#390 One More Time - This is Not a Popularity Contest

File No. WD13-2026-014 Status: On the Record

Rideau‑Rockcliffe Ward

This Is Not a
Popularity Contest

Rideau‑Rockcliffe doesn't need a councillor who's good at events. It needs one who's good at oversight. Those are not the same skill.

Peter Karwacki — Candidate for City Council, Rideau-Rockcliffe Ward

$5,000,000,000 / yr

Ottawa's annual operating budget — the size of the organization our ward's one vote at the council table is supposed to help steer. You don't steer that by showing up.

One gets you a warm reception at a community barbecue. The other gets you asking the right question before council signs off on a $95 million landfill purchase that was appraised at $23 million. That is not a figure of speech — it is the actual gap between what a ward needs and what a ward often settles for.

Attendance Is Not Accountability

I've been to the same events. I know the buffet circuit — the ribbon cuttings, the community association AGMs, the seasonal socials. They matter. They're where you meet your neighbours and hear what's actually breaking in their lives. But they are not where a $5 billion budget gets examined, and they are not where oversight failures get caught. A councillor who treats the circuit as the job has confused being liked with doing the work.

“Municipal legislators must always exercise significant and vigilant due diligence, particularly on big projects that the public cannot be expected to follow in detail. Although the LRT project was approved in 2013, before I arrived on council, in hindsight, I wish I had asked more detailed questions and requested clearer answers earlier than I did. I acknowledge this shortcoming in part because I believe we need to build a greater culture of accountability at city hall.”

Tobi Nussbaum — Former Councillor, Rideau‑Rockcliffe · Ottawa Citizen

Look at What Happens When Oversight Is Optional

• 01 / OPS

  An independent police workplace investigations office — created in 2022 specifically to fix a documented pattern of harassment and misconduct failures — was quietly shut down in 2023. The Police Services Board wasn't consulted. Members found out the day of their regular meeting.

• 02 / Audit

  In May 2026, the city's own auditor general found OPS reporting to the board contained flat-out inaccuracies, including outdated figures on the body-camera program. The auditor's word for it was "vague." An oversight board can only oversee what it's accurately told.

• 03 / Landfill

  Council approved a $95 million purchase of a landfill site assembled for roughly $8 million, negotiated behind closed doors under an NDA, on a 20–5 vote.

• 04 / Transit

  OC Transpo has racked up years of missed performance targets against a backdrop of newsletters listing votes, motions, and commitments — activity without a matching improvement in service.

None of that gets fixed by attending more things. It gets fixed by a councillor who reads the reports, asks who verified the numbers, and is willing to be the one dissenting vote when the room wants to move on.

Popularity vs. Governance

Popularity and Governance Pull in Different Directions

A popularity contest rewards the councillor who never makes anyone uncomfortable. Serious governance sometimes requires exactly that — asking the question nobody at the head table wants asked, holding up a vote that everyone else is ready to wave through, telling a community association its process advantages incumbents even when that's an unwelcome thing to say to the room that just fed you dinner.

I'm not running to be liked by everyone in Rideau‑Rockcliffe. I'm running because this ward, and this city, has real problems that don't get solved by charm: flooding basements with no coordinated protocol, a transit system that's been "improving" on paper for years while riders wait longer, a police oversight structure that keeps discovering after the fact what it should have known in advance, and a ward boundary that keeps producing outcomes nobody voted for.

What I'm Asking of Rideau‑Rockcliffe

Vote for the person who will read the budget line by line, not the person who remembers your name at the potluck.

Those aren't mutually exclusive in theory — but when a ward has to choose, and it does, choose the one who takes the $5 billion seriously. That's the job. Everything else is garnish.

It has been easier for Councillor King to keep this ward comfortable than it has been for me to convince residents they've been made comfortable on purpose. Trust, once given, doesn't ask to be re-examined — it just sits there, quietly renewed every October. Asking you to look again at a vote you've already cast three times is a bigger ask than "trust me" ever is. I'm making it anyway, because the budget and the oversight failures don't get smaller while we wait for that to feel easy.

Sources on the Record

1. Police workplace investigations office shut down (2023) — CBC, June 2026: "Ottawa Police have a sexual misconduct problem — a decade of fixes have largely failed"
2. Auditor General findings on inaccurate OPS reporting (May 2026) — CBC: "Audit finds Ottawa police projects lack proper budgets, oversight" · Auditor General of Ottawa: Official audit announcement
3. $95 million landfill purchase — CTV News (Jan 28, 2026): "Ottawa to spend $95 million to buy east-end landfill" · CBC News (Jan 27, 2026): "Ottawa landfill dump purchase"
4. Tobi Nussbaum on LRT oversight — Ottawa Citizen: "Here's the link between the health of democracy and the LRT delay"

Peter Karwacki for Ward 13 peermetrics.ca

I am  a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and trained data analyst running for Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe) on a platform of structural accountability, open data, and infrastructure oversight — with a stated one-term commitment.

This time around, inform yourselves, vote differently, vote wisely. Vote for Peter Karwacki for Rideau Rockcliffe.