Random Acts of Urbanism

Timing note: Between recording the podcast and broadcasting it, this poll came out.

TL;DR: plus full transcript below.

* The flood delay: the province says the mayor’s office took 8 days to request assistance after the July 1 flood. Leiper’s campaign wants the paper trail — potential October surprise, and Brigitte notes that just asking the question may be damage enough.

* 27,553 early voters: up 46% from 2022, 76% from 2018. Only the Leiper campaign told Brigitte they’re happy with their early-voter data — a confident ground game. High turnout favors challengers.

* The engaged are really engaged: notebook-toting crowds at Saravanamuttoo events, young volunteers canvassing for Leiper. But most voters will still vote on trust and name recognition, not policy (see: Gore vs. Bush, 2000).

* Watch the undecideds: a third of voters were undecided in summer polling. If they’ve broken, they’ve likely broken away from the mayor. The coming public poll tells all.

* The soft-win scenario: Sutcliffe could win with 32–36% — “a win is a win, but it’s a soft win,” and a diminished mandate has council colleagues already eyeing 2030.

* Lawson’s week: the zero-tax-increase plan is “beautiful politics” — his big beautiful idea — and his homelessness/addiction treatment plan is one Brigitte wants every candidate to steal.

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Transcript:

Brigitte Pellerin (00:00): Hi everyone. Hi Evan. How are you doing this week?

Evan Potter (00:04): Great. I’m doing great this week. And you know why I’m doing great this week?

Brigitte Pellerin (00:07): Tell me. Tell the people why you’re doing great this week.

Evan Potter (00:12): Because I know there is at least one public poll coming up. And there may be more — it could be up to three public polls. One for sure.

Brigitte Pellerin (00:16): Woo. All right.

Evan Potter (00:24): We’re going to find out things, Brigitte. Things will be confirmed — or things will be contradicted. But there will be —

Brigitte Pellerin (00:28): Is that all you want to say for now?

(00:35) No, that’s great. You’re making everyone sit on this cliffhanger so they have to watch us again next week. It’s perfect. Great marketing. You’re the best.

Evan Potter (00:41): There might be a real surprise.

Brigitte Pellerin (00:47): Well — before I go into what we decided to talk about this week, just one thing about what came out earlier this week. I believe it was Tuesday.

The minister responsible — I forget her first name; Dunlop is her last name — was explaining that, you know, with the floods, the July 1 flood. When there’s a problem like this and the city requests the assistance of the provincial government with an extreme event, it’s up to the city to request assistance. That’s the way things work in this country.

(01:17) But the provinces typically will remind the city that there are resources available. And so this is what happened. As we understand it, as we record this, the province did remind the city that there were resources available.

And apparently — not confirmed, but this is from the mouth of the minister of the Ontario government — the mayor’s office took eight days to request assistance after the July 1 flood.

I don’t know why they would do that. So Jeff Leiper’s campaign is asking for the paper trail showing that.

(01:55) If indeed it is true — and I don’t know why she’d be lying about this on camera — but if that is true, there has to be a really, really good reason why it took eight days to request assistance. Because the people whose basements were flooded, they won’t find it funny at all.

Evan Potter (02:08): I’m sure there’s an explanation. And the only question now is whether the Leiper campaign can get the paperwork before election day.

Brigitte Pellerin (02:17): Maybe they don’t need that. Because if you sow enough doubt in voters’ minds that there was a delay, and that it’s unexplained as of yet — that’s enough. I don’t think you need the paper trail.

Evan Potter (02:26): But the media needs the paper trail.

Brigitte Pellerin (02:30): Of course. But for people to decide how they want to vote, maybe just asking the question is enough damage to the Sutcliffe campaign. So maybe that’s our October surprise. We’ll find out.

(02:37) Meanwhile — and I want to say that we’ve been saying this all wrong. This was not the advance poll. The advance poll is October sixteenth. What we had last week was early voting. Am I correct?

Evan Potter (02:54): Yes, that’s correct.

Brigitte Pellerin (02:57): Not that it really matters. Anyway, we had four days of early voting.

(03:02) And I think we may have — I don’t know if it’s a record we’ve beaten, but let’s call it a high-water mark. We had 27,553 voters who voted in those early voting days last week. Which is a 46 per cent increase from four years ago, and a 76 per cent increase from eight years ago, 2018. So that’s a good number.

(03:18) Now, I have to say something for folks who may not understand how this works.

So Elections Ottawa — big shout-out. I love these people. They do the work of angels and they’re great. When you go and vote, please thank them for their work. That’s all they really — they don’t get paid that much to do this work, and it’s critically important.

Anyway: when Elections Ottawa tallies everything, they share with all the campaigns a list of who voted in those early voting days. But of course, they don’t say anything about how those people voted.

(03:47) So the campaigns get the list of who voted early. And then I’m assuming they cross-reference it with their own list of known supporters — people who told them yes, who have a sign on the front lawn, who said I’m going to vote for you, or I might vote for you. So they have those lists, and that gives them an indication of how they’re doing in their campaign. Because if their voters have already voted for them — that’s good.

(04:21) Well. All the campaigns have my number. They know how to get hold of me. And there’s only one that reached out to say they were happy with the data they received from Elections Ottawa. That’s the Jeff Leiper campaign.

Evan Potter (04:36): Okay. That’s the open and transparent campaign.

Brigitte Pellerin (04:39): That’s right. And so I’m sharing this — the campaign is, how could I say this, going into this holiday weekend feeling confident that their voters are going out and doing what they said they would do, which is vote for Jeff Leiper. That’s my interpretation of the message I received earlier.

But if that’s true in the other campaigns — guys, you can reach out. If you’re also happy with your numbers, I’d love to report that.

(05:00) It’s an interesting phenomenon. And it goes to what we’ve been saying for weeks: what Jeff Leiper needed was a superior ground game.

Evan Potter (05:20): Not just superior. Incredible.

Brigitte Pellerin (05:23): Okay. And a dissatisfaction with Mark Sutcliffe, and everyone else voting strategically for Leiper.

Evan Potter (05:27): Yes, of course. And a lot of people loving Alex Lawson. He needed those things together. He needs an incredible ground game, an unbelievable ground game — and he needs Alex Lawson in the high twenties. That’s what he needs.

Brigitte Pellerin (05:47): Right. So we’ll find out about that part, the Lawson numbers — and I believe that’s what you want to talk about, how that’s the one number we should all look at. But if all of this is happening, then we may be looking at an upset.

Evan Potter (06:02): You may be very, very happy.

(06:06) But just a comment on the early voting. 27,000 — that’s great, it’s a high number. Let’s say there are three hundred and thirty thousand people who vote on October twenty-sixth. So that’s about eight per cent, nine per cent — don’t call me on the math — somewhere between eight and ten per cent who’ve gone for the early vote.

(06:30) I was told this week by someone that a higher percentage of Toronto municipal voters went to the polls for the early vote. Just an interesting factoid — that more Toronto voters, as a percentage of the total vote, took advantage of their early vote.

Brigitte Pellerin (06:54): This means something. We just don’t know what it is.

Evan Potter (06:57): But let’s carry it through. Let’s say the high early vote is an indicator of an unusually high turnout on voting day. It doesn’t mean it will be — but let’s play a thought game.

High voter turnout is good for challengers. Low voter turnout is good for incumbents.

Brigitte Pellerin (07:21): Always. That’s right.

(07:26) That’s usually true. It won’t be true in the US midterms, but it’s usually true — because the Republican voters are not going to go out. That’s my point. Anyway, we don’t need to talk about this, because this is a municipal podcast.

Evan Potter (07:34): So that’s no surprise. Mark Sutcliffe is running a status quo campaign. His campaign would prefer there to be a lower voter turnout, of course.

Brigitte Pellerin (07:42): Of course.

(07:48) Just again for numbers: last election the voter turnout was 43-ish per cent. And it was up a little bit, because the one before that was 41 or 42-ish.

And I’m gunning for 45. I’d like to keep this increasing, and to be reasonable in my ambitions — I’d love to have over 50 per cent, but maybe in a couple of cycles we can have that.

(08:10) But here’s what I’m noticing, and this is the subject of my upcoming Ottawa Citizen column. I’ve been going out to events, canvasses, town halls, church basements, what have you — and we’ve been at some of the same ones; we see each other in real life.

What I’ve noticed is — I don’t want to say there are huge numbers of people very engaged with the campaign, because that’s not true. But the people who are engaged are really engaged. And that crystallized for me maybe about a week ago. The intensity.

Evan Potter (08:49): Intensity.

Brigitte Pellerin (08:52): I mentioned last week on the pod that I see people showing up at Neil Saravanamuttoo’s events with notebooks, scribbling notes, and then they stand up to speak and they have stories to illustrate what their dissatisfaction is with the city and the services it provides.

(09:00) And we were together — Jeff Leiper had a canvass with Catherine McKenney, the NDP MPP for Ottawa Centre, in the Glebe. So obviously, friendly Jeff territory.

Evan Potter (09:20): Nice meeting Catherine McKenney for the first time.

Brigitte Pellerin (09:24): It was great. I’m glad you finally got to meet them.

So we followed along a little on the canvass. But what really impressed me was the group of volunteers showing up to canvass with Jeff — and how young they are.

And you know me, I’m the terminally curious person. I’m constantly asking: why are you here? Tell me what makes you come out and knock on people’s doors.

(09:40) And the fact that people are interested, and younger — I don’t want to betray their confidence, this was not for the record — but the overwhelming impression I’m getting is that young people, especially the ones volunteering on Jeff Leiper’s campaign, are engaged and interested in having a better city. Better for them, more affordable. They have different priorities among themselves, but generally speaking, they want something better.

(10:20) And the status quo politics we’ve had, where politicians promise you goodies — I don’t think that’s working with those younger folks. I know it’s not working with people my kids’ age. My kids don’t like that. They feel like: what are you taking me for? Some stupid person who’ll just vote for you because you promised me something — you dangle a little piece of candy in front of me? What the heck is that?

They don’t like it. They want a city that engages them. That values their voice and their opinions.

