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The candidates vying to become Ottawa’s next mayor have spent the last few months laying out their campaign platforms.
Fourteen people have signed up to run for the city’s top job.
This week, we get to know some of the people behind the policies. Click on the names below to read more.
Alex Lawson is a busy man. He owns a home framing business. He volunteers. He has three daughters.
Ask him what he does to unwind and he talks about his rural property in Dunrobin. But even there, the answer is more work.
“There’s always work to be done there, whether it’s building a new chicken coop or it’s cutting acres of grass or going for a walk in the forest with my girls and my dog,” he said.
Time and again during his campaign, Lawson, 38, has said he’s “been a lot of different people” and “worn a lot of different shoes.”
Alex Lawson owns a home framing business and is now running to become Ottawa’s next mayor. (Arthur White-Crummey/CBC)
Most times Jeff Leiper feels like he’s lived through something big, he gets a tattoo.
One shoulder has an artistic reimagining of the City of Ottawa’s coat of arms to mark his election as a city councillor. His forearm has a heart with a shovel stuck through it to mark a heart attack that struck him while he dug out from a snowstorm in 2019.
Those tattoos lay out some of the twists and turns of a man who’s been through many transformations in his career, in his life and in his politics.
“When I win as mayor, I’ll get another tattoo,” he said.
Jeff Leiper in The Record Centre on Wellington Street W., where he has acquired part of his substantial vinyl collection. (Arthur White-Crummey/CBC)
Economist and former public servant Neil Saravanamuttoo is in his “happy place” combing through financial spreadsheets, but this mayoral candidate is anything but a timid number cruncher who wants to stay in the background.
Despite spending most of his career in government, he’s branded himself as an outsider, an anti-establishment candidate who rails against “special interests” taking over Ottawa city hall.
People who know him describe him as a creative thinker, and he’s framed his campaign around finding out-of-the-box solutions.
“The importance of relationships is key,” said Saravanamuttoo. “We can’t achieve things working alone.”
Neil Saravanamuttoo lives in the Glebe with his wife Kimberley. His two daughters, 20 and 22, are studying in other cities. (Francis Ferland/CBC)
Looking back on his first term as Ottawa’s mayor, Mark Sutcliffe hopes the job hasn’t changed him.
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.
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.
Mark Sutcliffe says his life has been busier since he entered politics, but he hopes he hasn’t changed. (Elyse Skura/CBC)