{"id":917841,"date":"2026-10-02T12:48:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T12:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/917841\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T12:48:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T12:48:20","slug":"dynamic-race-underway-to-see-who-will-be-ottawas-next-mayor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/917841\/","title":{"rendered":"Dynamic race underway to see who will be Ottawa\u2019s next mayor"},"content":{"rendered":"

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An OC Transpo light rail train makes its way along Line 1, in Ottawa, on Aug. 14. Transit is a top-of-mind issue for local voters ahead of the Oct. 26 election.Justin Tang\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Federal politics and Parliament dominate the typical Canadian perspective on Ottawa<\/a>, the nation\u2019s capital. The phrase \u201cOttawa says\u201d has long been synonymous with decisions by the federal government. <\/p>\n

But, with municipal elections across Ontario on Oct. 26, Ottawa voters are getting set to make decisions of their own, including choosing who will be the next mayor of their city, the second-most populous in Ontario and home to more than one million people. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a debate underway about who can best manage the issues that are top-of-mind for local voters, including crime, homelessness, public disorder, transit and municipal taxation.<\/p>\n

Although there are 14 names on the mayoral ballot, polling shows that incumbent Mark Sutcliffe is facing a concerted challenge from at least three of the candidates: veteran city councillor Jeff Leiper; businessman Alex Lawson; and Neil Saravanamuttoo, a former senior economist with the federal Finance Department. <\/p>\n

Pollster David Valentin, the principal at Liaison Strategies, says the mayoral race in Ottawa is one of the most interesting ones in Ontario right now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems more competitive,\u201d he said in an interview. \u201cI think, all things being equal, that [Sutcliffe] will probably get re-elected. The field is so split, it seems unlikely to me that that would not be the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a big field of candidates, Mr. Valentin said that Mr. Sutcliffe could win another term with 35 per cent or so of the vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the chemistry is there that something interesting could happen. There could be an upset.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe in April. Polling ahead of the election shows incumbent Mr. Sutcliffe is facing a concerted challenge from at least three candidates.Keito Newman\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Whoever wins on Oct. 26 gets to govern a municipal area created by the provincial government in 2001 to combine the former Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton and 11 other municipalities into a single city.<\/p>\n

Canada has many large cities, but only one national capital. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a city unlike any other in Canada,\u201d said Mr. Sutcliffe, a former broadcaster who was new to politics when he was first elected in 2022. He succeeded Jim Watson who had a 14\u00bd-year run over two stints between 1997 and 2022.<\/p>\n

The city faces Quebec on the other side of the Ottawa River. Key players that any mayor has to deal with include the federal government and the National Capital Commission, a federal Crown corporation that manages 11 per cent of all the land in the capital region, on both the Ontario and Quebec sides of the river. Ottawa is also home to scores of embassies and diplomatic residences. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a unique city with unique challenges, but it\u2019s also a big city with many of the same challenges as other big cities in Canada,\u201d said Mr. Sutcliffe. <\/p>\n

Mr. Valentin has tracked traffic, transit and city spending affecting property taxes as issues in the mayoral race. And there\u2019s crime. \u201cPerceived, increased homelessness, whether it\u2019s real or not. Graffiti. All of these things are feeding into a feedback loop now where people are increasingly telling us they feel unsafe in different parts of the city,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Key rivals for the mayor\u2019s job are pushing the narrative that Mr. Sutcliffe has been idle, which he rejects by citing movement on a number of files.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we have gotten a lot done in the last four years.\u201d<\/p>\n

He notes his administration has negotiated an agreement with the province that would see Ontario Premier Doug Ford<\/a>\u2019s government take on responsibility for the O-Train LRT; has ordered scores of new buses; enjoyed solid relations with the federal and provincial governments; hired more police officers; and committed to end youth homelessness by 2030.<\/p>\n

Six Ottawa Liberal MPs, including Defence Minister David McGuinty and former treasury board president Mona Fortier, have issued a statement in support of him.<\/p>\n

Five prominent conservatives, including former federal cabinet ministers John Baird and Lisa Raitt, did the same.<\/p>\n

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A homeless man sets up his tent outside the Bank of Canada in Ottawa in August, 2024. A 2024 city-led count found that 2,952 people were experiencing homelessness in the nation\u2019s capital.Dave Chan\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

In an interview, Mr. Sutcliffe acknowledged visible downtown homelessness, a concern for many. \u201cI understand why residents feel that way because it does feel, at times, like the problem is growing faster than the solutions we are able to provide,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the reality, not just in Ottawa, but elsewhere,\u201d he said. \u201cIt does feel, at times, like whenever we help one person, there\u2019s another person who is in need of help and that\u2019s why we need to step up our efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 2024 city-led count found 2,952 people experiencing homelessness in the nation\u2019s capital, up slightly from 2,612 in the previous count in 2021. <\/p>\n