(10:50) They understand democracy, and that you don’t always win. But at least if you feel like your voice was heard and considered, and then you lose the vote because it’s majority rule — you’re okay with that. It’s when you feel like nobody wants to hear from you until it’s time for you to take the little candy and go vote in the right spot.

That kind of politics — which you and I are used to, because, not to age ourselves, but we’re older than that — I don’t think is working anymore.

Now, I could be wishful-thinking out loud again, and probably I am for this cycle. But I think there’s a sea change coming, and I’m delighted to see it.

Evan Potter (11:25): I want the world to be like your world. It’s a beautiful world. It’s an ideal world.

(11:37) I would say that this is normal campaigning. Now, in a municipal election context where you have six months — it’s not like a federal or provincial campaign of four or five weeks.

Brigitte Pellerin (11:48): It’s five weeks.

Evan Potter (11:50): Sure. As Kim Campbell is famously said to have said about a campaign being no place to discuss — I’m garbling it —

Brigitte Pellerin (12:01): Serious arguments. Serious issues, I believe it was.

Evan Potter (12:04): Serious arguments. In a municipal context, with five months, you can have the engagement you’re talking about.

(12:10) But what I think we’re seeing — my inbox is flooded with Mark Sutcliffe messages of candies, and candies from the other campaigns too. Policy candies, as you said. Goodies and candies.

And I think it works. It doesn’t work for you and me and the other ten per cent of voters — that cohort of very highly informed voting public. But these goodies work on single-issue voters, low-information voters, people who won’t be thinking about the election until the day or the hour before they go to the polling station.

(12:50) And do you know what they’re thinking? They’re thinking: who’s familiar? Literally, who am I familiar with? I’m familiar with the mayor, but I don’t recognize these other names. I’ve never heard of these other people. I’m doing my civic duty — I’m going to vote for the mayor. Or: I want change. What are my choices?

They’re not thinking policy, the specifics. What’s the difference between Neil’s transit plan and Jeff Leiper’s and Alex Lawson’s? They’re not thinking that. The academic literature tells us this: they’re thinking about trust. Whom do I trust more?

(13:38) Al Gore was an egghead — egghead meaning a brain. Bill Clinton’s former vice-president, who was then the candidate in the 2000 US federal election. I think most people thought Al Gore was smarter than George W. Bush.

Brigitte Pellerin (13:45): He’s sharp.

Evan Potter (13:46): But they trusted George Bush more than Al Gore.

Brigitte Pellerin (13:51): Which is a weird thing to say, but you’re right. I mean, they voted for him.

Evan Potter (13:55): And it was not about policy. Al Gore had all the policy. He was the policy wonk. He was the policy nerd.

Brigitte Pellerin (14:00): He’d grown up in it, too. His father was a senator from Tennessee. Mind you, George W. Bush’s father had been president and vice-president, but —

Evan Potter (14:10): But Al Gore came in after eight years of Bill Clinton, one of the most popular presidents in the United States. And it was a nail-biter. The Supreme Court basically decided the 2000 US election.

Brigitte Pellerin (14:18): Remember the hanging chads? What a world.

Evan Potter (14:27): It just tells you — not in every case, not in every election — but it’s not the smartest guy who will win, or the guy with the best policy. It’s that trust factor, or the change factor.

(14:43) So that’s what I’m looking for. That’s my metric: do you trust this candidate more than the other one? Because if I trust you, Brigitte, I’ll trust that your policy decisions, once you’re mayor or councillor, are going to be the best policy decisions.

Brigitte Pellerin (15:05): Right. So this is where I’m going to push back just a little bit. Not really — because you’re right, that’s the history, that’s the academic work, and historically it’s true.

But I’m going to flip it around a little. There’s also the question of people who are just now starting to tune into this campaign. And there are a lot of them. I know, because they come to me.

Evan Potter (15:25): Most people. Yeah.

Brigitte Pellerin (15:29): They ask what I think.

And they’re starting to think about it and going: okay, I know my life, I know my situation. One friend was talking to me about this just last night, saying it doesn’t really affect him — his house is paid for, they have two incomes, they’re living comfortably. It doesn’t really matter to them who’s in charge, because they’re paying their tax bill and they don’t really —

So I asked this friend: then how do you decide who to vote for? Not sure yet.

(16:12) So maybe then, if you’re in that kind of situation, you start to think: do I trust the guy who’s currently in charge? Do I like the way this guy makes decisions? Because when push comes to shove — any idiot can make you promises. I can show you a three-year-old who’ll promise to clean his room and not do it. Any idiot can make a promise.

It’s how do you govern. How do you make decisions when there’s a hard decision, a hard call you didn’t expect.

(16:37) And so people are asking those questions about the incumbent too. I think that’s true in every other election — which is why I say I’m not really pushing back against you. I’m highlighting this other element.

And my sense — and it’s a vibe reading, okay — my sense, and I’m looking forward to that new poll, is that we have so far underestimated how unimpressed most, maybe not most, but a plurality of Ottawa residents are with the mayor.

(17:06) It’s not that he’s a bad person. He’s not completely wrong. But he’s also not great. That’s very much the vibe I’m getting. And people are actively looking for someone else they could trust with it.

And I don’t know — Alex Lawson, being 38 years old, may not benefit from a lot of immediate trust. A lot of people like what he has to say, though. They want him to stay involved even if he doesn’t win, which, you know, is pretty likely. And then it comes down to Neil versus Jeff.

Evan Potter (17:38): So, as I’ve said before, my take at this stage of the campaign — in the final stretch — is that both Neil and Alex have overperformed. They’ve exceeded expectations.

Jeff Leiper needed to overperform against the mayor, because he’s automatically the underdog but the most serious contender. And he didn’t overperform.

Brigitte Pellerin (18:07): Not that we know so far. That’s why those polls are going to be —

Evan Potter (18:09): When I say overperform, I mean as a candidate, visibly, to us. He might yet have a ground game that has exceeded all expectations and delivers — and maybe that’s his narrow path to victory. But he hasn’t overperformed in the public domain, in my view.

And the mayor didn’t need to overperform. He just had to make sure he didn’t make any major mistakes. And he hasn’t — he’s a careful person. He hasn’t made any major mistakes.

And he can still — well, we’ll see the polls. That’s why I need to see that public poll.

Brigitte Pellerin (18:45): I want to say something, because the polls we’ve had so far — excluding the one in September, which was just weird — all the other ones, the Liaison tracking polls, showed by and large a third of voters undecided.

What if these people have since decided, and they’ve gone away from the mayor?

Evan Potter (19:03): Right.

Brigitte Pellerin (19:06): Do you remember? I said this — I believe in July. My theory was that this high a number of undecided, this late in the campaign, is an indication that people don’t want to vote for the incumbent. They’re just not sure who to vote for instead.

And they may now have made that choice. So I’m so curious to see where those people will have distributed, if they have distributed, in the next poll.

Evan Potter (19:30): Excellent point, Brigitte. I totally agree. Again, comparing to Toronto — Ottawa had a much higher undecided than Toronto. A third. And even going into September, that non-probability-based poll had it at twenty-eight per cent. So still really a third.

(19:50) So I’ll be looking for a lot of indicators in the upcoming public poll. And obviously we’re all going to be looking at the undecided, which should, in theory, by now be down to twenty per cent. Usually in the last week it’s ten per cent. But maybe down to twenty.

I share your view that a lot more Ottawans do not want Mark Sutcliffe to be mayor than his campaign probably thinks.

Brigitte Pellerin (20:24): And it’s also entirely possible — not to depress them, not that they care — it’s also possible that these undecideds who don’t really feel like voting for Mark Sutcliffe might vote for Mark Sutcliffe anyway, because having surveyed the field, they believe there’s nobody who’d be better. That’s also a possible read of the situation. And many people may just do that.

(20:49) But again, that goes to what we were saying last week. Even if Mark Sutcliffe wins with a much diminished mandate — if his mandate is weak because he wins with a tiny number.

Even the Parti Québécois won the Quebec election this past week with less than 30 per cent of the vote. This is mind-blowing.

So what if the mayor of Ottawa wins with that kind of mark — thirty per cent, thirty-two per cent —

Evan Potter (21:18): Thirty-two, thirty-three to thirty-six.

Brigitte Pellerin (21:21): — and say a full third of the people who voted for him did it on the basis of I guess, because I don’t like the others. That’s not a huge mandate. It’s soft.

A win is a win is a win — but it’s a soft win.

Evan Potter (21:32): A win is a win here. And in Ontario we don’t have municipal parties, so it’s the individual. And of course, if he does win with a substantially diminished vote share, his team and his office are going to make sure we try to forget that very quickly.

Brigitte Pellerin (21:57): Well, of course. I would do the same thing. That’s fair enough. It’s the game.

Evan Potter (22:00): The question is: does that matter to his council colleagues, his allies, and the people who are not that supportive of him getting a second mandate?

Brigitte Pellerin (22:08): Especially those council colleagues who are thinking of their own run for mayor four years from now.

Evan Potter (22:13): Absolutely. Some of those council colleagues are already starting to think seriously — to strategize about 2030.

Brigitte Pellerin (22:18): Strategize and position themselves.

So that’s the thing. If Mark Sutcliffe wins again, he’s going to be watching his back the whole entire time. People are coming for him.

Evan Potter (22:28): Or — if he doesn’t intend to run again, it doesn’t matter. He just has to do a decent job until 2030 and then go on to the next phase of his life.

(22:47) Brigitte: Alex Lawson, zero tax increase in 2027. What do you think?

Brigitte Pellerin (22:52): Okay, so first of all — I have the privilege of getting embargoed copies of things. So I got this policy the night before, because that’s what journalists get. We’re used to that.

And I had just played a long game of frisbee, and it was 10:30 at night when I got home and I saw this. And it was not great to look at — I don’t like numbers. So I was a little bit unhappy about it. But nobody cares.

(23:10) Look — the zero per cent thing. I think a lot of people have dismissed this out of hand as irresponsible or unreasonable or unrealistic. And it may very well be.

But politics-wise? Man, did he hit it. Bullseye.

Evan Potter (23:30): Absolutely. I talked to somebody on his campaign and I said: I don’t think, policy-wise, this is really smart. I don’t think this is smart policy — but it’s beautiful politics. It’s just beautiful politics. And people talk about it.

