Interview with Stéphanie Plante
By Joel Weiner
A long-time resident of Rideau-Vanier Ward, which includes Lowertown as well as Vanier and Sandy Hill, Stéphanie Plante now represents it on Ottawa City Council. She won her seat in the October 24 municipal election, beating out nine other candidates and garnering 35.9% of the total votes cast.
This victory marks the start of another chapter in Plante’s life, which began 43 years ago in Windsor, Ontario. Raised in nearby Tecumseh, her resume now reads like a roadmap to success: from working on a Ford Motor Company assembly line to earning two university degrees, serving on the staff of a former Deputy Prime Minister, becoming a federal civil servant and teaching municipal law and commemorative naming in the Common Law section at the University of Ottawa.
Along the way, she became a wife and mother. Husband Orest Zakydalsky is the senior policy analyst at the Ukrainian Canadian Congress; son Ian is 12 years old and will soon be in high school. A long-time advocate for the LGBT community, Plante also served as a surrogate mother for a gay couple in Spain and four years ago gave birth to a girl named Martina.
It was a job that brought Plante to Ottawa almost 20 years ago. Settling first in Vanier, then Sandy Hill, she quickly got involved in a wide range of community activities that reflect her many interests. Action Sandy Hill, the Parents Council at L`école Francojeunesse, Refuge 613 and Run Ottawa are just a few of the organizations where she’s been either a volunteer or committee chair.
Why did she run for City Council? “There were two main factors that influenced me,” she explains. “One was that I spent a lot of time in the trenches of community associations, both in Vanier and in Sandy Hill. I had a good grasp on many of the City files, so people would ask me for help in navigating City departments and I knew exactly where to direct them. When Mathieu Fleury decided not to run again, I thought ‘This is something I can do because I know something about the lay of the land.’”
“The second thing was that I worked on Parliament Hill at the time of the truckers’ convoy and I saw the breakdown of communication unfolding every day in my inbox. I’m an open person and I can put my ego aside to get things done. So, I thought that if this or something like it ever happens again, I will know what not to do. I can be a bridge builder for my community.”
As a candidate for municipal office, Plante had a platform of policies and programs that obviously appealed to the voters of Rideau-Vanier. And now that she’s our councillor, her attention is focused on mastering the intricate details of the many issues that Lowertown and the Ward at large confront. Since almost immediately after the election and continuing through to swearing-in day on November 15 and beyond, Plante and the other Council newcomers are being briefed by City staff in order to learn in depth about the files they’ll have to deal with.
Already, though, Plante is fleshing out the priorities on which she campaigned. “Lowertown is ground zero for a lot of the failures in housing policies, the opioid crisis and the pandemic,” she says, “so getting keys into people’s hands and providing wraparound services for the most vulnerable is a key priority for me.”
The ByWard Market is another target in Plante’s sights:
I’m not pandering to Lowertown when I say that the Market’s revitalization is going to be another top priority for me. Four years from now, it will celebrate two centuries of operation but it needs a considerable amount of improvement in several areas before we reach that milestone.
King Edward Avenue is also on her agenda. “There is a working group trying to solve this huge and complex issue, but the rules are that I can’t join it until I’ve been sworn in,” she explains. “So, I don’t yet have a lot of information on that file. However, I do have some related experience dating back to September 2001. That was when the terrorist attacks on 9 11 led the U.S. to close both the bridge and tunnel between Windsor and Detroit, and we had long lines of semi-trailers rumbling through our downtown core, which is certainly the case in Lowertown. I was working for a Windsor MP at the time, the Rt. Hon. Herb Gray, and that problem was very much ours to deal with.”
Plante acknowledges that some of the Lowertown’s issues are city-wide as well. “Take access to general practitioners as an example,” she points out. “I want to start a family doctor recruitment program and get that off the ground as soon as possible. We’re lucky in this ward because we have the University of Ottawa medical school, and I want to see what we can do to keep its graduates in the city.”
When asked about how she’ll balance her civic duties and with family responsibilities, Plante makes clear that she thought through that challenge before tossing her hat in the ring.
Actually, the first thing my husband and I talked about was the potential effect on our relationship. And I can honestly say he’s been nothing but absolutely supportive. He was one of my top canvassers during the campaign, the guy who hammered in signs and watched over my finances. And going forward we will both have a lot more community involvement, which he really likes.
As for my son, he’s at a stage right now where he is much more independent and doesn’t think that I’m really all that cool anymore. He has a key to the house, makes his own lunches and picks out his own clothes. So, I’m not as hands on as I had to be when he was younger; it’s more a question of managing emotions and other teenager issues. Also, I have the shortest commute to work right now because I can see City Hall from where I live and stroll there and back very quickly when I have to.
When the final election results were counted, Plante was thousands of ballots ahead of each of the other candidates except for Laura Shantz, whom she beat by just 323 votes. Although Plante came out ahead in Vanier and Sandy Hill, Shantz was the leader in Lowertown. As a result, Plante is determined to make her mark in our community. “The future of Lowertown affects the future of the whole ward,” she argues. “People who ignore Lowertown do so at their peril because getting things right in Lowertown will set the tone for the rest of the Ward and, indeed, the city. I do hope that people will feel free to reach out to me whether they voted for me or not. I’m very approachable and I’m here to serve everyone.”
To some extent, Plante will have to deal with competing interests in different parts of the Ward, particularly with regard to Vanier’s opposition to moving the Salvation Army’s facility on George Street to Montreal Road:
I’ve been very open about my position, which is no new shelters regardless of where you live in this ward. And I actually don’t think that’s the discussion we should be having because there shouldn’t be shelters with more than 40 people anywhere in the entire city.
I’ve already put a bug in the ear of the mayor-elect about this. I believe in capping the number of people in any shelter and that shelters should be spread throughout the city rather than being concentrated in one area like Lowertown. No one community should bear responsibility for the housing crisis. It’s not just Lowertown’s problem to solve.