Mr. Leiper, a city councillor for 12 years, has pledged to boost crisis response in Ottawa to help tackle homelessness, and says he would build more supportive housing on city-owned land for people who are relying on shelters, as well as more affordable not-for-profit housing. <\/p>\n

As part of a wider investment program in city services, he would restore bus routes cut under Mr. Sutcliffe\u2019s tenure.<\/p>\n

Mr. Leiper said he is \u201copen to some affordable and predictable tax increases\u201d to raise the $12-million required to pay for the buses, as well as to cover other costs. But he says the claim by Mr. Sutcliffe that he is planning 7-,8- or 9-per-cent tax increases is not true. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy commitment is not to do that. My tax increase will be affordable, and my tax increase will be predictable,\u201d he said, so there are not \u201cbig spikes.\u201d <\/p>\n

In an interview, Mr. Leiper says there is a currently a $10.8-billion funding gap to maintain the city\u2019s infrastructure, including roads, sewers and community recreation centres. On top of tax rises, he would introduce an infrastructure levy, estimated at about $40 per Ottawa household a year, to maintain repairs, raising $25-million annually. <\/p>\n

Mr. Leiper says bringing in money for infrastructure improvements will provide greater leverage with the federal and provincial governments when it comes to asking for funding. <\/p>\n

Although their political styles may be different, Mr. Leiper believes he could work with Premier Ford. <\/p>\n

He would seek to build a \u201cproductive and good\u201d relationship with Mr. Ford but be \u201cmore vocally firm with Queen\u2019s Park\u201d than Mr. Sutcliffe has been about the needs of Ottawa residents, he said. <\/p>\n

Ottawa\u2019s intransigent homelessness and addiction problem is a focus of the mayoral campaign of Mr. Lawson, a 38-year-old carpenter who runs a company building wooden frames for houses in the capital. <\/p>\n

His campaign headquarters is in the heart of Chinatown, near a now-shuttered safe injection site, with dozens of addicts milling about the streets nearby. <\/p>\n

Not only do such clusters of addicts keep customers from downtown businesses, Mr. Lawson says, but drugs are fuelling crime and kids on their way to school are finding needles on the street. The failure to adequately address the problem is also a blight on the lives of addicts, who deserve help, he says. <\/p>\n

Mr. Lawson has consulted addicts themselves and spent time with outreach teams, shelters and the police to try to find answers. If elected, he says he would build a rehab facility that would provide wrap-around supports, including training to get people back into the workplace and help to find housing. <\/p>\n

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Candidate Alex Lawson says his upbringing in a lower-income Ottawa neighbourhood and his business experience give him a multidimensional perspective on the city\u2019s needs.Charlie Woolf\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

He said, in an interview, that his upbringing in a lower-income Ottawa neighbourhood and his business experience give him a multidimensional perspective on the city\u2019s needs, including on public transport. One of his first acts, if elected, would be to reintroduce express bus routes. <\/p>\n

His most eye-catching policy has been his pledge to remove every on-street parking meter in the city, saying they are deterring residents from shopping on metered streets. <\/p>\n

Mr. Lawson says he never saw himself getting into politics. He voted for Mr. Sutcliffe last time but was looking for an alternative after seeing no tangible improvements on crime, traffic, transit and affordability and \u201cseeing nobody.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt started as a joke a couple of times. People saying, \u201cWell, why don\u2019t you do it? Eventually it was just like, you know what – why don\u2019t I do it?\u201d <\/p>\n

Mr. Saravanamuttoo said he was driven to run for mayor after trying to influence municipal policy as a community organizer. But he found working from the outside just did not lead to the changes he wanted to see. <\/p>\n

His flagship \u201cbuck a ride\u201d policy for public transit will, he says, attract more people to use the system and cost the city $83-million a year. <\/p>\n

To address Ottawa\u2019s lack of affordable housing and prohibitively high rents, the economist wants the city to invest heavily in public housing not just for low-income residents but for middle-income residents as well. Rather than creating more suburban sprawl, with its attendant infrastructure costs, he believes more housing could be built on surplus municipal and federal land near the centre of the city. <\/p>\n

And to address the capital\u2019s homeless problem, Mr. Saravanamuttoo wants to build a \u201cvillage\u201d of micro homes made of shipping containers as a transitional fix until permanent housing can be found for unhoused people. He has yet to seize on a location for this but says such projects have been established successfully in New Brunswick and nearby in Gatineau.<\/p>\n

\u201cLocation is going to be key,\u201d he said in an interview. \u201cIt is something that needs to be quite frankly discussed and negotiated with residents of Ottawa.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: An OC Transpo light rail train makes its way along Line 1, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":917842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739,714],"class_list":["post-917841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/917842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}