Brigitte Pellerin (23:45): And it worked. People talked about it. And he got attacked for it, which is great for his brand.

He played the game like a guy who’s been playing the game for a very long time. And he’s not — I mean, some of the people around him, including his half-brother Emrys, have been around politics for a long time. So they know the game, and they’re playing it super well.

Evan Potter (24:09): Guess what? It’s a big beautiful idea. Where have I heard that before? I wanted a big beautiful idea, and Alex Lawson delivered one right to my door.

Brigitte Pellerin (24:14): You wanted one, you’ve got one now.

(24:21) And I wrote about it, and I got a number of interesting comments — including from people saying: well, I don’t know if it’s any crazier than Mark Sutcliffe’s two-point-five per cent cap. It’s just pushing it to its logical conclusion.

Evan Potter (24:36): Guess what, Brigitte? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If Mark Sutcliffe can present, with a straight face, obviously artificially low annual tax hikes — then why can’t one of the candidates for office go one further?

Brigitte Pellerin (24:56): Go one further.

Evan Potter (24:58): So listening to the mayor stumble through his rebuttal amused me. He doesn’t have any leg to stand on.

Brigitte Pellerin (25:06): It triggered me, because he brought back Larry O’Brien. And I want to forget Larry O’Brien.

Evan Potter (25:10): He can bring back Larry O’Brien all he wants. This is good politics. He knows it.

Brigitte Pellerin (25:18): It was brilliant politics. I’m not going to mince words. It was great.

Evan Potter (25:21): The Sutcliffe campaign team knows it. They’re just going to have to deal with that now.

Now — how many points will it add to Alex? We don’t know. We’d have to test it. And that’s why I want to see the public polling coming up.

Brigitte Pellerin (25:36): I want to give him some points too, Lawson — because the next day he came out with another one. And again, I got that one the night before as well, also after playing frisbee, but this one didn’t have as many numbers. It was the one on homelessness, drug use, and help for people struggling with drug addiction and seeking treatment.

And that’s something I knew was coming, because I’d had discussions with him about it.

(26:18) Of all the candidates — especially the candidates who haven’t had a lot of experience in municipal politics — he’s done his homework, by going around with people in the field. Including people who used to live on the street, used to be homeless, used to be addicted to drugs.

And I think there’s something there. I’m not the expert. But when I read his proposal, and when I heard him talk about this stuff —

(26:39) And I want everyone to steal this idea, regardless of who wins. Right now we keep putting band-aids on situations. We put people in shelters, we put them somewhere. But when someone says I want better for my life, I want to get clean, I want help, help me somebody — and not everyone is ready, but when someone is — we don’t have the resources. We don’t have the beds, in the sense of beds and the wraparound services. We don’t have enough of that.

Some of that is up to the province. But it’s time for the city to take leadership on this and really go strongly in that direction.

(27:10) And I’m not saying Lawson’s plan is the right one — I’m not the expert. But it sounds good to me. And I would like everyone to steal it. We need to help these people. You can’t just move them from shelter to shelter and not help them when they are ready to live differently and get their lives back on track. It’s the least we can do.

And it’s also smart economically. Because once these people’s lives are back on track, they can get a job and work and be productive and pay taxes.

So that was Alex Lawson’s week, I think.

Evan Potter (27:39): I think it was. And now what I’d like to see is: how does he top that? Can he top the zero tax increase in ‘27 with another proposal?

Because this is the raw politics. Let’s face it — the last three weeks, two and a half weeks, it’s going to be raw politics.

Brigitte Pellerin (27:56): This is where it starts to get rough.

Evan Potter (28:00): You can expect two things happening concurrently. There’s the ground game — get out the vote, obviously. And then trying to stand out, to show contrast.

But ultimately voters are going to feel just a blizzard of policy proposals. Contradictory. Confusing. You and I and the other ten per cent of informed Ottawans will try to distill them and figure them out. But the vast majority of voters can’t, and won’t.

Brigitte Pellerin (28:34): They don’t have time. It’s a lot, in fact.

Evan Potter (28:37): So, as I said at the beginning, they’re going to go with the person they recognize. That name recognition.

Brigitte Pellerin (28:44): And trust.

Evan Potter (28:44): And I have to say that local Ottawa media have been doing a pretty good job over the last 90 days in giving Leiper, Saravanamuttoo and Lawson coverage.

Brigitte Pellerin (28:54): Including the op-eds in the Ottawa Citizen, which allow each candidate, unfiltered, to make their pitch. Same length, same format, go.

Evan Potter (29:02): They’ve got a lot of media coverage — the media hasn’t ignored them. Those four leading candidates.

(29:10) And I don’t suggest that the other ten candidates, or nine, or however many are left, are fringe candidates. I’m just saying that we’re talking about the four leading candidates.

Brigitte Pellerin (29:19): They’re protest candidates. Let’s put it that way.

All right — listen, we’re almost out of time. So next week I want us to talk a little more about the local races.

And in the meantime, I want to wish you and everyone watching a very happy Thanksgiving long weekend. Talk to you next week. Bye.

Evan Potter (29:32): Yes — happy Thanksgiving. We’ll see you next week. Bye-bye.

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I asked the three main challengers what they thought of Mark Sutcliffe’s $10-billion infrastructure plan. Neil Saravanamuttoo did not answer, but we can safely assume he’s not especially impressed.

Jeff Leiper: “Sutcliffe’s infrastructure plan is a hodge-podge of projects already approved by Council, projects Council has already rejected, and projects that depend on funds not yet (and maybe never) secured. Revenues available to build infrastructure will be reduced under his reckless tax cap promise and fulfilling his promises will require massive cuts to other city spending. Leiper's commitment is to increase the funding available for infrastructure projects with a $46 yearly levy on households. “Sutcliffe's plan is a wish list, not a budget. We've tried his approach for four years, and our infrastructure fell further behind. Ottawa deserves a mayor who tells the truth about what it costs.”

Alex Lawson: “Mark had 4 years to invest in critical infrastructure but instead he let it rot in the ground while he spent our money on things we didn’t need. Now he’s asking us to believe he’ll fix the problems he let linger using debt instead of the money he already wasted. My fiscal plan will be out soon, and it will focus the city’s spending on getting the basics right, so I don’t need to come begging hat-in-hand for another chance four years from now.”

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Transcript

Brigitte Pellerin (00:06): Hi everyone, hi Evan — hope you’re doing well. This is a busy one. We’ve got a bit of froth in our eyebrows, because there’s a lot going on and a lot to get to.

But first, a little housekeeping. I want to thank our viewers, because people are watching and listening — I hear it wherever I go. People say, I listen to you and Evan, and I really like the format. They appreciate the conversational format. They appreciate that we’re not partisan — I mean, not that there’s partisan politics in municipal politics — but they appreciate that we talk openly, and as honestly as we know how, about the race. So that’s useful, and I’m grateful, and I love hearing it. When you see me out there, come and talk to me. I like that.

Evan Potter (00:53): And come out to the Big Rig.

Brigitte Pellerin (00:56): That’s right. When we go out for beers — and this time I tried to be a bit more ahead of it and made a reservation and everything. It’s always good to see people.

I also want to say that the good folks at Rogers TV run this podcast on the television network, so if you have Rogers at home, go and watch us there if you like. And we’re now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — I always want to say Shopify. They’re not the same thing. I know that.

So if you like what we do and want to support us: share it, rate the podcast. It helps other people find us.

(01:29) And people do talk to me. A woman came up to me at a Neil Saravanamuttoo event earlier this week, and she had some good criticism. She started with: maybe you don’t care. And I said, no — I do care. I want to hear what you have to say.

I won’t share what she said, because she said it to me, not for public consumption. But she had a valid point to make, and I gave her that. And then we had a good evening. So it was good.

Anyway — let’s go. What are we talking about first? What’s really got your goat this week?

Evan Potter (02:02): Well, before I get to my regular Jeff Leiper grievances — which I keep saying I won’t do, and then he or his campaign does something that drives me nuts —

Brigitte Pellerin (02:08): You’re Jeff-bashing?

Evan Potter (02:16): No, we’ll come to that. But first: hot off the press this morning, the Globe and Mail runs the first national story on the mayoral race, to my knowledge. I don’t think the National Post has written anything on the Ottawa mayoral race.

And it was very fair, very factual. It was a news piece, not an opinion piece, and it gives the rest of the country a sense of what the four top contenders are saying and what their intentions are for the city. I think that’s really good. It’s good for Ottawa. It’s good for the candidates.

(03:07) What struck me, Brigitte, was David Valentin’s direct quote. He’s the principal at Liaison Strategies, who’s been doing the Ottawa tracking poll.

Brigitte Pellerin (03:13): He’s the head of the Liaison polling firm.

Evan Potter (03:21): The Globe journalists went to him and asked his view. And he said that the mayor — I’ll use the conditional — could win, and the number he ascribed to that win for Mark Sutcliffe was 35 per cent. Which I note is the same number Liaison was polling the mayor at over the summer.

So it’s interesting that David would throw that 35 per cent winning number out there. He was conditional. And as David has done in the past, he leaves the door open for a surprise.

Brigitte Pellerin (04:01): Well, of course they always do that — which bothers me, because I go out there and stick my neck out and make predictions. I’m wrong more often than not. But I think it’s more fun when you go out and make predictions.

Evan Potter (04:13): I’ve been predicting, based on public polling and my own sense of the campaign, that the mayor could win anywhere from 32 to 39 per cent.

Now, the mayor’s closest supporters and his allies on council have privately told me they think he’ll win more than 40 per cent — and one said even over 50. I don’t think that’s the case. I’m going to stick with David’s conditional prediction of somewhere in the mid to high thirties, all things being equal. Because the mayor has been leading in the public polling since the beginning, all the way through.

Brigitte Pellerin (04:23): And in a four-way race, that’s kind of enough.

(04:58) And traditionally, as we’ve said over and over again, in Ontario municipal politics the incumbent tends to win. That’s just because people don’t — well, it’s a lot to pay attention to, right?

Evan Potter (05:02): So for all the viewers who are champions of the challenger candidates: I’m not trying to throw cold water on the aspirations of your candidate. Brigitte and I are just telling you the reality, which is that in municipal races incumbents almost always win. It’s literally over 85 per cent, sometimes a 90 per cent chance that the incumbent wins.

