Alayne McGregor
After eight years as Somerset Ward councillor, Catherine McKenney has announced they plan to run for mayor in next October’s city elections.
They are so far facing Councillor Diane Deans and former Mayor Bob Chiarelli in the contest for mayor. Current Mayor Jim Watson said in December that he would not run again.
McKenney, 60, has two daughters, with their 14-year-old still at home. They and their wife have been married for almost 17 years. Their two dogs, Lily and Jellybean, are frequently seen with McKenney around the ward; they also have two cats.
The BUZZ interviewed McKenney on January 10. This is an edited and condensed version of our conversation.
Centretown BUZZ: Why have you announced your intention to run for mayor?
McKenney: I have been considering it for some time, talking to a lot of people across the city who have reached out to me and whom I’ve had conversations with over the years about priorities in the city. And over time I came to the conclusion that I had the experience that it takes and that I would have a platform and ideas that would resonate across the city.
And I am anxious to have those conversations, have those ongoing conversations about how our city can change and what amazing possibilities there are for us.
BUZZ: Are you frustrated with the way the city is currently operated?
McKenney: The city changed – all cities changed significantly – in early 2020. If we want to look back, we can always point at issues that frustrated people, whether it’s light rail, cuts to transit, the lack of affordable housing, the lack of any real action on climate.
But from 2020 on is when we’ve been forced to really look ahead and think about what is possible and what the potential of our cities are, because we’re not going to go back to where we were.
Things will change and they can change into something much, much better. So I was more compelled by what the future held, certainly.
BUZZ: But we’ve had serious problems before: the ice storm, tornadoes, floods. Why is the pandemic so much worse?
McKenney: The pandemic is global, and it has changed over a significant amount of time how we live, how we move about the city, how we work, whether we go into work. It forced us to adjust. But as we slowly come out of it – and we will – will people all go back to work? Will people want to stay home and work from home even part time? Are people willing to work in very low paying jobs?
People have really reevaluated their lifestyles, their relationship to each other, their relationship to their neighbourhoods.
BUZZ: Do you think this reevaluation gives you more of a chance to become mayor?
McKenney: I think there will be a lot of candidates running for mayor. There will be different ideas put forward by different candidates. People will be paying attention, mostly because it’s an open race.
And this election, like no other, is one where people are looking for change. They’re looking for what’s going to happen in the future. How will my relationship with my community, with my existing neighbourhood – what will that look like?
This is a perfect opportunity for me to put forward ideas that will resonate with people, whether it’s on climate, on transit, in terms of public space. Arts and culture. Those are the things that people are looking for. And I feel I have the experience to understand the needs and to react to them.
BUZZ: Can you give me some examples?
McKenney: Let’s take transit. Right now, we continue to have buses running nearly empty into the downtown every day. If we’re going to respond to the change that people are looking for in their day-to-day lives, we need transit to respond to people’s needs to get around their own neighbourhood. If you’re working at home and you want to get to the library or you want to go visit friends, you should have transit that works for you in your community.
Whether you live downtown, in Kanata, in Orleans, we all share that same need. So I think it’s critical we invest in transit so that transit meets us where we are, when we’re there, and is affordable. Transit is going to be one of the most important changes in this city in the next few years.
McKenney: I have not, but anecdotally, I’ve heard from many people who weren’t a regular transit riders and did take advantage of it.
BUZZ: Have you heard the result of the free transit month in December?
BUZZ: I found it interesting, actually, that the #11 was one of the busier routes when I took the free transit. And the 6 and 7 as well.
McKenney: The #11, I certainly did note that. Again, it goes back to that notion of moving people around their own neighbourhoods.
I’ll give you an example. This morning I had a dentist appointment at Holland Cross and my wife was leaving for work at the same time, and she said, “You want me to drop you?” And I said, “No, I’m going to wait another five minutes and go catch the train behind our house.” It was it was easier for me because the train runs every five minutes. I don’t worry about being late. I know it’s coming and it’s more convenient for me in the cold to take transit.
So it benefits everyone. It gets everybody out of traffic, less cars on the road, less congestion, easier access. And it just helps to build a healthier city.
BUZZ: Mayor Watson has promoted city-building projects like Lansdowne or LeBreton Flats. Do you have a city-building project?
McKenney: There will be some city building projects. The conversations that we’re going to have over the next several weeks and couple of months will be about what will the commercial core of the city look like.
People often say the downtown is not very busy now. I tell them the downtown is doing just fine. Where we live, houses are not up for sale. A lot of small local businesses are doing well. You know they will continue as we come out of the pandemic. Our traditional main streets are busy with people who live here.
But it’s the commercial sector of the downtown that needs attention, and I believe that’s where we can make real change over the next few years. We can provide more housing, and in the commercial core, we can have more local businesses.
Once you have more people living there, we can open up more streets for people to get around and, bring in arts, animate that commercial sector. Calgary has great plans, and I think that this city can do the same thing.
BUZZ: I’d like to talk about shared values and goals between people who live in the central area of Ottawa, versus people who live outside the Greenbelt. What do you think they would be?
