'It's not a tea party': Mayor Jim Watson on his leadership and democracy

Jim Watson keeps his "promise book" on the polished wooden desk in his teal-coloured office in the heritage wing at City Hall.

Other than a 2010election promise to shrink council, he's been able to cross off every single item on his mayoral to-do list over the past 12 years.

"I feel very passionately about making sure that I got my agenda through, because that agenda had the backing of the majority of people in Ottawa," the outgoing mayor told CBC.

It's an enviable record for any politician. There's no arguing that Watson has moved some major filesduring his tenure, from the LansdownePark redevelopment to the launch of the Confederation Line to the new city art gallery.

A substantial expansion of the city's rail systems, and a new central library a 2014 election promiseare underway.

"I, like a lot of people, get tired of politicians who go out and promise the world, then they get to council and then they can't deliver and then they blame it on council," said Watson.

"Well, why did you bring up a promise if you knew you didn't have support for it?"

That hasn't been a problem for Watson.

But the way in which Watson has secured support around the council table this term has drawn criticism for being too divisive, creating an unseemly level of acrimony. What in theory is supposed to be 24 independent members of council somehow morphed into two entrenched camps: the so-called "Watson Club" versus the outsiders.

The tension between the two groups reached its zenith during the convoy council meeting in February, a chaotic display in the midst of the protest crisis so shocking that more than 70,000 people tuned in to watch.

CBC spoke with six of the 11 council members who aren't running for their seats again to understand what it's been like to be in office this past term. The abuse hurled at them during the pandemic and the related convoy protests took an unexpected toll. But they also struggled with the politics inside city hall.

We know that there are some members of council, well, they'll never vote with me.- Jim Watson

That Jim Watson leaves behind a fractious council culture is somewhat ironic, considering he came to power in 2010 on the heels of four tumultuous years at city hall.

He won on the welcome slogan of "stability, reliability and credibility." And he kept his promise to work more collaboratively with his council colleagues they all did.

But by the 2018 election, something changed.

A more progressive council was chosen, with some incoming members very open about the fact they didn't agree with all the mayor's policies on transit fareincreases, for instance and vocal about the fact they weren't afraid to mix it up.

Watson's response to that blatant opposition was to pointedly sideline those who didn't agree.

To Diane Deans, it seemed as if the mayor "had decided he wasn't going to run again and he did things very differently at the start of this term."

Consider that in just the second council meeting in 2018, Watson named brand-new councillors as committee chairs and deputy mayorsinstead of following the usual practice of tapping those with more experience.

No urban councillors chair any committees.

When first-term councillor Jenna Sudds voluntarily stepped down from chairing the big-budget community and protective services committee, for example, Watson replaced her with another first-term councillor, Matthew Luloff, even though he already chaired another committee.

"I put forward names of people who I think I can work well with, who I think have the experience and the aptitude to do a really good job," Watson told CBC. "That's the part of leadership that I think it's important."

Watson dismisses criticisms about who chairs what as "inside baseball," but the decisions at the beginning of the term to freeze critics out of leadership roles set up an us-versus-them mentality from the get-go.

And heconcedes that unlike his first term, he hasn't been working to get everyone onside.

"We know that there are some members of council, well, they'll never vote with me or never vote on this side of that issue," Watson said.

"And we're not going to waste their time. We're not going to waste our time. So at the end of the day, the goal was to try to find a clear majority, which was usually 15 or 16, which we were pretty successful."

That majority became known as the Watson Club.

The term was first used publicly by Mathieu Fleury three years agoafter the mayor's office effectively blocked the councillor's last-ditch efforts to stop the controversial Salvation Army shelter planned for Vanier and theChteau Laurier hotel addition.

When Fleury was first elected in 2010he said the council vibe was collaborative, but over the years, he's felt the pendulum of power swing too much toward the mayor's office.

He pointed to the mayor's procedural manoeuvres to get his way, such as trying to avoid voting on a motion for a judicial inquiry on the Confederation Line.

And when you're on the outs with the mayor, said Fleury, it can get personal and petty.

One small example: Watson, supported by a majority of councillors, named George Darouze, a deputy mayorand rural councillor for Osgoode, to the Shaw Centre's board of directors. Traditionally, the seat should have gone to Fleury, whose ward includes the convention centre.

"The politics were hurtful andin some ways destructive to us working together," said Fleury.

Despite being a veteran councillor, Diane Deans said she's been made to feel like an outsider from Day 1 of this term.