And in our case, we don’t see a change election. This is more a status quo election. So in that case, all things being equal, all the predictions point to Mark Sutcliffe.

Brigitte Pellerin (05:50): Except — okay, here’s where I stick my neck out.

Advance polling is usually an indication. In most elections, when you have high voter turnout, and especially a lot of people showing up to vote early, that tends to be a sign of a change election.

(06:09) Now, early voting for the municipal race just opened this week. I don’t know that we have numbers yet, and that’s fine — we’ll be able to talk about this more next week if they’re out. But anecdotally, there were some — not everywhere. I’ve been to places where it was kind of deserted.

Evan Potter (06:28): Not at City Hall. At City Hall, not. But other places.

Brigitte Pellerin (06:30): I was at Richcraft the other evening — mind you, it was the evening — and there was nobody there for the advance vote. But it was nice. There were signs and everything, so it was clear. If you were there to vote, they make it clear and easy to do that, and I appreciate that.

A big shout-out, now that we’re here, to the people who run Elections Ottawa. They do fantastic work. I just love them.

(07:00) Some people have reported to us privately that they’ve seen biggish lines. Maybe. I don’t know — I didn’t see that with my own eyes, so I can’t confirm it. But if it’s true that advance turnout is high, to me that signifies more of a change election than not. So that’s one thing.

Evan Potter (07:14): I will respectfully disagree with you on that.

Brigitte Pellerin (07:18): Okay. You and your numbers and your data.

The other thing is that I think the polls underestimate the dissatisfaction with Mark Sutcliffe. And I say this from my observations, from what people tell me, from what I see with my eyes. I don’t think people are excited to have Mark Sutcliffe as mayor. Even his supporters.

Evan Potter (07:43): No, they’re not excited.

Brigitte Pellerin (07:48): They’re like: it’s better than the others. This is the devil we know. And I don’t mean he’s a devil — it’s just the expression. The guy we know. It’s okay. We know what to expect.

People like predictability, especially business owners. They like to know that if he’s re-elected, what they’ve been doing for four years will continue to work for the next four. That’s very valuable when you’re a business owner. So that’s the core of his support, as far as I can see.

Evan Potter (08:13): Can I say something on that? It’s interesting that you say devil you know — that was one of the commentaries from Globe readers under this morning’s article. Someone wrote: Mark Sutcliffe, better the devil you know.

Brigitte Pellerin (08:26): Right. Exactly. Or: meh, it’s all right. Or: could be worse.

Evan Potter (08:26): And you’re absolutely right. There has never been great enthusiasm. He can talk about Team Ottawa all he wants, but there’s no great enthusiasm for him personally.

But as an incumbent mayor, he doesn’t need to have that. My sense with Mark Sutcliffe is that his campaign is doing enough to get him over the finish line. He’s not overperforming. He’s just doing what he needs to do to get a second term. And because his main opponent is Jeff Leiper, who has not overperformed — and who needed to — it makes the mayor’s job much easier.

Brigitte Pellerin (09:15): So from the preliminary information I’m gathering from a number of sources, I’m starting to think that Mark Sutcliffe’s main opponent is no longer Jeff Leiper — it’s Alex Lawson.

In the sense that people who six months ago, if you’d asked them who they were going to vote for, would have said: yeah, Sutcliffe, devil I know, whatever, it could be worse, I don’t mind, I’m used to it — those people are now going to Lawson.

Evan Potter (09:40): That’s very interesting. I am hoping we will have a public poll within seven days of election day. We need to validate what you’re hearing — your sense from your sources, and from others who have said the same thing.

But as I’ve been saying for a couple of months: Neil Saravanamuttoo and Alex Lawson are the big non-winners. Can I call them that? They win whether or not they lose. It’s a wonderful position to be in.

Brigitte Pellerin (10:17): They’ve already won.

Okay, let me segue into something else. That was my piece on the state of the electorate as far as we know it now. But something hit me this week, because I’ve been going to events.

Neil Saravanamuttoo has done, I believe he said, about ten of these. He calls them Ask Me Anything, Tell Me Anything town halls. And he means it. He stands there and he takes it, and he engages with people.

(10:45) I’ve been to Alex Lawson events, I’ve been to Jeff Leiper events, I’ve been to one Mark Sutcliffe event — but he’s such a known quantity to me that I don’t really need to see his people. So I’m interested in the challengers.

And I’ll tell you this about the Neil Saravanamuttoo supporters and the Alex Lawson supporters. They’re different kinds of people. They come at it from different angles. Neil has more progressive supporters, whereas Alex Lawson has more centre-right supporters.

(11:13) But these people show up prepared. They’re engaged. They have notebooks. They’re scribbling things down. And I’m loving it, because my little nerd is so happy to see people engaged.

They show up with questions that stretch over two or three minutes and we follow along — they’re not boring. They’re not the long stories you sometimes get at these events where you think: good grief, that’s not a question, that’s a novel.

(11:43) People are really engaged back and forth with each other in the room. They talk to each other at the end of the event.

There is such an appetite for the kind of politician or leader who is authentic and genuine — not a polished politician, or someone trying to be one. Both Neil and Alex, by virtue of being at the bottom right now in the voting intentions, are probably not raising a ton of money. They have to be creative. And their best asset, for both of them, is themselves. They’re putting themselves out there. They’re flying without a net.

Alex Lawson does similar things — he doesn’t advertise it as Ask Me Anything, but you can ask the guy anything and he’ll just smile and answer. And people love that.

(12:10) So I’m seeing this race as Neil and Alex versus Mark and Jeff.

Evan Potter (12:16): Interesting. I agree.

(12:38) And I completely agree with you. When you first suggested this bifurcation to me earlier this week, it just sparked. Like you, I thought: it’s obvious. Of course. That’s the great separation.

Because normally I put Neil and Jeff at 40 per cent — that they share the 40 per cent. And I like your new separation: the fresh, authentic Alex and Neil versus the consistent, predictable Mark Sutcliffe and Jeff Leiper.

Brigitte Pellerin (13:21): And there were two statements this week that really hit me — not just one-liners, but crystallizing statements.

Neil Saravanamuttoo announced earlier this week that if elected, one thing he’d do is restore City Hall as the people’s palace, starting with removing those security barriers at the entrance.

(13:45) Because it used to be easy to just go into City Hall — including in the winter when it’s cold, you’d go into the building, use the washroom, listen to someone playing that beautiful piano, look at the art, warm up for a minute. Or in the summer, cool off in the AC. We can’t do this now, with those stupid security barriers. People don’t want to go through a checkpoint just to go to the bathroom.

And as he said: this is ridiculous, and we don’t need it, because the mayor’s office and the councillors’ offices and the staff offices are already separated, with security around them. We don’t need to keep the people out of the people’s building.

(14:13) And that, coupled with his promise to do a lot more of those town halls and go around the city so people have access and can ask him questions and hold him accountable — there is such an appetite for that. People might even vote for that in spite of everything else, just because he’s real.

(14:30) And similarly with Alex Lawson and his focus on getting the basics right. He talks to you like your normal neighbour. He’s not trying to spin you — ever. It doesn’t feel like it. Maybe he is, and if so he’s the best actor I’ve ever met. But you really get the feeling that these are regular people who want to get things right and work to make this city better.

And that’s the upset that I think could be coming. And I’m wishful-thinking out loud here, okay — that’s what I want to see, and that’s what I’m going to keep talking about. If I’m wrong, I’ll be very sad and you’ll break my heart. But this is what I really want to see.

And thank you for listening to my word salad slash TED talk. Go ahead.

Evan Potter (15:17): Here’s how I’d react to that. I completely agree with you.

And if indeed David Valentin is close with his prediction of the mayor winning at 35 per cent — a win is a win is a win, as we know in our first-past-the-post system. But it’s not an unqualified win if Mark Sutcliffe comes in at 35 per cent, because that says something like 65 per cent of Ottawa —

Brigitte Pellerin (15:45): Didn’t vote for you.

Evan Potter (15:46): — didn’t vote for him. Even if, on council, he’ll get a big round of applause from his allies. So that’s an interesting possible dynamic.

(15:52) Secondly: we don’t have a champion for the city on the progressive or the centre-left. I thought Jeff Leiper could possibly have been that champion, but he did not want to play that role. It was clear to me from last fall, and it’s clear now, three weeks before election day.

So on October 27th, Brigitte, there is an opening for someone to be the champion.

Brigitte Pellerin (16:30): For next time around.

Evan Potter (16:31): For the next four years. And I don’t know if that will be Neil, or Alex, or someone else. But there is a void, as you’ve described. People want change. Sixty-five per cent of them, if David Valentin’s number is close to the mark, will not have voted for this mayor to lead Ottawa.

Brigitte Pellerin (16:44): They want better. They want their city to work. They want their bus to show up.

(16:54) That’s not much of a mandate, to win with thirty-five per cent.

Evan Potter (16:59): He gets the win — a win is a win — but it’s a diminished mandate.

He speculated this week that he did not rule out going for a third term. I don’t know why he made that public comment. I would imagine, as most observers have told me privately, that he’s going to quit after the second. If he wins, he’ll be a two-term mayor.

Brigitte Pellerin (17:26): It feels like a checkbox on a to-do list — you get the mayoral job out of the way and then go run for something else. That’s what it feels like to me.

Evan Potter (17:29): Well, I’m not going to ascribe a particular emotion. I’m just saying it was odd that he’d leave the door open. I don’t know how calculated and tactical that was. I didn’t expect him to say something like that.

My assumption, and the assumption of many, is that he’ll win. It’ll be somewhere in the high thirties, probably. It won’t be a complete endorsement of Mark Sutcliffe by the people of Ottawa — but a win is a win.

The next stage is who will take up the mantle of leader of the opposition, as I’ve been calling it — the person who represents the other 60-odd per cent of Ottawa residents. If Mark Sutcliffe does win, that position is going to be completely open. We’ll see who wants to step into that void.

Brigitte Pellerin (18:28): I have big thoughts on that, which I’ll wait to share, because otherwise I’ll be talking the whole time.