McKenney: Absolutely, I do. I often am surprised when it’s suggested that a councillor like myself who represents a downtown ward cannot relate to a suburban community.
I remind people that 1) I actually lived in Kanata for years and I worked for the councillor there. So I have a very keen knowledge of the needs of suburban communities. 2) I think it’s unfair to assume that people living in suburban communities don’t want the same things that people living in more urban communities want.
Again, their kids getting to school safely, walking, cycling, being able to take transit where they need to go, not having congested roads, having lowered speed limits on their residential streets. We know that’s the number one concern across this city.
So we have many, many shared values. And that extends also to rural villages. People living in rural villages also want the same things. They want to be able to move around their community, to walk to where they want to get to. That’s why they live in the type of environment that they do.
So I believe that there are many more shared values than not between between residents of the city.
BUZZ: Even potholes? That’s part of Bob Chiarelli’s platform.
McKenney: (laughing) Well, nobody likes potholes. Whether you’re driving, walking or cycling, they can be dangerous.
But, on that, it reminds us how expensive it is to maintain roadways. We have to start rethinking, where do we invest our infrastructure dollars? And how do we ensure that we have the plans necessary to actually take care of that infrastructure? And that’s why potholes today is such a hot topic. Maintenance of all of our infrastructure, actually.
BUZZ: What do you think you can do better than the other two people who so far have indicated an interest in running?
McKenney: I go back to having a suite of ideas. I know that my experience as a former assistant to a suburban councillor, staff person at the city, a councillor for two terms has certainly given me the experience in and out of City Hall, in the bureaucracy, in the political realm to have a keen understanding of what changes can be made and how they can be made.
I know how the budget process happens on the inside. I know that there are priorities in our budgets. We can shift those priorities.
I will have a bold platform that will promise the kind of change that we need to move forward as a healthy, vibrant, and equitable city for everyone.
BUZZ: Do you have a role model from other cities? I’m thinking of people like Naheed Nenshi in Calgary or Glenn Murray in Winnipeg or Valérie Plante in Montreal or Anne Hidalgo in Paris.
McKenney: Absolutely. I’ll throw in Lisa Helps from Victoria, and Michelle Wu from Boston. A lot of the recent and new mayors who have been successful have done so on very progressive agendas.
Ensuring that there are alternate modes of transportation, ensuring that we invest in our cycling infrastructure, our pedestrian infrastructure, our transit. Getting people out of congestion, getting people out of traffic has been a key success for many of the current and [recent] mayors who I feel have been very successful.
BUZZ: Did anyone in particular encourage you to run?
McKenney: My wife certainly did. She’s my biggest booster. It started probably seven, eight, nine months ago with one or two people approaching me. I always figured that there would be somebody who would have a very progressive platform running.
And in conversations with different people, some colleagues, people I know, residents from my neighbourhoods and from across the city, it became apparent to me that I would be able to build a coalition of supporters and people that I would be proud to work with through an election.
BUZZ: One of the things you can say about Mayor Watson, whether or not you agree with him, is that he’s been very good at creating the coalition to get his platform through. Would you alter that approach in the next council?
McKenney: My approach would be very different. I don’t believe that any one person has all of the answers for an entire city, whether you’re the mayor, the city manager, or whomever.
You do need to work with others. Sometimes, you may not get what you’re looking for. But to have open dialogue, open discussion to ensure that all voices are heard, and to make sure that different parts of the city are all represented in leadership roles, is very important.
It is something that I would be very aware of going into a role like mayor. I know I don’t have all the answers. Even as a city councillor, when something is proposed to me, I turn to my community associations, my recreation associations, constituents to understand their concerns on any proposal.
So as mayor, you really do have to ensure that you’re able to work with different people, different ideas, and bring that together. It doesn’t mean that you don’t want your agenda to be successful. But I don’t believe that having your way all the time is healthy for a city.
BUZZ: So that should reassure rural or suburban residents that it’s not just Centretown all the time if you got elected?
McKenney: Absolutely, I feel very strongly about that. It’s a geographically large city, a very diverse city. To ensure that we are making the change that will benefit every part of the city, all voices need to be heard. If every recommendation just goes through, then you don’t need 24 councillors around the table. You have us there so that we are representing our communities.
We are bringing to the table the concerns, the issues, the ideas from our communities. And the best way to build the city is for all of that to be input to discussion, debate and decision.
BUZZ: In two Ottawa elections, in 1991 with Nancy Smith and then in 2006 with Alex Munter, there was a lot of hope for a more progressive candidate and it didn’t come to pass. Is there anything you’ve learned from those campaigns that would make you more successful?
McKenney: I wasn’t around for the first one, but certainly for the Munter campaign, I was very much involved. Every election is different and often success depends as much on timing as it does on anything else.
I think there will be many serious candidates running for mayor, and that’s a good thing because we will have discussions. We will bring forward ideas, we will talk about changes that we want to make and people will be able to decide. I see this one as being different than we’ve had in a long time.
BUZZ: You’ve been described as having NDP leanings. Is that correct?
