Over the past few months, the candidates vying to be Ottawa’s next mayor have been laying out their campaign platforms. This week, we get to know the people behind the policies. Today: Mark Sutcliffe.
Looking back on his first term as Ottawa’s mayor, Mark Sutcliffe hopes the job hasn’t changed him.
It’s clear his life is not the same.
Beyond the sometimes tense debates around the horseshoe-shaped council table at city hall, he’s had breakfast with the prime minister, met King Charles (a “pinch me” moment, he says) and built a deep connection with a chief of staff who died suddenly during his term.
He’s even been an answer on Jeopardy!.
But the former journalist and businessman says he still wakes up early almost every morning to run, goes to all his children’s sporting events and talks over the tough problems with his wife, Ginny.
“I don’t feel like I’m any different,” he told CBC in an interview in his Wellington West neighbourhood, at the same café he chose for a similar chat four years ago.
“I sometimes ask my friends … ‘Do I seem any different than when we were running together five years ago?’”
Mark Sutcliffe (furthest right) walks alongside King Charles and Queen Camilla during their visit to Ottawa in 2025. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)
Running still a focus
Sutcliffe’s team has often said the running is non-negotiable.
“It’s always been challenging to put the runs in, but it’s kind of like saying, you know, how do you make time to sleep? How do you make time to eat? How do you make time to brush your teeth?” he said.
His routine, though, has evolved.
Sutcliffe said he’s also taken on a personal trainer to maintain his overall health, something he’s “not crazy about” but knows is necessary now that he’s 58.
“He’s much more dedicated to running than I am,” said Mathieu Fleury, a former city councillor and one of Sutcliffe’s regular running partners.
“There’s no pressure, right? Like he adjusts your speed. He adjusts to the route, the distance.”
That ability to adjust is something Sutcliffe has used to sell himself as a politician.
Mark Sutcliffe (left) poses with Ottawa Centre MP Yasir Naqvi (centre) and Mathieu Fleury (right) while out on a run. (Mark Sutcliffe/LinkedIn)
The art of negotiation
When Sutcliffe was elected mayor four years ago, he inherited a council where long and emotional debates created deep fractures among colleagues.
This term was not without its own heated debates.
Sutcliffe brought in a compromise proposal on garbage pickup after public backlash — and when that led to a stalemate vote, he followed up with a compromise-to-the-compromise that narrowly passed at council.
Much more top of mind is the Lansdowne 2.0 redevelopment.
The ‘Lansdowne 2.0’ construction at Lansdowne Park in Ottawa is seen in September 2026. The first part of the renovation involves building the new arena. (Giacomo Panico/CBC)
Controversial from the start, the project got Sutcliffe’s support during a 2023 meeting that took two full days
“The vast majority of votes [across four years] were unanimous,” Sutcliffe said. “That’s a handful of people voting against the majority.”
Among that handful, he pointed to Shawn Menard, the incumbent councillor for Capital ward (which is home to Lansdowne Park) and chair of the environment committee.
“I don’t think anybody would perceive us as being natural political allies,” said Sutcliffe. “But there were a number of different things during this term of council that we found common ground on, and worked together.”
Nine sitting councillors — though not Menard — showed up to Sutcliffe’s September campaign launch to show their support, many telling CBC they’ve appreciated his willingness to hear their concerns and work on solutions.
With 22 of 24 incumbents running for another term, Sutcliffe said he doesn’t expect his leadership strategies to change if he’s re-elected at the helm of a more experienced council.
A young Mark Sutcliffe interviews hockey legend Guy Lafleur for Chez 106. Sutcliffe enrolled at Carleton University with an eye toward a career in journalism, but the radio station came calling before he could graduate. (Submitted by Mark Sutcliffe)
Handling criticism
It’s a style Sutcliffe said is honed by his experience in media and business.
Even before entering the political arena, Sutcliffe was well known across the city.
