We need clearer accounting for photo radar revenues

Video of Laine asking questions about Red Light Camera and ASE revenues

Recent media reports have highlighted the Ottawa Auditor General’s findings that describe the redirection of red-light camera revenue since 2019 to the City’s general revenues and to the Ottawa Police Service.

I have to say I’m feeling disappointed that we repeated this same decision-making, despite my best efforts, even as recently as four months ago.

I spoke out during the 2025 budget deliberations in December because we voted again to redirect revenue from road safety measures, this time from automated speed enforcement (ASE) revenues, collected now and moving forward.

That’s right. This isn’t just a 2019 decision under the last term of Council: this Council voted to make the same decision in 2024!

In the 2025 Ottawa Police Service budget proposal, we were presented with Category 5: User Fees and Revenues, which clearly states that a portion of ASE revenues collected from 2026-2028 will go towards balancing the police budget.

At that time, it was not properly earmarked for traffic safety expenses, nor was it expensed from the City’s books over to OPS. It moves through a reserve fund and so doesn’t show up in the budget books. It’s there, but there’s no specific accounting. It’s not recorded against the expenses of the Road Safety Action Plan. It’s not specifically recorded in the Ottawa Police Service expenses against road safety programs.

According to the Auditor General: “[n]ot allocating net new revenues generated from new red light cameras installed after 2020 to the dedicated Road Safety Reserve Fund means that these funds will not be used exclusively for road safety initiatives. This can impact the level of public trust in the program as well as limit road safety outcomes that could be achieved through road safety initiatives funded by red light camera revenues.”

I said it at the time, and I’ll say it again: the public deserves clearer accounting. The opaqueness (however professionally typical) of a program that is as contentious as red-light and automatic speed enforcement is not appropriate. As we see from public reaction, I was right. It remains a critical role for a city councillor to exercise careful oversight of the City’s finances at budget time and raise any discrepancies that affect residents. It’s not simple work, and it’s not always politically popular or personally easy to speak out. But the budget is a series of choices, and it’s our job to examine those choices through the lens of our residents.

When you move money around and it's not appropriately accounted for it looks like a slush fund.

For this reason (among others), I voted against the 2025 police budget and the 2025 City budget.

When we assure the public that money collected from unsafe driver behaviours will go exclusively towards road safety improvements, I think that justification resonates with most people. When we start moving dollars around to balance other budgets, even in small amounts, it undermines the commitment we have made to residents and robs Peter to pay Paul.

City staff have agreed in the wake of the Auditor General’s findings that shifting these funds was not done transparently and they have committed to a public reckoning through the next budget cycle. I hope that’s not too little too late to restore trust. My staff and I spent significant time uncovering at least some of this late last year and raising it to Council’s attention, but I wonder what else we haven’t found. This Council was voted in to do better in terms of transparency and in rebuilding the relationship with residents. I am disappointed in the damage that has been done and how this opens us to the same criticisms made of the previous term of Council.

And I’m disappointed in how this will effect the public’s view of the red light camera and ASE program. Both are effective at making our roads safer – they have been proven to slow down cars and reduce red light running. They’re too important to lose.

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Motion to improve road safety

Today, the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee unanimously approved my motion to improve road safety across Ottawa. Here's my motion:

WHEREAS speeding continues to be one of the most significant road‑safety concerns raised by residents across the City of Ottawa, particularly in residential neighbourhoods and school zones where vulnerable road users, including children, are at heightened risk; and

WHEREAS recent City data has shown a substantial increase in speeding in school zones, with compliance dropping from 87 percent to 41 percent within a 12‑week period following the removal of Automated Speed Enforcement (ASE) cameras, and high‑end speeding increasing from 0.3 percent to over 4 percent during the same period; and

Whereas speed data is an important input in understanding risk related to more serious collisions; and

WHEREAS the city’s current approach to collecting speed data is limited and does not provide a full picture of speeds across the roadway network, and

WHEREAS other jurisdictions across Canada and internationally are increasingly incorporating innovative, technology‑enabled, and data‑driven approaches—including, predictive analytics, and AI‑supported monitoring systems—to inform their road safety programs; and

WHEREAS the City of Ottawa is currently undertaking work to update the Road Safety Action Plan, which will guide the road safety priorities for the next term of Council; and

WHEREAS this work presents an opportunity to modernize and strengthen the inputs used to make informed data-driven decisions about road safety;

THERFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT staff, through the update to the City’s Road Safety Action Plan, leverage advanced data analytics, predictive modelling, and AI‑supported technologies, where appropriate, to enhance the City’s ability to identify, monitor, and respond to speeding trends and inform road safety priorities

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT staff consider speed management as a focus area when developing the Road Safety Action Plan that will be presented to Council in 2027.

Progress Report: Year Three

Read the Year Three Progress Report

Dear Neighbours,

I am pleased to provide you with the College Ward Annual
Progress Report, showing the work that we did in 2025. I work hard every day to represent you on the
issues that are important to our neighbourhoods.

I hope this Progress Report is informative of the projects we
took on last year, and that it demonstrates my continuing
transparency and accountability to you. There is still more
always to do, and I list some future areas of interest.

Warm regards,
Laine

Out of Service: Ottawa’s Transit Problem

The news this week wasn’t good. Thousands of bus trips cancelled again in February. LRT down to one train for the foreseeable future. When it comes to Ottawa’s public transit, it seems there’s never good news.

Even the announcement of progress on the LRT East project was met with cynicism, given that the trains that Line 1 uses continue to have “spalling” issues with the wheel assembly.

When will it end? And what am I – one of the members of OC Transpo’s governance body – going to do about it?

Since 2022, I’ve been wrestling with myself over a feeling of powerlessness about OC Transpo, in conflict with my ability as a decision maker to affect change.

I have residents who are suffering immeasurably from a lack of service. Algonquin College students have the biggest uptake of the U-pass of all of Ottawa’s post-secondary institutions, but they can’t get to and from classes reliably. Bells Corners’ routes were cut during the pandemic, and the subsequent elimination of the 200 series through the New Ways to Bus changes have completely isolated that community from transit.