But I would like to criticize the mayor’s plan a little. Can I do that? And I’m not forgetting to ask you about Jeff Leiper’s surprise — remember, it was supposed to be big.

(18:49) So last year I had a talk with Mark Sutcliffe before he announced he was going to run again. And I asked him: if you were to run again, why? Why would you do this?

Being mayor is a tough job. It’s not being a celebrity. It’s a good salary, but Mark Sutcliffe has enough experience in media and business that he could make more money doing something else. So clearly he’s not doing it for the money. And he’s not doing it because he enjoys seeing his photo everywhere, because he could be even more out there if he wanted to.

So — why? And he said, and I forget his exact words, something like: the job is not done. I came in to do a job and the job is not done.

(19:18) And I had that in mind this week when he announced two planks of his platform.

One got my goat: the registration system for swimming lessons. I have three children. We don’t do this anymore, but I still have scars from fifteen years ago — the Hunger Games of registering at nine p.m., the system crashing, the trouble registering for recreational activities. And just now we’re thinking about making this better? What were you doing for the last four years? This has been a problem for decades.

Evan Potter (20:08): As you have said: he is campaigning against himself.

Brigitte Pellerin (20:14): And then the ten-billion-dollar infrastructure renewal plan, because we have such a deficit on infrastructure.

I wouldn’t even know where to start. If you gave me ten billion dollars and said go — I wouldn’t know where to start. We have such a backlog.

But his proposal — when you look at the part that says where the money would come from. And I’m not much of a numbers person, but I still went and looked. It’s not clear. It’s a mishmash of tax revenues, water revenues, money from private partners, money from other levels of government.

(20:48) So I asked the other candidates, and I’ll put their statements in the show notes because it’s a bit too long to quote. They’re not impressed — I can say that much.

And Jeff Leiper especially, because that’s one of his things, the infrastructure deficit — saying Ottawa deserves a mayor who is honest about the real cost of this stuff. I think there’s a huge appetite for that too. And I think Jeff Leiper could make so much more mileage on this question than he has so far.

Evan Potter (21:24): He does. Jeff just doesn’t seem to be able to step up when he has these opportunities — these communications opportunities. He can’t seem to step up, for some reason.

Brigitte Pellerin (21:37): Whereas a guy like Lawson will say: well, you had four years, and you didn’t do anything except let it rot further into the ground.

And then he has this line, which is his best line — and I’ve told him that, so I don’t mind telling everybody else. He says: if Mark Sutcliffe had done the things he’s now promising while he was in office the first four years, I’d be knocking on doors for him instead of running against him.

That is the best line of the campaign. Hands down.

Evan Potter (21:57): That’s a great line. That is the best line. Hands down.

Brigitte Pellerin (22:06): So I was thinking about this — Mark Sutcliffe telling me the job’s not done. And I’m thinking: Mark, the job was not even started.

That’s my opinion. But I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks that way. And there’s still time for other candidates to make more of a dent in his support.

Evan Potter (22:13): No, I think you’re right.

(22:23) A stronger main opponent — somebody not like Jeff Leiper — could have torn the mayor apart on this. So easily.

Because it really feels, and I’ve talked to people about this, that this is an attempt by the mayor to respond to all the critiques of him on the infrastructure deficit. So he’s put something together and thrown it up against the wall to address the criticism. But a stronger main challenger would have torn him apart on it.

Brigitte Pellerin (23:06): And put it to his face that this does not work with his promise to keep the tax increase to 2.5 per cent. The math isn’t mathing.

Don’t take my word for it, because I don’t math very well. But anybody who knows anything about numbers will tell you these two things cannot work unless you get a windfall from somewhere else. And you’d better get it.

So you can’t make promises that you will do something based on somebody else making it possible for you. That’s not leadership.

(23:35) Leadership is showing up and saying: I will do this, and this is how I will do it, and you believe it or you don’t. You can’t just show up and say I’ll fix everything if somebody else helps me. That’s not leadership.

Anyway, I’ve ranted enough. Go ahead — we only have a few minutes left. What about Jeff’s surprise?

Evan Potter (23:52): That’s one of my various grievances — the regular weekly grievances about Jeff, the underperforming main opponent to the mayor. Apparently the main opponent for the mayor.

Before we get to the surprise, let’s get to the rally. There was a main rally, which I attended. It was about 200 people.

Brigitte Pellerin (24:14): On the twenty-eighth.

Evan Potter (24:21): It started with a drag show. It was interesting — different. A drag show is fine. I’m not sure it quite fit.

Brigitte Pellerin (24:29): I love drag shows. They’re great. I’m just not sure this fits the narrative — but I love drag shows.

Evan Potter (24:43): If that was your main expression of diversity and inclusion — I mean, it’s one aspect of it.

I would have been more impressed if there had been 500 people. That probably would have caught the fire code — Ottawa Fire Services would have had to be called in — but you know what I mean. If you’re going to make the big show, you have to have more than 250 people in the room. You have to have more endorsements from public figures.

It just felt short. Especially if it’s your main rally.

(25:23) Secondly, let’s get to this surprise. What do you understand from the surprise? His campaign has been teasing a major surprise, and I believe they even had a date. Was it September 28th? Which has now passed.

Brigitte Pellerin (25:37): It was September twenty-eighth, which has now passed. It’s in the past now. And I’m not aware of any surprise.

Evan Potter (25:43): Not aware of any surprise. I tracked some of Leiper’s socials to try to find the video where he was promising the surprise, and I couldn’t find it anymore.

Brigitte Pellerin (25:54): I got the email about it. There was an email, and I think it was on the website.

Evan Potter (26:14): So to the campaign, to the campaign manager, we would ask: where is your surprise? Is it a surprise delayed? If so, why was it delayed? Is it a surprise you’d now like everybody to forget about, because something happened?

What surprise? What are you talking about?

Brigitte Pellerin (26:10): I did ask them. I asked Stephen Yardy. I said: can you give me a hint? Can I get a preview? I’ll keep it under wraps. And — nope, nope, nope. I can’t tell you.

(26:29) That’s what it feels like. What surprise? What are you talking about, Evan?

Evan Potter (26:33): We had no surprise, and yet you told everybody.

Some people are going to listen to us right now and say: there they go, inside baseball, it’s not really relevant to the campaign. But you know what? It actually is relevant — because in the context of the Jeff Leiper campaign, this is an own goal. It’s yet again an example of a campaign that shouldn’t be making these mistakes.

(27:03) And if there is no surprise after all — something happened, things happen, the surprise you thought you had no longer exists — you’d better do some communication with the public, and even with the insiders like us, to let us know. Look, something happened. You don’t have to tell the world the details, but you have to address the question.

(27:28) This is basic communications. PR 101. Don’t leave a question hanging out there. Don’t over-promise and under-deliver. These are clichés, but the Jeff Leiper campaign steps right into it every time.

Brigitte Pellerin (27:34): And under-deliver. That’s always a bad idea.

(27:48) I’ll take thirty seconds to try and defend them, because they’re not here and they won’t say anything.

I know enough of the people on his campaign. They’re serious, competent people — not just old pros, but serious people. And the surprise thing aside, it’s also possible that they are working so hard to get actual people to vote for Jeff on election day that none of what we’re talking about is a priority to them. They’re focused on the prize, which is people actually voting for him. They may be working on a plan and they wouldn’t tell us.

So that’s the only other thing I can think of. And I will leave the door open — I want them to know I’m seeing that as a possibility, and I want our viewers to understand it could be a possibility as well. Especially people who support Jeff and would like to see him do better: it’s possible he will do better than you and I think he’s doing, Evan.

Evan Potter (28:47): Okay. So I will say, in closing, that despite my ongoing grievances with the Jeff Leiper campaign — there are multiple people in this household, and there is a Jeff Leiper sign on my front lawn.

So there you go. The Jeff Leiper campaign has evidently persuaded someone in this household.

Brigitte Pellerin (29:04): At least somebody in your house. All right. That’s good to know.

Okay then. We’re out of time, and we have to get ready to go meet some of our viewers and have a great pint tonight — we’re recording this on October second, so I look forward to that. We’ll talk about it next week.

Have a great weekend, Evan. Talk to you later. Bye.

Evan Potter (29:24): I look forward to it. You too. Bye-bye.

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Transcript

Brigitte Pellerin (00:02): Hi Evan, how are you today?

Evan Potter (00:03): Fine, fine. Again, there’s a briskness in the air, and it’s hard to deny.

Brigitte Pellerin (00:08): Hard to deny — this time it’s coming.

I want to start by saying a great thank you to the viewers and listeners who came to have a beer with us last week at Irene’s Pub in the Glebe. Almost a dozen people showed up, which — for something announced on Twitter at the last minute — I can admit now, I was a little bit scared nobody would come and it would just be you and me having a beer. Which would have been fine, obviously. So we went in with low expectations, and I was blown away. It was lovely to meet people, talk to them, hear them, have those conversations.

So we want to do it again.

Evan Potter (00:49): Come one, come all.

Brigitte Pellerin (00:52): We will be at the Big Rig at Gloucester Centre next Friday — October second. I should have looked at the calendar before announcing it, but yes: Friday, October second.

I’ll try to be there around six-ish, traffic depending. I was a bit sad that I got to Irene’s late — I had a problem with my bike, so I arrived eight minutes late and people were already waiting for us. So I’ll aim for six-ish and announce it on Twitter. And you’ll get there when you get there, after your class, traffic depending. We’re being a little loosey-goosey with the timeline. But we’ll be there, have a beer, and hear what people have to say out in the east end.

Evan Potter (01:32): Absolutely. I love travelling around the wards. I don’t know why I’m so interested in all this stuff, to be honest with you. I’m fascinated, because I want to know what people think. Maybe that’s the inner political scientist in me.

Brigitte Pellerin (01:50): There’s a beautiful series on the CTV Ottawa news site. Leah Larocque went walking around in all twenty-four wards. She talks to people about their concerns, and then she explains the wards a little — where they are, what’s important there. Really interesting, and very well done. Look it up, folks, if you’re interested. Maybe just your ward, or go explore the others.

(02:18) And now, from the sublime to the ridiculous — sorry, I needed a transition, and it’s not always elegant — that polling. What is going on?

