-controlled, high-impact, and require no new legislation or major capital. These are the credible first-100-days list.

High-impact, low-feasibility (name it, don't promise it): #9, the LRT upload — the payoff is enormous but the city is a price-taker on terms.

Province-controlled items (#10, #12, #13): useful for distinguishing what a councillor can actually deliver from what depends on Queen's Park — this is a distinction worth noting.

Methodology note: scores are directional, not derived from formal weighting