Growing up in a family of federal public servants — his wife, too, works for the government — Sutcliffe opted for a different path.
He dropped out of Carleton University to take his first job in radio, where he had to overcome childhood shyness.
Later he turned to entrepreneurship, creating the Ottawa Business Journal and serving on various boards and charities.
While he used to host broadcast programs and municipal debates, Sutcliffe now finds himself fielding questions from journalists.
He said he doesn’t consider himself an introvert or an extrovert, but a person who enjoys going out to events before heading home to quietly decompress.
Mark Sutcliffe crosses the finish line at the 2026 Ottawa Race Weekend. He used the race to raise money for ending youth homelessness. (Patrick Foucault/Radio-Canada)
Even on those early morning runs, Sutcliffe said he doesn’t mind if that “blank, peaceful time” is interrupted by people stopping to say hello or to bring up their concerns about the city.
That’s true even if the criticism is harsh, he added.
“I don’t thrive on conflict,” he said. “For me, it’s never personal.”
But he won’t listen to people who hide behind anonymous online accounts.
“I never, never read the comments,” he said of a decision he made during his first political campaign to close his eyes to social media. “I was just not going to look at social media again, and I haven’t looked at it since. I don’t pay attention to all the negativity out there.
“It’s not helpful. It’s not productive.”
‘Good morning Ottawa’
That’s not to say it doesn’t reach him.
He’s gotten his fair share of criticism — for running the London marathon during an overseas trip with Ottawa Tourism, for finishing a leadership course in New York City after OC Transpo was forced to shut down its rail service, and for posting the occasionally dreary photo in his “Good morning Ottawa” series.
Sutcliffe attaches that now-familiar phrase to every photo that gets posted to his X page, including a hotly debated March image showing a pile of discarded Christmas trees in a melting snowbank.
One social media user got 10,000 likes by reposting the photo with a parodic mayoral quote: “Look upon this apocalyptic wasteland, and witness the field of sadness and decay over which I rule.”
This photo, one of many posted to Mark Sutcliffe’s social media with the phrase “Good morning Ottawa. Bonjour Ottawa.” was lambasted by users. Sutcliffe says it was all in good fun. (Mark Sutcliffe/X)
“I just thought that was funny!” Sutcliffe laughed, when reminded of that post.
He explained he was motivated to snap the shot by his joy at seeing spring finally arriving after a long winter.
“I was not proposing it as a photo for a brochure about Ottawa or a marketing campaign. I wasn’t passing it on to Ottawa Tourism to say ‘Come to Ottawa. Here’s what Ottawa looks like.’”
Sutcliffe expressed surprise that some find him overly serious, explaining there’s a lot of joking around at the office and at home.
And while he admits the job requires confidence, Sutcliffe said he’s not obsessed with self-image.
“I’m not hung up on, ‘What does everybody think of me?’ and ‘Does everybody love me?’ and all of that kind of stuff,” he said.
LISTEN | Sutcliffe’s radio profile:
Ottawa Morning8:29Meet the mayoral candidate: Mark Sutcliffe
CBC’s municipal reporters interviewed all four front-runners in Ottawa’s mayoral race. For the first segment, CBC’s Elyse Skura tells us about incumbent Mark Sutcliffe.
In fact, having Ottawa City Hall in the shadow of Parliament Hill seems a good way to keep an ego in check.
“I do get mistaken for the Prime Minister sometimes,” he said, noting the more famous politician with the same first name is a similar age and build.
Once, he said, a fairly well-known person — whom Sutcliffe would not name — complimented him on his speech in Davos (where that “other Mark,” Mark Carney, called on middle powers to stand up to Trump).
Mark Sutcliffe says he’s been mistaken for Prime Minister Mark Carney more than once. (Mark Sutcliffe/Bluesky)
From newcomer to incumbent
Sutcliffe had a personal guide for his transition into the public sphere.
