#493 CBC questions - $1.50 a piece

 

Why Would CBC Treat an Outsider Any Different?

Peter Karwacki — Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe)

I registered as a candidate for Ward 13 months ago. At the registration desk, I met Arthur White-Crummey, who covers Ottawa city hall for CBC. We spoke briefly. I haven't heard from him — or from anyone else at CBC — since.

I don't think that's personal. I think it's structural, and it's worth explaining why, because the same structure shapes what you read about a lot more than one ward race.

The pattern isn't unique to municipal politics

CBC's editorial style choices on international coverage have drawn criticism for years — how it labels Israeli communities in the West Bank, how it describes the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks, and a long list of similar word-choice fights that media critics on multiple sides have picked apart in detail. I'm not going to relitigate every one of those debates here. What I want to point at is the underlying mechanism: a public broadcaster with an internal style guide, editorial layers, and institutional incentives that reward consistency with an established framing over departure from it. Once a newsroom settles on a house style, individual reporters have limited room to move, whatever their own instincts are.

What that means for a ward race nobody's watching yet

Scale that mechanism down to municipal coverage and you get something quieter but just as real. An incumbent has four years of council votes, statements, and relationships with the press gallery. A challenger has a registration date and, if they're lucky, a candidates' debate near the finish line. Editorial decisions about who gets a call, whose press release becomes a story, and whose campaign gets folded into a "race to watch" roundup aren't made maliciously — they're made by the path of least resistance, and the path of least resistance runs through whoever the newsroom already has a relationship with.

This is the same argument I've made about O-Train oversight, police board auditing, and city liabilities: don't look for a villain, look for the incentive structure. Individual people are usually acting reasonably inside a system that produces an unreasonable outcome.

So no, I'm not expecting CBC to go out of its way for a challenger in Rideau-Rockcliffe. Not because anyone there wishes me ill, but because "public broadcaster" describes a funding model, not a guarantee of evenhandedness toward whoever isn't already in the building.

What I'm doing instead

This is the same reason I write this blog and publish through Unpublished.ca rather than waiting for an assignment editor to decide Ward 13 is worth a story. Ottawa's incumbents win essentially every time, turnout sits around 40%, and urban wards get outvoted 16-9 on council. None of that changes because a reporter picks up the phone. It changes when residents go looking for information themselves instead of waiting for it to be delivered.

If CBC covers this race, I'll take the interview. If they don't, that tells you something too — just not something about me specifically.

— Peter Karwacki
Candidate, Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe)

Biggest challenges

The single biggest challenge isn't any one file — it's that council has no consistent system for turning warnings into action. We've seen this pattern too many times: the St-Laurent LRT tunnel had an "urgent" finding flagged back in 2020 that still hasn't been resolved. The Ottawa Police Services Board admitted its own auditing wasn't robust, years after a resignation statement promised otherwise. Lansdowne 2.0 keeps adding liabilities the city will be servicing long after this term ends. In every case, the information existed. What was missing was a structural requirement to act on it — and be measured on outcomes, not press releases.
Next council needs a real audit-and-disclosure standard: independent, recurring, and public, covering transit safety, policing oversight, and major financial commitments alike. Ottawa doesn't have an information problem. It has an accountability problem. Fix that, and better decisions follow on their own.

The 2026 budget raises property taxes by 3.75 per cent.

What is the maximum tax increase you would support for the upcoming 2027 budget and why?

I wouldn't set a number in isolation — I'd set a ceiling tied to what residents can actually verify they're getting for it. That said, if pressed: I'd support a cap in line with inflation, roughly 3 per cent, and not a cent more without a public accounting of where the last increase went.
Here's why I'm cautious about going higher. Ottawa is carrying liabilities that aren't fully priced into the budget conversation — Lansdowne 2.0's financing structure, federal workforce cuts hitting local spending power, trade-war exposure flowing through the federal budget channel. Property tax increases get debated in isolation from those pressures, as if they're unrelated.
Residents shouldn't be asked to absorb increases while liabilities pile up off to the side undiscussed. Before asking for more, council owes people a real liabilities ledger — what we owe, when it's due, and how growth in one column relates to restraint in another.

Traffic

Traffic in this ward isn't one problem — it's a handful of specific choke points that keep getting deferred. St-Laurent Boulevard and Vanier/Beechwood both need real traffic circles, not just repaving, to handle how those intersections actually function today. The Aviation Parkway and Birch/Sir George-Étienne Cartier Parkway crossings are pedestrian safety issues, but they're also traffic issues — uncontrolled crossings force unpredictable stopping patterns.
Then there's the elephant in the room: truck traffic still cutting through King Edward and Rideau because there's no interprovincial crossing east of downtown. I support the East End Crossing at Kettle Island — not because it solves everything, but because engaging now shapes design and mitigation terms, instead of leaving Ward 13 without leverage once council decides regardless.
Fix the intersections we control directly, and stop treating the crossing question as something we can simply oppose our way out of.

What other priorities matter to you in your run for councillor that might not have been captured above?

A few things haven't come up yet that matter to me. First, municipal AI governance — Ottawa is adopting AI tools in city operations without a public disclosure standard for how, where, and with what oversight. That needs to exist before the technology gets ahead of accountability, not after.

Second, park equity across the river — comparing Riverain Park's full modernization to Bathgate Park's scaled-back restoration, with its basketball court removed and not replaced, shows resourcing decisions aren't applied evenly, even between neighbouring communities.

Third, I've made a one-term commitment. My livelihood doesn't depend on winning re-election, which means I can prioritize naming structural problems — like low turnout entrenching incumbents, and urban wards being consistently outvoted 16-9 on council — over saying what's comfortable.

I'd rather residents get an honest, evidence-based voice for four years than a permanent seat built on avoiding hard truths.