Evan Potter (02:26): People have a lot of views on the polling. And I’m going to say that the polling situation right now is an under-reported story by Ottawa’s local media. I’m looking for CBC, CTV, the Ottawa Citizen, whoever else, to have a look at what’s going on.

Brigitte Pellerin (02:53): Do you want to catch people up first on what’s happening?

Evan Potter (02:57): I was thinking about how to address this today, and I’ll keep it as fact-based as I can.

We’ve had seven public polls since April. Liaison Strategies did five of them. Of those five, four reported polling on the mayor’s race — and the August Liaison poll did not release the numbers for the candidates for mayor.

Brigitte Pellerin (03:35): But it talked about other issues, like safety and homelessness. Just not the mayor’s race.

Evan Potter (03:40): Exactly. Then we had Corus Consulting [name to verify] in June — that was poll number six. And most recently, ElectRight [name to verify], reporting from September seventeenth and eighteenth, did a poll. Both of those also included numbers for the candidates for mayor.

Brigitte Pellerin (04:02): I have one question before we move on, and it’s a factual thing.

There’s a group — I forget the name of it — a group of established pollsters. Because everyone can go out and measure things, but polling is actually a science. To be accepted into that group, you presumably have to show you’re a real pollster. Liaison is in that group.

Evan Potter (04:23): Yes, it is. Abacus is in there.

Brigitte Pellerin (04:30): Abacus is in there. Mainstreet Strategy — would they be in there?

Evan Potter (04:34): Mainstreet, yes. They’re all there. All the major pollsters are there, and those who typically do public polls are there.

Brigitte Pellerin (04:45): But not ElectRight. This latest poll.

Evan Potter (04:47): I did not see ElectRight on the members list.

Brigitte Pellerin (04:55): Okay. So if we’re wrong about this, someone can correct us — but you don’t see it on the list that’s publicly available.

Evan Potter (04:55): No, it’s not on CRIC’s member list. As I’ve been told this week, it’s a voter identification firm. And if you go on the website, as a service, it provides public opinion research.

Brigitte Pellerin (05:08): And by highlighting this, I’m not trying to throw shade at them or question their work. I’m just saying there’s a factual difference between the established polling firms — let’s call them that — and other people who do research that can also be polling, but who aren’t recognized established pollsters.

Evan Potter (05:31): Well — they are not the pollsters included in the CRIC membership. I think they would probably say they’re professional pollsters, or that they provide those services.

(05:59) So here’s what I would conclude, without getting into questions of methodology, which will vary from pollster to pollster. Sample sets, weighting averages — all of that will vary from firm to firm.

What I can say is that in all six of the polls in which the mayoral results were released publicly, Mark Sutcliffe was ahead. That’s incontrovertible.

(06:42) And I think intuitively we know that. He’s the incumbent — I always come back to this — he’s the incumbent mayor with no quote-unquote personal scandal attached to him.

To be able to unseat somebody like that — you don’t even have to say Mark Sutcliffe, we’ll just call him the mayor — is incredibly difficult for challengers. The incumbent advantage, and I’ll say it for the next four weeks, is huge. We’re not saying it’s insurmountable. We’re not throwing shade, as you said, on all the many people who are putting aside their personal lives to be challengers. We need that for democracy. But to challenge incumbents, whether at the ward level or the mayoral level, is a huge bar to surmount.

So you would expect Mark Sutcliffe to be ahead, and by all accounts he has been, and probably is as we speak. Now the question is: is he ahead by eight points, ten points, sixteen points?

Brigitte Pellerin (07:35): So what’s the issue, then?

Evan Potter (07:42): We don’t know. But he’s ahead.

Jeff Leiper — if you look across all the polling in terms of committed and leaning, his variation has not been that great. If we were to do a census, which we’re not going to do, it would probably be between twenty-two and twenty-six percent.

Brigitte Pellerin (08:10): Which is his natural base, basically.

Evan Potter (08:11): I like that word you used — natural. You’d say the progressive voting base in Ottawa is probably about that size. So he’s probably capturing it. They have no other place to go. He’s their guy, he’s their candidate.

And of course he’s sharing some of that — we don’t know what percentage — with Neil Saravanamuttoo. I’ve always said the two of them probably take forty percent.

Brigitte Pellerin (08:44): So they would win if there were one guy.

Evan Potter (08:48): They could win if they were one guy. And Neil was always the primary threat to Jeff Leiper’s underdog attempt to unseat Mark Sutcliffe.

Brigitte Pellerin (08:55): Because he’s fishing in the same waters, so to speak. Not that voters are fish.

(09:07) Our viewers are very smart. They’re very well informed. They understand things.

Evan Potter (09:15): So we’re telling people things they already pretty well know. The real question now becomes Alex Lawson. What is his number?

When you have Liaison having him at twenty-six percent — let’s say in the high twenties —

Brigitte Pellerin (09:35): That was in July.

Evan Potter (09:36): In July. And people around town apparently know what the August number was, but it’s not public, and I’m not going to say anything. So we’ll just say mid to high twenties.

And then ElectRight —

Brigitte Pellerin (09:52): Had him at four percent.

Evan Potter (09:52): Four. Or six to seven if you distribute the undecideds. So it’s still single digits. And a huge difference, obviously. A huge swing.

(10:05) Is that a realistic swing in two months? Pollsters would probably say no.

Brigitte Pellerin (10:13): I’ve seen nothing on the campaign trail that would suggest it. He didn’t say something outrageous. Somebody could have a gaffe of such magnitude that people turn away from them — but none of that happened.

Evan Potter (10:31): I don’t know what the sampling set was. There are so many missing pieces to the puzzle here.

Brigitte Pellerin (10:39): Well, we do know some of it. The September one, by ElectRight, had a sample of about six hundred folks.

Evan Potter (10:46): Six hundred — that’s a margin of error of about four.

Brigitte Pellerin (10:50): And it was heavily weighted toward older people, older than fifty-five. And about a third, or a bit more than a third — I forget the exact number — with a household income between a hundred and a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Which is not everyone.

Evan Potter (11:01): So does that mean they weren’t doing random dialling? The level of probability sampling — well, I won’t get into that.

Brigitte Pellerin (11:14): I don’t know what that means. But that’s the information we do know.

Evan Potter (11:24): We’re not going to cast aspersions on the polling firms here. That’s not our business to do.

We’ll just say that what we need, Brigitte — and I think many observers agree — is a polling firm, call it a name-brand polling firm, to step in in the last four weeks and do a poll.

Brigitte Pellerin (11:47): And show us what they’re seeing.

Evan Potter (11:50): To validate. And things have changed — don’t forget, polling is a snapshot in time. It’s hindsight. Things could obviously change again, and usually do, from mid-September polling to late September and early October polling.

So I would say: no question, Mark Sutcliffe, as the incumbent, as we would expect, is ahead. We don’t know by how much.

(12:20) He’s the presumptive — it’s his election to lose. It has always been his election to lose, as the incumbent. And the question is whether someone like Jeff Leiper can catch up. As I’ve said, we don’t know. Can he go from the mid-twenties to the mid-thirties in a month?

Or, alternatively: has the existing polling not picked up what’s actually happening on the ground, because the Leiper campaign is doing so well there? We don’t know. And the problem with that is we won’t know until polling day.

Brigitte Pellerin (13:03): And this is where the problem is. People can say: well, you journalists and commentators love polls because they give you something to talk about. Fair. True.

But it’s also useful. I’m starting to hear now from people who say, okay, there’s an election, I know it’s coming, and I haven’t looked at anything yet — and they ask me what I can tell them in five minutes to help them figure out where things are at. A poll does that for people.

(13:31) When you’re just a person with a life to live, other work to do, kids to take care of, activities and whatnot — you get to the end of your day, it’s seven p.m., and you’re looking at it thinking: do I have a beer, or do I look at the platforms first? So people want a quicker way to at least get a sense of where things are. That’s an independent public poll — or more than one independent public poll, ideally.

Evan Potter (13:53): More than one, of course.

Brigitte Pellerin (13:57): So you can compare them, because they all have different methodologies, different sample sizes, different ways of weighting — and now I’m getting into territory I shouldn’t really talk about, because I’m not competent at it.

But somebody pointed me to this: if you weigh yourself first thing in the morning and then weigh yourself after dinner, which number are you going to take? Which is your real weight? And some polls sometimes want to go with one or the other. I said, well, I’m the morning. I don’t even weigh myself after dinner. I don’t want to know that number.

So you compare that to this, which helped me understand it.

(14:41) But the point is, it helps voters who don’t have a huge amount of time to dive into all the candidates and the platforms and watch all the debates and do the kinds of things we do. It’s a shortcut to what the situation looks like.

(14:54) So if you show the mayor ahead, you’re not surprised — the mayor’s ahead, and there’s no reason he shouldn’t be. That’s fine. But then there are the other guys.

If you’re happy and you want to vote for Mark Sutcliffe again, you don’t need any of this. You’re doing fine. You know what you’re doing. Your job is done — you just have to go and vote. Congratulations, you have the easy job.

But if you don’t want Mark Sutcliffe again, and you just don’t know who among the others you should vote for, that kind of polling information helps you tremendously. This is why you and I have been saying we need more of those numbers. Somebody has to come up with them.

Evan Potter (15:31): Well said, Brigitte.

Polling is about the horse race, and of course it gets media attention because of that. But it also helps people decide, and rank choices, and make strategic decisions among the candidates. They can only do that if they get a fairly accurate ranking of where the candidates are.

People will donate based on momentum — if they think somebody has momentum, they’ll give them more money.

(16:12) And critically, especially at the municipal level, there are volunteers on the ground. These campaigns don’t have the budgets to do the air war. It really is door-knocking. And it’s the ability to mobilize volunteers — you can’t pay them. So the more committed, motivated, energized volunteers you have — and part of that energy is going to come from a sense that your candidate is catching up or has a chance. And the only way you can convey that in a quote-unquote scientific way is to show the polling.

Brigitte Pellerin (16:52): Right. Or campaigns can share their numbers. They have numbers. Behind the scenes they’ll talk to people like you and me and give us a sense of what they’re seeing, and for whatever reason they’re not releasing it publicly, and I respect that.