Robyn Guest spent decades at city hall, working for his predecessor Jim Watson and then managing the transition from Ottawa’s longest-serving mayor to Sutcliffe.
While she planned to move back into the bureaucracy, Guest had become indispensable as a person “who knew everything and everyone” in the building, Sutcliffe said.
He ended up recruiting her as his chief of staff.
“If I had come in as an outsider and brought a whole bunch of outsiders with me, it would have taken a long time to learn the system and build the relationships within the city administration that are required to get things done,” he said.
“We complemented each other.”
Sutcliffe says Robyn Guest, who served as his chief of staff, was indispensible. Her sudden death was an emotional shock that challenged him and his entire team. (Jean Delisle/CBC)
A confidante who managed political crises with ease, Guest was indispensable, Sutcliffe said. It was hard, he added, to imagine work without her.
Then, Guest began to experience symptoms of an illness.
One day in early 2025, she left while Sutcliffe was out at an announcement. Both were unaware she would never return to city hall.
“It was awful,” he said. “Robyn was phenomenal. And I miss her every day and think about her every day.”
Guest died of cancer in October 2025. The morning after her passing, Sutcliffe and Fleury went for an emotional run.
They discussed Guest, what she personally meant to Sutcliffe and his support for her family. But Fleury noted that Sutcliffe knew “stabilizing the [mayor’s] office was job number one.”
Beyond the personal heartbreak, Sutcliffe said it was a good reminder that, in politics, no one is “indispensable.”
“When you have no choice, that’s what you do,” he said. “You just keep going.”
Mark Sutcliffe (right) stands with his family at the end of his 2026 campaign launch. From left to right: Sutcliffe’s son Jack, his wife Ginny, his step-daughter Erica Giustiniani and his daughter Kate. (Submitted by Mark Sutcliffe)
Sutcliffe has always held that he has no aspirations for higher office, though he has hinted he would like to be at city hall for some time.
At his campaign launch, his wife Ginny told the crowd the family knew from the start that a bid for a second term was in the cards.
Surrounded by his 17-year-old son Jack, his 15-year-old daughter Kate and his step-daughter Erica, it’s clear how much they’ve grown — with Ginny quipping that she is now and forever the shortest member of the household.
One relief for Sutcliffe has been that he doesn’t feel it was as difficult a transition for his children as he feared.
“Local politics is a little bit different from provincial or federal politics,” he said. “It’s a friendlier environment.”
(But when asked if Jack and Kate might be inspired to become politicians themselves, Sutcliffe said “I hope not!”)
Mark Sutcliffe attends a mayoral debate held by the Ottawa Board of Trade on Oct. 1. (Michel Aspirot/CBC)
‘A good time, not a long time’
Sutcliffe told CBC he’s “here for a good time, not a long time,” but isn’t ready to forecast when that time may end.
“There’s no term limits in Ottawa,” he told CBC at one of his policy announcements. “If I’m re-elected on October 26, I intend to be in a strong position in 2030 to run again.”
Asked if he would give any advice to his past self, Sutcliffe would only say that time moves faster than you’d expect.
He’s proud of what he sees as progress and his ability not to “sweat the small stuff.”
Sutcliffe celebrates his first birthday with his sister and mother. (Submitted by Mark Sutcliffe)
If anything, he wishes he could spend even more time with his mother, now 95.
“I know she hears about me from her fellow residents at her retirement residence, and they sometimes pass along newspaper clippings … which is very sweet,” he said.
On his way out of the café, Sutcliffe was stopped a few times, including by long-time friends like Harvey Slack who could answer that one recurring question: whether Sutcliffe is the same person he always was.
“Absolutely,” Slack repeated several times, earning a smile from Sutcliffe that lingered as he walked out the door.
Harvey Slack (left) expresses his support for Mark Sutcliffe’s mayoral run during an impromptu meeting at a Wellington West café. (Elyse Skura/CBC)
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