Support Ottawa Coalition for a People's Budget

Last year, a group of community organizers banded together to develop Ottawa's first Alternative Budget. This budget was developed to uphold people's voice on a process like municipal budget, which has for long existed in the shadows of City Hall.

Municipal budgets are critical documents that lay the roadmap for revenue building and expenditures each year. These budgets make decisions on important issues like affordable housing, climate emergency, transit and transportation infrastructure, community services and investments in policing. Yet while impacting many areas of our lives, budgets remain inaccessible to us, and are often presented as rigid and unchangeable. Ottawa's annual budgets continue to perpetuate inequity among the most vulnerable through failing to address housing and climate emergencies, through continuing to fund police services that make our neighbourhoods unsafe and through failing to make transit affordable. Our budgets are tools of maintaining status quo - status quo that harms many who reside in Ottawa.

The Coalition for a People's Budget is rooted in organizing the power of the people to voice their priorities and directions on what the City budget SHOULD look like. The People's Budget is an exercise in community and movement building on taking the power back from City Hall into the hands of the people. People's Budget dares to imagine what our society would look like if affordable housing and free transit were prioritized rather than car-based infrastructures and luxury developments. We dare to imagine what are communities can look like if strong social infrastructure was prioritized over surveillance, policing and criminalization. We dare to imagine a City budget that puts people and the future of our planet above corporations, developers and law enforcement institutions.

As a grassroots group, our coalition is fully organized by community volunteers. As part of our research and evidence building, we bring third-party researchers onboard who read through past budgets and condense data that enables our organizing and community engagement. Additionally, we hope to build a pool of money to disseminate honoraria and stipends for community folks that participate in our conversations and other engagement activities. For these purposes alone, the coalition is reaching out to the community to build core funds that will empower us to do the work we hopes to do.

Your donation will support the strengthening of democratic engagement with the city and its processes, particularly for groups who have bene historically marginalized from these processes. Even a donation as little as a dollar is critical towards building momentum for the Coalition and amplifying its call for an equitable and accessible City Budget.

We are extremely grateful for your support and hope to see your continued involvement with our work.