They can also release, if they want, how much money they’re raising — because that’s a great indication too. And on this one, the Leiper campaign is reasonably, or very, transparent. Do you have their latest number?

Evan Potter (17:20): The Leiper campaign, to their credit, has run an open campaign.

(17:33) They’ve said they now have twenty-six thousand committed voters — meaning people who’ve said they will vote for Jeff Leiper. They’re probably over two hundred and twenty or two hundred and thirty thousand in donations. I don’t know how many volunteers they have on the ground, but I’ve always said they need more — not fifteen hundred, they need thousands of people on the ground.

Brigitte Pellerin (17:58): And they have signs, too. There’s a map — I’ll put a link to it, though we have to be careful not to show people’s addresses — where you can see the properties that have requested a sign. It’s a good map. If I were running their campaign, I’d be happy with that map.

Evan Potter (18:18): To give you a clear example of the challenge for the Leiper campaign: twenty-six thousand people have committed to them. Catherine McKenney’s final vote tally in 2022 was, I think, a hundred and ten thousand, which got them to thirty-eight percent at the time.

So the Leiper campaign has to get four, five times what they have now — at least — just to match Catherine’s vote count four years ago. And they probably have to do better than that to be competitive.

Brigitte Pellerin (18:59): And without spilling secrets — not that I know that many secrets — the campaign is confident they’re on track to achieve that. So we have to say that.

We also have to remind people that the Leiper campaign is promising a big surprise on Monday, September twenty-eighth. We mentioned that last week and said, well, it had better be good. Don’t underwhelm me.

Evan Potter (19:24): The surprise has to be monumental, Brigitte. The surprise has to be a kind of so-and-so is dropping out and joining us surprise. It has to be big.

Brigitte Pellerin (19:38): Because — we have to point out that Mark Sutcliffe had Jean Chrétien, former prime minister, for our younger viewers, show up at the unveiling of his platform for francophones in Ottawa. I’m mangling the exact title. But Jean Chrétien shows up and endorses Mark Sutcliffe. That’s a big one. To the extent that endorsements matter — and maybe they do, for some people.

Evan Potter (19:58): I think certain endorsements certainly matter, and we can say that one’s a good one. And we can say that Mark Sutcliffe has a boatload of endorsements.

(20:15) People aren’t thinking of endorsements at the door, obviously. But for certain communities — and I would assume the francophone community in Ottawa, which is substantial. Is it ten to fifteen percent? It’s not an insubstantial voting bloc.

Brigitte Pellerin (20:27): I think it’s a little bit more — fifteen to seventeen. But I could be wrong.

Evan Potter (20:35): And to have Jean Chrétien endorse the sitting mayor is a powerful message.

We’re just showing people what power the mayor has. He controls the attention economy. He has all these endorsements. He’s been campaigning every day for four years — to use Joanne Chianello’s formulation, which I think is totally accurate.

Brigitte Pellerin (20:47): Because the media will show up to his events. That’s right.

(21:02) Fair enough. They all do it.

Evan Potter (21:04): They all do it. So you combine all those advantages, and it should not come as a surprise that Mark Sutcliffe is ahead in the polls. The shock would be if Mark Sutcliffe were not ahead in the polls.

Brigitte Pellerin (21:19): Although — and again, these are people who talk to me, so this is a self-selecting sample. I’m not the data person; I’m the feelings person. So I get people talking to me.

And the overwhelming feeling I sense among the people who talk to me and ask me questions about the campaign is a generalized lack of enthusiasm about the options available to us as voters. Let’s just keep the four top ones.

It’s difficult for them to make a decision, because nobody really is exciting them just yet. And there’s a lot of same-same — at least, that’s what’s being perceived out there, as far as what people tell me.

Evan Potter (22:02): It’s interesting that you say that, because even the last poll — the ElectRight poll — had the undecideds at twenty-eight percent.

Brigitte Pellerin (22:21): That’s still a big number.

Evan Potter (22:22): It’s still a big number, and it’s an unusually big number. The professional pollsters will tell us what the undecided numbers should typically be a month away from election day. And I know it is not a third. I know for sure that a month away from election day it should be closer to twenty, maybe. Not thirty. Thirty percent is high.

Brigitte Pellerin (22:48): My sense is that when people say they’re undecided, they’ve decided who they’re not voting for. They just don’t know who their alternative is.

That’s not true of everyone — there are always people who literally don’t know who they’re going to vote for. But that percentage is much lower than thirty percent. I think it’s probably half of the current undecided. If twenty-eight is accurate, maybe half of them are mostly telling pollsters, without telling them: I know I don’t want Sutcliffe. I don’t think I want Sutcliffe again. Or they’re not even sure about that, but he’s not really their first choice. They just don’t know what their options are.

Evan Potter (23:27): That’s a good point. They will know who the mayor is. The one person they will know among the candidates is the mayor. And if they’re undecided, it’s clear they are probably not in the mayor’s court.

Brigitte Pellerin (23:42): And this is my favourite question. So if I meet you on the street, folks — or if you come and have a beer with me — be prepared to answer it. Because the question I love asking people, and I don’t argue, I just sit there and listen, is: are you really happy with the way things are right now?

And overwhelmingly the answer is something along the lines of: yeah, it’s kind of — I mean, it could be worse, I guess.

And then I say: are you excited about any of the challengers? Don’t really know them yet. So, no. Nobody has grabbed them. There’s no Mamdani wave so far.

Evan Potter (24:13): There’s no Mamdani effect. So far, no. There won’t be any Mamdani effect here.

Brigitte Pellerin (24:20): Well, a girl can hope.

And then I ask: if there was one issue — what’s your top issue, really? And then it varies. But safety, transit and infrastructure come up a lot.

(24:35) And when I ask folks, well, what about your tax bill, how important is it — then you get, because I hang out with smart people, more detailed discussions. Well, it’s fine to have a low tax bill, but if the streets are falling apart, what’s the point? That’s not okay.

Yes to a low increase in my taxes — but can we do something about the pothole that just cost me three hundred dollars, because I had to replace a wheel?

Evan Potter (25:05): So people are sophisticated enough to make those trade-offs.

Brigitte Pellerin (25:12): It’s interesting to see.

All right — we only have a few minutes left. Before we set up the next beer, because I love having drinks with people: what else are you watching this week? There are debates coming up. Jeff’s surprise. What else?

Evan Potter (25:26): Jeff’s surprise — it’ll be interesting to see the level of surprise.

I attended Neil Saravanamuttoo’s end-of-summer barbecue at Brewer Park. And I just want to say again that Neil looks like he’s having fun.

Brigitte Pellerin (25:49): Good for him. Why not?

Evan Potter (25:50): He’s relaxed. He loves answering the questions. And he’s getting that slice of the Ottawa local municipal voting market who want to talk about infrastructure spending, and opening up the budget process — who want to get into that, call it technical, detail.

Of course Neil is in his element. He’s getting positive attention — the type of attention he wouldn’t be able to get in a five-minute delegation to council or committee. So, good for him.

Brigitte Pellerin (26:30): Good for him, yeah.

I went to a Lawson event last weekend, out in Manotick. There was other media there. I went as my Substack self — I was not writing for the Citizen on this one — but there was also someone from the Citizen doing a profile on him. So we’ll see when that comes out.

(26:55) And I’m going to put them on the spot right now, because they kind of almost agreed to let me shadow Alex on a canvass. I want to follow him around — not in his most natural environment, but in a suburb, or Centretown, or somewhere you wouldn’t think would be his natural place. I want to shadow and hear how people are reacting to him, and what issues they’re talking about with him.

I want to see how that works out. Because the July number at the mid-to-high twenties, and the four percent he’s getting now — one of those is wrong. They cannot both be true.

And I’m curious enough that I want to know which one. This is me not being scientific about it, just my impressions of where I think the number is between those two extremes.

Evan Potter (27:43): We need another pollster to come in — to give a sample size of a thousand and find out what’s going on with regard to Alex Lawson.

Brigitte Pellerin (27:46): Yes, I know. And in the meantime, you’ll have to deal with me, I guess.

(28:03) All right, then. I hope you have a great weekend, and we’ll reconvene next week. And I’m pretty sure we’ll both be at the big surprise thing. We’ll pay close attention to that.

Okay. Talk to you later. Bye.

Evan Potter (28:13): We will. Bye-bye.

Get full access to Random Acts of Urbanism by Brigitte Pellerin at randomactsofurbanism.substack.com/subscribe

For debates on Rogers TV, start here. The Ottawa Student Debate is here. Evan’s piece on the councillors supporting Mark Sutcliffe is here.

Transcript

Brigitte Pellerin (00:01): Hi everyone, hi Evan — how are you doing today?

Evan Potter (00:04): Very well. I feel a bit of coolness, a briskness in the air.

Brigitte Pellerin (00:08): Yes — enjoy the last bits of summer, when it comes, between noon and two every day. But this is a great time of year, and it’s a sign the election is coming. So is the flurry of activity. We have a lot to talk about this week, because stuff is happening.

But before we get into that, I want to put in a good plug for our friends at Rogers TV, who have produced — I don’t know how they got this done — candidate debates, not just for the mayor’s race but for all the wards. And when you look at the videos, you see interesting view numbers. I think people are more interested than you and I have been giving them credit for. We’ve been calling this a bit of a dead campaign, and I want to hope and believe there’s more interest than we can see.

I’ll put a link to where you can find those debates. Go find your ward — and feel free to listen to all the ward races if you want. There are really good, interesting debates there to watch.

Evan Potter (01:15): I totally agree. Kudos to Rogers. I’ve been watching the debates on YouTube, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised that there’s actually been a debate.

Remember, we said that in some of our experiences people were just reading out their answers — they’d received the questions in advance, and they were sitting at a table reading the answers out. I think in one debate that actually happened. It wasn’t really a debate, and that was disappointing. But then I watched other local debates where that wasn’t the case, and there was an actual debate among the candidates — which is what people are looking for.

Brigitte Pellerin (01:58): Exactly. And then there was the Ottawa students’ mayoral debate earlier this week, which — I have to give them massive kudos. I couldn’t be there in person, but I watched the recording, and I’ll add the link to the show notes. It’s long. But the format was wonderful. The questions were really smart and knowledgeable, and the answers were interesting.

