Voter Compass Responses

 

Vote Compass <candidates@votecompass.com>	14 July 2026 at 01:30
Reply-To: candidates@votecompass.com To: peterkarwacki.overbrook@gmail.com
If you would like to suggest revisions to your Vote Compass submission, we encourage you to contact us at candidates@votecompass.com. All submitted content will be publicly displayed when Vote Compass launches in late September. Please note that final inclusion in Vote Compass is contingent on official candidate certification following the August 21, 2026 nomination deadline. Summary of responses: Q003 • The City of Ottawa should do more to combat climate change. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: Yes, Ottawa needs to do more to prepare for the impacts of climate change—particularly flooding, which is already hitting residents hard—but it must be done with rigorous oversight, independent verification of projects, and a focus on proven engineering solutions rather than reactive spending or big symbolic gestures. We can’t keep approving projects without understanding the real costs and risks upfront." Q006 • Municipal workers are paid too much. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: Yes, municipal workers are paid too much when you look at the overall picture — the bloated bureaucracy with 16,000 city employees (up sharply since amalgamation), generous total compensation packages, and the results taxpayers are getting. Cost-cutting has to start there. We pay public servants well; they need to deliver results, with proper metrics and accountability. Ottawa can't keep expanding headcount and payroll without reining in costs or we'll keep facing the same fiscal pressures on infrastructure, roads, and essential services." Q007 • Private contractors are more efficient than municipal workers at delivering most municipal services. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: Yes, private contractors are more efficient than municipal workers at delivering most municipal services. Competition, clear incentives, and the need to turn a profit drive better results and lower costs for taxpayers. Ottawa’s bloated bureaucracy with 16,000 employees shows the problem — we pay well but don’t always get the performance. We should expand competitive bidding and contracting for services where it makes sense, with strong contracts, performance metrics, and real oversight so we get value instead of excuses.” Q008 • The mayor should never overturn council decisions. Your Position: Somewhat disagree Supporting Statement: No, the mayor should never be prevented from overturning council decisions. Strong mayor powers exist for a reason — to give real leadership when council is fractious, divided, or making shortsighted choices that lead to waste and overruns. Without the ability to step in on key issues like the budget or major projects, you get exactly what we’ve seen: endless process, hidden costs, and no accountability. The mayor needs tools to stop bad decisions and deliver results. Council can still override with a strong majority, but leadership shouldn’t be hamstrung by default.” Q010 • Municipal buildings in the City of Ottawa should fly the Pride flag during Pride month. Your Position: Somewhat disagree Supporting Statement: “No, municipal buildings in Ottawa should not automatically fly the Pride flag during Pride month. Public buildings represent the entire city and all its residents — they should fly the Canadian flag and the City of Ottawa flag. Decisions to display other flags should be debated openly with clear criteria, not become default policy. We have real problems to solve — flooding, transit reliability, infrastructure, and fiscal accountability. Symbolic gestures often serve as pandering rather than delivering the substance residents need.” Q012 • Every municipal council meeting should begin with an acknowledgement of Indigenous peoples’ ties to the land. Your Position: Somewhat disagree Supporting Statement: . Council meetings exist to conduct the city’s business — approving budgets, fixing infrastructure, addressing flooding, improving transit, and ensuring fiscal responsibility. Mandatory symbolic statements like this are classic pandering and form over substance. They accomplish little while consuming time and attention that should go toward delivering real results for all residents. If we want to improve outcomes for Indigenous communities, let’s focus on concrete actions like affordable housing, better services, and efficient infrastructure — not rote rituals at the start of every meeting.” Q013 • The City of Ottawa should keep historic street names and statues, even if they commemorate people who some would consider racist by today's standards. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: Ottawa should keep historic street names and statues, even if some people consider the figures racist by today’s standards. We don’t erase history because it makes some people uncomfortable — we provide context and education. Removing or renaming everything is pandering and form over substance. It costs money and time that should go toward real problems like fixing our flooding infrastructure, improving transit, and managing the budget responsibly. History is messy; pretending otherwise by scrubbing names and statues doesn’t make the city better.” Q021 • The City of Ottawa should try to keep property taxes low, even if it means fewer services for residents. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: . We have a bloated bureaucracy that has grown dramatically since amalgamation, and cost-cutting has to start there. Residents are already feeling the pressure from high taxes and poor value on big projects. The answer isn’t to keep raising taxes to fund everything — it’s to cut waste, improve efficiency, use independent reviews, and make hard choices about what services are truly essential. Taxpayers deserve to keep more of their money while still getting core services delivered competently. Q022 • The City of Ottawa should rely more on fees for specific services rather than raising taxes to pay for them. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: The City of Ottawa should rely more on fees for specific services rather than raising property taxes to pay for them. User fees and charges make sense when people are paying for what they actually use — like tolls on bridges or roads for non-residents, or fees for certain programs and services. This approach is fairer, keeps general property taxes lower for everyone, and forces better prioritization. We already have examples where this could work, and it beats the alternative of constantly hiking taxes to fund everything through the general budget.” Q026 • The City of Ottawa should apply an additional tax to vacant homes. Your Position: Strongly disagree Supporting Statement: No, the City of Ottawa should not apply an additional tax to vacant homes. That’s just another layer of taxation and bureaucracy on top of what property owners already pay. The real solution to housing affordability is to cut red tape, reform zoning, and speed up approvals so we can build more homes. Punitive taxes on vacant properties often end up hitting the wrong people, create enforcement headaches, and don’t actually solve the supply shortage. Let’s focus on increasing housing stock through practical changes rather than finding new ways to tax people.” Q028 • The City of Ottawa should encourage more multi-unit housing in neighbourhoods that are currently made up mostly of single-family homes. Your Position: Somewhat disagree Supporting Statement: more housing types in single-family areas is fine in principle, but the real test is whether the city has done the unglamorous work first — sewer capacity, stormwater, school seating, transit frequency — before adding density. This tracks my Canada Day flooding piece connecting West Rockcliffe/Manor Park's combined sewer status to infrastructure accountability. I'd likely argue Ward 13 is a caution case: some of it sits on aging combined sewers, so "encourage more multi-unit housing" without a parallel capital commitment is exactly the kind of output-without-outcome gap Q029 • The City of Ottawa should protect existing green space, even if doing so limits new housing development. