Jim Watson (Canadian politician)

Early life

Born in Montreal, Quebec, Watson grew up in Lachute and attended Laurentian Regional High School from 1974-1978. He later moved to Ottawa to attend Carleton University and graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor of Public Affairs degree from the School of Journalism and Communications. He entered the federal public service and rose to the position of director of communications for the Speaker of the House of Commons.

City Council

Jim Watson first entered public office in 1991 when he was elected to Ottawa’s City Council as councilor for Capital Ward. He was subsequently re-elected to Council in 1994. In 1992 Watson championed a roll-back of salaries and operating costs at the city level. His first direct action against excessive city spending was his unilateral decision to donate his yearly 2% salary increase, totaling $700, to charity. In addition, as part of the re-election process Watson donated his severance pay of $5200 to four local charities after moving from Regional to City Council in 1994. During his second term as Councilor, Watson reduced his own salary by 13% from $51,000 to $45,000 while voting to reduce the mayor’s office budget and salary. In 1996, he supported Dalton McGuinty's bid to lead the Ontario Liberal party.

First mayoral term

In 1997, Watson sought election as mayor of Ottawa winning 83 per cent of the popular vote to become Ottawa's mayor. During his term as mayor, Watson’s emphasis centered on ensuring that the City adopt sustainable fiscal management policies which would enable overall operating costs to go down while reducing budget deficits and the city’s debt burden. In conjunction, Watson managed to freeze property tax rates in consecutive years, with only a marginal 3% increase, below the rate of inflation during this period, taking place during his entire tenure as mayor.

He resigned as mayor on August 14, 2000 to become president and CEO of the Canadian Tourism Commission.

After municipal politics

In 2003, Watson left public service to pursue a career in media as host of CHRO-TV's The New RO @ Noon. He was also a regular contributor to the Ottawa radio station CFRA and the Ottawa Citizen.

Watson has served on the board or as honorary chair of several community organizations including the Riverside Hospital, the National Arts Centre, the Central Canada Exhibition Association, the Christmas Exchange of Ottawa and the Forum for Young Canadians. He served as chair of the United Way's 2002 campaign, which raised a record $21 million.

Provincial politics

In the 2003 provincial election, Watson defeated Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario incumbent Garry Guzzo to become the Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) for the Ottawa West-Nepean riding and was appointed by Premier of Ontario Dalton McGuinty as Minister of Consumer and Business Services on October 23, 2003. He became Ontario's first Minister of Health Promotion on June 29, 2005.

Minister of Municipal Affairs

After the 2007 election, he became Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. During his tenure as Queen's Park's official liaison with Ontario's municipalities, Watson was able to implement a substantive policy designed to support the uploading of property tax supported programs from the budgets of Ontario’s municipalities to that of the Provincial budget. Under this policy, the province will take back $1.5 Billion worth of programs funded by Ontario’s municipalities by 2018, reversing previous downloading of provincial responsibilities which occurred during Mike Harris’ tenure as Premier. As a result of this uploading of associated costs to the province, the estimated benefit to Ottawa is approximately $122 Million. Furthermore, the up-loads are projected to reduce Ottawa’s social program costs by over $18.7 Million.

In addition, Watson signed the Federal-Provincial Housing Agreement in 2008, the largest housing agreement of its kind to date.

Second mayoral term

On January 12, 2010, Watson resigned from cabinet in order to run for mayor of Ottawa in the Ottawa municipal election, 2010. Watson won the election with almost 50% of the vote.

As Mayor, he followed through on an election commitment to limit tax increases to no more than 2.5%, bringing in the lowest rates in a number of years

Upon taking office, Watson froze his own salary and cut his office budget by 10%. He also enacted a set of integrity and transparency measures, including hiring an integrity commissioner, launching a lobbyist registry and requiring that elected officials’ office expenses be posted online.

Watson froze community recreation fees for three years, and reduced the size of the city’s workforce twice, the first times it had been done since amalgamation.

Watson and City Council also invested $340 million in infrastructure renewal such as roads, sidewalks, pathways and sewers and record amount in cycling initiatives.

Watson helped advance two major city-building projects that had stalled for a number of years: the revitalization of Lansdowne Park and the introduction of light rail transit. In October 2012, City Council approved the final Lansdowne Park plan, an agreement with the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group that will see a new stadium, increased green space, and housing and retail added to the site. In December 2012, City Council voted unanimously to move forward with the Confederation Line, a 12.5 km light rail transit line from Tunney’s Pasture in the west to Blair in the east, to be fully operational by 2018.