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Safety and transit issues got a lot of airtime at a Knoxdale-Merivale city councillor candidate debate Thursday evening.<\/p>\n
Roughly 200 Knoxdale-Merivale residents crowded into the Nepean Sportsplex to question and hear from the three candidates vying for the suburban ward west of the core.<\/p>\n
Former playwright, theatre director and community association president Sean Devine is trying for a second term representing the area’s roughly 40,000 residents.<\/p>\n
Devine faces Cole Fraser Jones, who was an electronic-optronic technician in the military and now manages infrastructure modernization projects for a federal department, and Anna Ielo-Tal, a federal public servant. <\/p>\n
Devine and Ielo-Tal clashed following last month’s debate after claims of bullying.<\/a><\/p>\n Recently, some of Devine’s council colleagues have taken the unusual step of openly campaigning against him and for Ielo-Tal<\/a>.<\/p>\n Safety and police spending<\/p>\n When asked what steps they would take to improve neighbourhood safety, Devine mentioned his past stances on the Ottawa police budget. <\/p>\n While he supported the last police budget, he voted against three others.<\/p>\n “They always say ‘Well give me more money and I’ll fix it.’ And I got really tired of that response.” <\/p>\n “Sometimes community safety is nothing more than getting a new street light.”<\/p>\n Residents gathered at Nepean Sportsplex on Thursday to watch a debate between Ward 9 candidates. (Emma Weller\/CBC)<\/p>\n Ielo-tal pushed back.<\/p>\n “I would never not support the police budget. I’m not sure why Sean did, but that’s something I would always support,” she said.<\/p>\n Fraser Jones expressed doubts around Devine’s street light comment and said he wouldn’t support a police budget increase.<\/p>\n “Just putting street lights up, it might help, but in a lot of cases some of these folks are pretty brazen and it just makes the criminal activity a lot better lit for them.”<\/p>\n Transit changes<\/p>\n On the topic of transit, candidates agreed that change is needed both in the ward and across the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Transit is a mess,” said Ielo-Tal. “What I would do is I would really advocate to bring back express buses.”<\/p>\n She said that transit was once reliable and faster in the ward and it is essential to return to that.\u00a0<\/p>\n “When the bus says it’s going to come, it actually has to come,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Devine agreed, stating that “reliability is far more important than the bus affordability.”<\/p>\n “So Anna made reference to bringing back the express busses that you used to ride \u2026 We lost [route] 282 with New Ways to Bus<\/a>, or as I call it ‘New Ways to Lose Riders.’ I worked very very hard with OC Transpo, we got that express bus back,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fraser Jones cited light rail problems and said there needs to be political accountability.<\/p>\n “Unfortunately the tracks [have to] get torn up,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n “What I’m hoping, for whoever inevitably wins the mayor’s seat this time around, that they’ll use the strong mayor powers to turn council into a cabinet model and appoint a councillor as secretary of transit.”<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792166178_701_default.jpg\")
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