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: I bring an ecological argument too — stormwater absorption, combined sewer overflow risk, and flood mitigation aren't abstract "nice to have" green space arguments in MY framing, they're the same infrastructure-capacity case I make elsewhere, just from the water-management side rather than the housing-supply side. Q030 • The City of Ottawa should build new housing in existing neighbourhoods rather than create new subdivisions. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: a fairly direct "yes," backed by the landfill vote and ward-structure argument I've already made in other contexts, plus a delivery condition on infrastructure funding. Q039 • The City of Ottawa should protect historic buildings, even if this prevents owners from making certain renovations. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: the city's process for exercising that authority is must be transparent, evidence-based, and consistently applied — not whether the goal is worthwhile. So I'd expect something like: protecting genuinely significant heritage buildings is defensible, but "heritage" designation can also be applied unevenly or used as a tool that isn't about the building at all, and I'd want to see the criteria and the track record before endorsing blanket authority. Q047 • The City of Ottawa should cover the cost of programs for low-income residents, even if this means other residents pay more. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: I'd expect the exact same move: support for low-income programs, paired with a demand that the city demonstrate measurable outcomes (people housed, food insecurity reduced, etc.) rather than measuring success by program existence or announcement, the way I've criticized elsewhere (OC Transpo "improving on paper," King's Police Services Board vouching tested against later failures). Q058 • The City of Ottawa should upgrade its water infrastructure, even if this means raising water or sewer rates. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: My Canada Day flooding piece ties Ward 13's combined sewer status in West Rockcliffe and Manor Park directly to the Ottawa River Action Plan and to broader accountability case. If asked to weigh rate increases against upgrades, I'd expect to argue the city has been under-investing for years and that the flooding events are the visible cost of deferred maintenance — meaning the "trade-off" framing understates the current risk of doing nothing. Q061 • How much should the City of Ottawa spend on policing? Your Position: Somewhat less Supporting Statement: a pure budget number without a governance and reporting framework attached would probably strike one as exactly the kind of unmeasurable political answer I am against. I'd expect something closer to: fix the oversight and reporting structure first (restore independent investigation capacity, correct the reporting practices the AG flagged), and let the budget follow from what a functioning oversight body determines is actually needed. Q064 • The City of Ottawa should respond to public drug use with support services rather than police enforcement. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: Not provided Q065 • The City of Ottawa should spend more money to provide shelter spaces for people experiencing homelessness. Your Position: Somewhat disagree Supporting Statement: I want confidence that shelter spending is being managed with real project discipline (cost control, timelines, defined outcomes) rather than assuming good intentions translate into good execution. Ward-structure fairness might surface again, in the sense of asking whether shelter capacity and the burden of hosting it get distributed evenly across wards, or concentrated in ways that track the urban-suburban power imbalance I've documented elsewhere (Lansdowne, the landfill vote). Q067 • People experiencing homelessness should be prevented from setting up encampments in public spaces. Your Position: Strongly agree Supporting Statement: prevent encampments" the same way: an enforcement answer to what's fundamentally a capacity problem. If shelter space and exit-to-housing outcomes aren't adequate, "prevention" without an alternative is enforcement without a plan — which is the kind of unmeasurable, outcome-free commitment I've criticized elsewhere (OC Transpo, the Police Services Board). Q068 • The City of Ottawa should do more to prevent landlords from evicting tenants in order to raise rents. Your Position: Somewhat disagree Supporting Statement: expect skepticism of a bylaw or policy that sounds protective but isn't actually enforceable or measured — similar to how you've treated other symbolic-sounding commitments (King's Police Services Board statement, OC Transpo's "improving on paper"). Q071 • Property developers should pay a greater share of the cost of road, water, and energy infrastructure needed to support new housing construction. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: Not provided Q074 • The City of Ottawa should spend more on flood prevention, even if it means higher taxes or utility fees. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: Not provided Q075 • The City of Ottawa should spend more on public libraries. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: Not provided Q101 • The City of Ottawa should spend more on social housing, even if it means tax increases or cuts to other services. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: Not provided Q102 • The City of Ottawa should spend more to improve its public transit service, even if doing so leads to higher fares. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: Not provided Q103 • The City of Ottawa should allocate more of its budget to improving roads, even if it means less funding for other core services. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: Not provided Q145 • The City of Ottawa should prioritize Bus Rapid Transit expansion over further Light Rail Transit investment. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: Not provided Q146 • The City of Ottawa should strictly enforce garbage limits to encourage residents to use recycling and green bins. Your Position: Somewhat agree Supporting Statement: Not provided Q147 • The City of Ottawa should proceed with the Lansdowne Park redevelopment. Your Position: Somewhat disagree Supporting Statement: Not provided Candidate profile: Biography: Pmp, certified health services administrator, IT professional, environmentalist and iver preservationist Campaign Website: Not provided