2025 City of Ottawa Budget Letter
December 11, 2024
Mayor Sutcliffe and City of Ottawa Councillors,
Re: Ottawa City Budget 2025
I am writing on behalf of the Ottawa Board of Trade regarding the city budget, a key tool for shaping the future of our city and quality of life for our citizens. The Ottawa Board of Trade is the voice of business and a key advocate for economic development in our Nation’s Capital. Our mission is to cultivate a thriving world class business community. One that drives affordable, inclusive, and sustainable city building and community prosperity. We work closely with our colleagues at the Ontario and Canadian Chambers of Commerce as well as key economic partners at all levels of government.
The Ottawa Board of Trade supports a budget that represents a forward-thinking, inclusive, and sustainable vision for our city, one executed on the principles of fiscal prudence, innovation, planning for growth, and optimizing opportunities.
Thank you and congratulations to our Mayor and City Councillors for working together to table the 2025 budget aiming to balance fiscal prudence and key investments for our future. Your focus on city wide and regional opportunities is critical to ensure our city reaches its full potential as a place where people want to visit, live and invest. We also wish to applaud the work of the city staff team as they navigate unique challenges in these uncertain economic and political times. Thank you.
We understand the current funding model poses unprecedented challenges to large cities, and uniquely to Ottawa. The launch of the fairness campaign was a wake-up call for our community and other levels of government. We are pleased to see strong indicators of support for Ottawa as an economic driver for Ontario, and Canada’s Capital City. The Ottawa Board of Trade stands with the City to ensure we have the appropriate resources required to deliver city appointed services.
We also understand that Ottawa has many unique assets and strengths that we can leverage to ensure long term economic growth. We have an opportunity to “build up Ottawa” through radical collaboration. A strong economic ecosystem can create an environment in which the private sector can drive the growth needed to support our whole community. We must optimize our resources and relationships to present a clear and coordinated approach to other levels of government for policies and programs that inspire private sector investment. Our work on this front and ability to communicate our commitment to innovation, resiliency, and service excellence will inspire confidence in our entrepreneurs and investors.
Locally, we encourage our council, staff, and partners to activate key opportunities by embracing an entrepreneurial culture and committing to being known as "open for business”. The City staff structure must be designed to support business growth in the most efficient, effective, and transparent way lest we lose important opportunities in key areas. City building projects must be contemplated through a climate, diversity and economic lens including impact analysis where possible.
We applaud the investments in infrastructure as a key factor in determining where people choose to live, and where businesses choose to invest. Advancing key areas will optimize our investments to date and drive the most growth; areas such as transit and transportation, downtown transformation and placemaking, health and education.
We are excited for the ongoing work with the City’s new economic development plan. For our part, the Ottawa Board of Trade has worked closely with the City and other private and public stakeholders to launch A Living Capital, the Downtown Ottawa Action Agenda. We are committed to shepherding the implementation phase for the next three years, with the next steps being naming the Champions Table and heading the Downtown Vibrancy Office as per the plan. We continue to advocate for every level of government, economic partners, the business community, and residents to declare downtown Ottawa a top priority. As the downtown goes, so goes the city.
We are also pleased to see a focus on small businesses. They are the cultural and economic core of our community, providing jobs, essential services, and unique experiences. They are the foundation of what attracts residents and visitors alike to our region. The entrepreneurs and employees of these businesses are community leaders and supporters and have proven themselves to be among the most driven and resilient among us. Together, we must advocate for, create, and support policies and programs that directly impact small businesses, and diverse businesses owned by women, Indigenous, racialized entrepreneurs, people with disabilities and those who are part of the LGBTQ2S+ community. Small business confidence and success increases with clear, efficient decisions and processes that reduce their commitment of time and money. The ability to navigate our regulatory systems, and easy access to services and support drives entrepreneurship.
Finally, we acknowledge that we are all connected – businesses, organizations and residents – and we are only as strong as our most vulnerable. We call on our local government to lead and collaborate with community services, mental health, and police services on a timely and transparent strategy to end homelessness using best practices and calling on other levels of government for policies, programs, and support in the areas of their jurisdiction.
We understand and appreciate that many of these initiatives are underway and commit to continued collaboration with the City of Ottawa and all stakeholders to ensure we stay “Ottawa Strong”.
Once again, thank you to the Mayor and City Council and city staff for your commitment to economic growth and innovation. We look forward to enhancing our support for the current economic development plan as well as the community and economic priorities for this term of council. Thank you for your ongoing support of our business community. We value our partnership with you as we work to protect and enhance the quality of life for everyone in Canada’s Capital Region.
Sincerely,
Sueling Ching
President & CEO | Ottawa Board of Trade