McKenney: I worked for Ed Broadbent for a little while, and I worked for Paul Dewar for a little while.
BUZZ: But is there any possibility this could be seen as an NDP versus Liberal election?
McKenney: Well, I’m in municipal politics because that’s what I like. I like the fact that it’s not partisan.
I work closely with people from really across the political spectrum, but certainly progressives, whether their kind of partisan leanings are Liberal or NDP.
When we think about municipal politics, about municipalities and how they’re governed, it’s not a simple matter of left versus right. It’s often a matter of north versus south or east versus west.
It’s how things grow and where they grow and why. So it’s just a very different beast when it comes to politics. And that’s what I like.
BUZZ: You’ve been strongly in favour of reallocating some of the police budget to other forms of emergency response by social workers or other health crisis workers, rather than the police. Some people have interpreted that as weak on crime. What is your response to that?
McKenney: If it’s somebody having a mental health crisis, if it’s somebody who is unhoused and sleeping on a bench, or somebody who uses drugs and is having an episode, today the only recourse you have 24-7 is a call to the police. We are asking police to do a job that they’re not trained to do and it’s outside of their purview.
It is not a crime to be in a mental health crisis. It’s not a crime to be unhoused. The way we prevent crime, the way we prevent issues in our community is by investing in recreation services for kids. It’s investing in housing, it’s investing in social programs. And so to reallocate some dollars to other forms of response is a smart way of thinking about how we respond in our community to people who who need it.
If somebody were having a gallbladder attack, you would not call the police. So if somebody is having a mental health crisis you need to have the resources there to call to help them. Where do those dollars come from? We cannot just continue to increase by very large amounts year over year the money to police. Some of that needs to be diverted and it needs to go to mental health and social responses so that two things are happening.
One is you’re investing in services, in programs that will ultimately prevent future issues. But you are also providing everybody with an opportunity to call the right number if there’s somebody who is having a difficult time and it’s not a police response.
BUZZ: So you think that ultimately that will reduce violent crime in the city?
McKenney: Absolutely. We know that investing in social programs, investing in recreation programs are the way to ultimately reduce crime. We know that investing in housing, mental health support, health supports will ultimately reduce conflicts in the community. And it’s the fair way to ensure that there’s some equity in our city.
BUZZ: When you come up to your first budget as mayor, is there one thing you’d like to reduce and one thing you’d like to increase?
McKenney: Probably early for that. But our budgets are made of priorities. So do we really need to give $3 million to a Porsche dealership to animate Montreal Road? Absolutely not. Do we still need today to provide grants for brownfield development? I don’t believe that we do. There are things that we pay for in the city that can be diverted. Those resources can go somewhere else.
For starters, it will be a reprioritization of where we’re spending our money today. I’m not talking about necessarily going in and looking for little itty bitty savings here and there.
But what is important is if we’re going to budget and that budget is going to result in a decrease in the hours that your recreation centre is open you should know about that. and today you don’t.
BUZZ: What would you do for Centretown in particular?
McKenney: It is critical that we address climate change in this city. We have a climate plan, an energy evolution plan. It is not funded and it is critical that we do that. A big part of that is again investing in transit. It’s also investing in other energy efficiencies, whether it’s helping homeowners to retrofit their homes through long term loans.
For Centretown in particular, I think that is really considering how the downtown has changed and how we need to respond to that. Businesses are no longer for the most part appealing to people outside of their neighbourhood. People are not coming downtown to work.
So just having that entire conversation and building a really strong commercial sector that becomes part of Centretown, I think is an exciting conversation to have.
BUZZ: How are you going to work with the provincial government, including if it stays Conservative?
McKenney: I think I’ve had some success with the LRT inquiry, so I can work with anyone. Certainly whomever the provincial government is at the end of 2022.
I know most of the local MPPs and MPs. I know Lisa MacLeod well. I’ve worked with Lisa, and Jeremy Roberts. Whichever party forms government, whether it’s federal or provincial and whoever is here in the mayor’s chair, it’s about working together to make the city better. And partisanship has to be put aside at that point.
BUZZ: During the pandemic, have you been able actually to go to places outside of Centretown?
McKenney: I’m a runner, so I run a lot. I go to different parts of the city. I go out to the Rideau-Goulbourn area, some trails there. I actually have my vet in Greeley. I’ve got a lot of friends in Kanata so I do get out of Centretown for sure. But more so before the pandemic.
BUZZ: When are you going to start your active campaign?
McKenney: It can’t start until May. But I’m going to have conversations with people. I expect to hold town hall meetings, likely online.But this is a perfect opportunity, between now and when it all formally kicks off, to really hear from people, to understand what people are looking for.
BUZZ: The shorter election period now for city campaigns – do you think it benefits or hurts you?
McKenney: Well, it certainly makes the fundraising effort a bit more difficult – and no, I don’t take corporate or developer donations.
BUZZ: Does having a spouse and a child at home help keep you sane with the pressures of City Hall?
McKenney: I think it does. For me personally, it keeps me grounded.