The mayor has rebuked her on many occasions. Instead of simply voting against a Deans motion to cut transit fares back in 2019, Watson called it the "worst motion" he'd ever seen.

He once refused to allow her to ask a question at the finance committee meeting, to which she does not belong, which is virtually unheard of.

More recently, he cut off her microphone at a Zoom meeting during procedural haggling over a motion for a judicial inquiry into the problems with the Confederation Line.

WATCH | The virtual scuffle at city council:

Procedural disagreement leads to virtual scuffle at Ottawa city council

3 years ago

Duration 4:11

Several councillors argued with Mayor Jim Watson over procedural rules at Wednesdays council meeting over Zoom, culminating in confusion and at least one councillor walking off screen.

Deans first sat on council with Watson in 1994, and it's no secret the two don't see eye-to-eye.

But the level of antagonism appears to have reachednew heights this term, hitting a fever pitch during the three-week vehicleprotests against COVID-19 mandates that paralyzed much of the downtown.

The two appeared not to have been communicating directly, even though Deans was the chair of the police board in the middle of a crisis that demanded a police response. When Deans and the board hired a temporary chief the day after Peter Sloly suddenly resigned, Watson backed a motion to remove Deans as chair.

Asked if the two of them had a direct conversation before an interim police chief was hired, Deans said Watson doesn't speak to her.

"The mayor will not give me his phone number," she told CBC.

Watson who's known for sending text messages constantly said she's never asked for it.

But the mayor defends his leadership style.

He said the term Watson Club doesn't bother him, adding he's been called worse. His job is to convince enough councillors around the table to support him. That's democracy.

When part of your narrative is actually not getting along, then what?- Scott Moffatt

"I don't think it's appropriate when people storm off and have a temper tantrum, for instance, because they didn't win a vote," he told CBC. "I think some people have felt that, you know, they've lost so many votes that the system is rigged."

People who run for office often hold strong views that are often at odds with the strong views of other around the council table, he argues, and it's a councillor's job to win support for their ideas.

"Democracy is not a tea party," said Watson. "We're not there for polite chit-chat."

Like a government and opposition

For many departing councillors, the rancour on council has been frustrating and demoralizing.

Keith Egli is a mediation lawyer by trade whose job is to try to get opposing sides to talk.

One of the things that attracted both he and Scott Moffattto municipal politics was the absence of political parties, the idea that councillors find a variety of allies on different issues.

That has happened on some issues the official plan was approved almost unanimously, as was a climate-change master planbut the last term has felt more partisan.

"It's almost like we have agovernment and an opposition," said Egli.

Egli said he's philosophically aligned with the mayor, so it's no surprise he usually votes with him although there have been some exceptions. And he, like others who are seen to be club members, argue that the blame for discord on this council can't all be laid at Watson's feet.

"In order for two people to get along, they have to want to get along and they have to want to be seen as getting along," saidMoffatt, who's walking away from his rural seat after 12 years.

"But when part of your narrative is actually not getting along, then what?"

He points out that the councillors who were the most uproarious during the convoy council meeting were the ones voting against the motion to remove Deans. Moffatt argues that councillors need to work behind the scenes to come to a solution for problems.

"How you get to the result isn't always about standing on a soapbox and crying foul about how things are going," he said.

"The public doesn't know that when a councillor doesn't do any lobbying efforts before they walk on a last-minute motion that fails, they don't understand that the motion was destined to fail and we know it's a bit of a show," said Moffatt.

"Sometimes the public doesn't know what show they're watching. We don't know what show we're producing."

Those councillors on the outside don't see it that way.

Fleury argues that discussions needto occur in open meetings so the public can understand how decisions are made.

And it's not like the Watson side of council chamber haven't walked-on substantial motions, such as the out-of-the-blue plan to add the farflung Tewin community to the urban boundaryagainst staff advice. The difference there is that the Watson-backed walk-ons pass.

Still, all councillors agree that something needs to change.

A new mix of personalities will bring its own interpersonal dynamic to city hall, which departing council members hope will be an improvement. And they suggest that council make a concerted effort to come up with a strategic plan, even go on a retreat.

Because in the end, what the public most cares about, said Moffatt, "is that their council actually makes them proud of their city."

More in this series:

TUESDAY: Departing council members say the pressures both external and internal made the job harder than ever before.

THURSDAY: The challenges of being a city councillor even without COVID-19. And why Coun. Carol Anne Meehan decided city politics wasn't for her.