Pellerin: Musk doesn’t think empathy is important. Fortunately, Ottawa does

It’s hard to know what the new (and brief) federal government and upcoming election will mean for Ottawa the city, except for the part about the whiplash-inducing trade war being painful. How should we position ourselves so we can contribute to strengthening the country and getting to the other side of this nasty storm in the best possible shape? We’ll need brains, creativity and empathy. Quiet competence, too. Fortunately, this city has plenty of each — in both public and private sectors.

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Mayor Mark Sutcliffe scored a big one Monday morning by meeting new Liberal leader and incoming prime minister Mark Carney mere hours after the leadership vote. The two men enjoyed delicious eggs at John’s Family Diner in Wellington West, the best breakfast joint in town, and discussed critical issues for the city.

“With the prospect of an election coming soon, I would assume that the new administration is going to want to have some impact right away, make some things happen,” Sutcliffe told the media. He pitched Carney his fairness campaign and stressed the need for support “around building more homes in the city, around infrastructure, around public transit.”

Good. We should not forget other urgent issues related to affordability and infrastructure. Climate and homelessness, too.

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There may not be a lot of appetite right now for investing in transit, affordable housing and other public goods. Protecting the economy and improving productivity are much more in vogue at the moment. Those of us who care about Ottawa being the best it can be need to frame our arguments in a different way.

A prosperous city — indeed a prosperous nation — is one where people have a real choice about where to live and where humans and stuff move easily. Mobility and affordability, along with population health and public education, are critical if we aim to be our best. They are fundamental structures of strong and resilient societies, not luxuries. We need to repeat that at every turn.

Meanwhile, public sector unions are staking their ground by insisting we can’t afford to pull a DOGE and fire public servants, as Elon Musk is doing. “This national crisis, which is without precedent, is not the time to start hollowing out our brain trust,” said Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE) president Nathan Prier.

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I don’t know if it’s possible to agree more than one thousand per cent with that sentiment, but I’ll try.

Elon Musk must be very confused

In addition to encouraging people to come up with smart and creative solutions to our problems, we’ll need to make space for kindness and a strong sense of community. On a recent podcast, Musk claimed a civilization’s biggest weakness is empathy, an idea borrowed from a Concordia University marketing professor.

I don’t know if it’s possible to disagree more than one thousand percent with that sentiment, but I’ll try.

Maybe Musk is confused about what empathy means? There is no way the ability to relate to another person’s emotions makes a society weaker.

Ira Wells, a University of Toronto literature professor, recently wrote a piece about Sesame Street in which he discussed at length the role and benefits of a strong sense of community as well as public institutions.

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He cited the CBC, schools and libraries as examples of the latter but you could also point to public places for people, walkable communities, the justice system or, yes, transit. Instead of seeing them as costly things whose benefits aren’t always immediately obvious to the average taxpayer, we should present public institutions as a valuable “source of common purpose.”

It’s up to those of us who believe in this vision to show how public institutions are good for everyone by highlighting their benefits, especially the ones that are harder to see. We’ll need our brains, our creativity and our empathy to do that.

We have our work cut out for us, no question about it. We should take inspiration from our mayor and get started right away.

Brigitte Pellerin (they/them) is an Ottawa writer.

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