Unfortunately, only three candidates were present. The mayor didn’t show up, and didn’t offer an explanation as to why he wasn’t there. The other three tended to agree a lot on what they’d do differently, so we didn’t get big clashes — but there were some really good moments. They laughed. It was a smart debate. I’m like: yay! It’s really worth watching.

Evan Potter (02:47): I read the media report on it, and I understand it was a packed hall — people had to be turned away. That’s good.

We’ve talked a little about the quote-unquote youth vote, the younger vote, first-time voters, throughout these podcasts. And I’ve asked a few people along the way whether there was any major effort underway to encourage younger people to vote. It looks like there is no formal effort by an interest group to do this. So it really is up to the individual campaigns, when they’re door-knocking, to ask — literally, as we’ve said before on the podcast — whether there’s a younger member in the household and whether they intend to vote.

Brigitte Pellerin (03:41): I know. I have two newish voters. One has voted before, but not at the city level — this would be her third election — and one for whom this is the first. So I’ve been leaning on them: I don’t care who you vote for, but please vote.

Evan Potter (03:52): And one of the stats that came out in the local coverage — the journalist was interviewing the student organizer — is that there are something like 160,000 young people in the Ottawa area. So if one of the mayoral candidates has mobilized part of that vote, it could be significant.

Brigitte Pellerin (04:21): And this is one reason I was really surprised not to see Mark Sutcliffe at that debate. As I understand it, he didn’t offer an explanation. He’s not talking to me much these days, so I don’t know what was on his mind. But the optics were awful.

Evan Potter (04:30): The standard explanation from the comms people — take it for what you will — is that there were scheduling conflicts.

Brigitte Pellerin (04:44): Right. As I understand it, this came as last-minute news to the organizing committee. Now, if I’m wrong, somebody can point me to the right answer — but as I understand it, the organizers expected him up until that day. That’s what I’ve been led to believe.

And that’s not a great thing, especially when you’re looking at polls showing you have competition. It’s a four-way race. If you can’t attend, that’s one thing — but then you let people know as early as you can, and you make some kind of statement saying: I’m sorry I couldn’t be there, it’s not a show of disrespect, there’s legitimately a lot happening and I can’t make this one.

Evan Potter (05:27): There is a way of doing this. You can submit a statement to the organizers that they read out at the event. There are all sorts of communications ways to protect yourself. But just not showing up will be interpreted as a lack of respect. It will be interpreted as the front-runner assuming he doesn’t need the youth vote, and doesn’t care.

Brigitte Pellerin (06:12): What do you gain by being disrespectful?

Evan Potter (06:02): So you don’t want that to be the narrative. Even if, in fact, the youth vote does not matter to you, you don’t want that to be the narrative. And the fact that the mayor lets that be the narrative also tells us something about the mayor.

Brigitte Pellerin (06:18): It’s a message. And it’s very loud.

(06:18) By contrast, earlier this week — on a different day — there was another debate organized by another group, mostly on environmental issues. The mayor was there, and so were Neil Saravanamuttoo and Jeff Leiper. But not Alex Lawson.

And on Twitter, one of the mayor’s communications people — I’m not going to out him; people can go look for it themselves — poked at Alex Lawson and said, well, big tough guy on Twitter was too scared to show up. I’m paraphrasing.

Evan Potter (06:52): No, we can name names, Brigitte. It’s DG Stringer. We all saw that tweet. He’s the co-chair. He’s a public person — he’s made himself a public person — so we can call him by name.

Brigitte Pellerin (06:55): It’s public. It’s on Twitter. He knows what he’s doing.

(07:00) So I reached out to Alex Lawson and gave him the opportunity: do you want to explain why you weren’t there? What he said to me was: look, there are a lot of events and I can’t make all of them. He did not explain why this one in particular got cut. But he did add that he had told the organizers well ahead of time that he wasn’t going to make it — so this was not a surprise.

People can believe what they want and interpret it any way they like. But for the mayor’s team to not give much of an explanation beyond scheduling issues, and then poke the other guy as the big tough guy who’s not here — which was a childish tweet anyway.

Evan Potter (07:42): We’ve seen this before from the mayor’s team, from the mayor’s comms. And what it says is: we don’t care. That’s the message it sends — that you don’t matter enough to us for us to actually give an explanation. Again, it speaks volumes.

Brigitte Pellerin (08:09): And the mayor was also busy this week. On Wednesday he had his official launch party. We were both there in person.

I was talking to the people organizing it, and they said they had maybe about four hundred people registered. I think we can agree it was somewhere between two hundred and fifty and three hundred in the room — including just about half the Liberal Party of the Ottawa area. We could talk about that in a second.

And you were there with your notebook. How many city councillors?

Evan Potter (08:45): I did a column on that yesterday. A whopping — almost half of city council showed up. Ten councillors. And the ones who showed up, almost all of them would be considered by you and me and others as allies of the mayor on council.

Let’s not mince words: this may not be the poisonous council of late 2022 under Jim Watson, but this is a split council. So the ten we saw there — these are the allies. They weren’t there for the piece of pizza and a glass of water.

Brigitte Pellerin (09:21): I’ll link to your column so people can go see who was there. If it’s one of your councillors, that gives you an indication.

Evan Potter (09:34): That, or the shawarma. That’s not what they were there for. They were there to stand for Mark. Let’s be clear. And as I said in my column, this is fine.

Brigitte Pellerin (09:41): And that’s fine. I like that, actually — show your colours. Let people make their decision based on your behaviour and what you’re doing.

(09:59) I did comment on the ambience. I was there four years ago — were you? Same room, same place, at St. Elias. Four years ago there were a lot more people in that room, and the energy was a lot stronger. This time people were happy and they clapped, but it was like a six or seven intensity. Four years ago it was tilting. It was good.

Evan Potter (10:20): I like the number you gave it. It was a kind of seven.

Brigitte Pellerin (10:26): Yeah. Good-ish.

Evan Potter (10:28): Brigitte, it was a made-for-local-TV, made-for-print-journalism event. That’s the entire purpose. He’s been campaigning since June, and he had his official staff campaign launch a few weeks ago. So this was just a made-for-TV moment to get a headline.

Brigitte Pellerin (10:52): I know you don’t want to talk about Jeff Leiper too much, because you’ve said so many things so many times. So I’m going to talk about Jeff Leiper a little, if you don’t. I have a TED talk ready on this one.

The fact that he has not — and there’s still time — but I am not aware of anybody on council who is overtly supporting him. Did I miss some kind of endorsement?

Evan Potter (11:17): We both missed it, if so.

Brigitte Pellerin (11:21): Other than maybe Catherine McKenney?

Evan Potter (11:24): He has two endorsements. The MPP for Ottawa West–Nepean, and Catherine McKenney.

Brigitte Pellerin (11:34): Anita Vanderbilt? No — not Anita. Sorry, I’m getting my MPPs and my MPs mixed up.

Evan Potter (11:36): Chandra. Chandra Pasma.

Brigitte Pellerin (11:42): That’s right. Thank you. Chandra is endorsing Jeff, that’s right. And Catherine McKenney. I’m not aware of any other politician.

Evan Potter (11:49): But have you heard Chandra or Catherine say anything since?

Brigitte Pellerin (12:03): No. And again — if I missed it, I know the folks on Jeff’s campaign, so please send me links, because I would love to be able to publicize that.

Now, I know people — including some good friends — who are working for Jeff Leiper. And these are not political novices. These are experienced people. And they insist they have good reasons to be confident.

I love my friends and I respect their work. And I think they’re out to lunch. If I’m wrong, I will eat my crow, and that’s not a problem.

But here’s my problem with Jeff Leiper. You called it several weeks ago — you said he hit the ground walking and never really picked up speed. He is campaigning like a guy who doesn’t want the job.

Evan Potter (12:47): That’s a strong version.

Brigitte Pellerin (12:50): It’s strong.

We saw the mayor, earlier this week or last week, make a claim about having found — I forget the exact numbers — so many millions of dollars in efficiencies in the budget over the last four years of council. And Neil Saravanamuttoo came out a couple of days ago with what I thought was a brilliant video message. Short. To the point.

Evan Potter (13:10): Brilliant video. Yep.

Brigitte Pellerin (13:12): Saying: I call BS on this. These are not savings, these are ravings. And he went through it with graphics, showing the budgets. Now, he’s an economist, so he speaks that language — but he made it clear to me, and I’m not a numbers person.

I don’t know the numbers well enough to know whether Neil is right or Mark is right. One of them is right; one of them is wrong. But regardless, the video was a smackdown — done with numbers and facts. Not nasty. Adversarial, a little aggressive, but not nasty at all, not personal. The tone was: no, Mark, you’re wrong, and here’s why.

And why isn’t Jeff coming out with videos like that?

Evan Potter (13:57): I don’t know, and neither does anyone else in town. That’s the answer. He’s got an entire comms team, experienced people, and they’re rolling out these boring videos of Jeff reading policy notes. I have to say, it is profoundly disappointing.

Brigitte Pellerin (14:19): For all the people who are disappointed with Mark Sutcliffe right now — for the last year and a bit, Jeff Leiper was a great big hope. And now he’s campaigning like a guy who doesn’t care.

And I know Jeff. I know he wants to do a great job. And I know he’s trying not to campaign in an aggressive or nasty way. I get that. But it’s just not working. I don’t see the numbers that show it’s working.

Evan Potter (14:50): So I will now come in to defend Jeff. Role reversal.

Brigitte Pellerin (14:54): Role reversal. You go.

Evan Potter (14:50): It’s not that he doesn’t care. Of course he cares. It’s that he hasn’t performed. As I’ve said before, he had to overperform noticeably against Mark Sutcliffe — as the de facto leader of the opposition, which is a position he never wanted.

Because surely, after a year — his campaign has been working on this for a year, as Stephen Yardy always tells people at the open campaign meetings, we’ve been doing this for a year — well, if you’ve been doing this for a year, your candidate has to be able to overperform in the last two months of a campaign. Noticeably. And he hasn’t noticeably overperformed. That’s been his biggest problem.

(15:41) Now, the only salvation is his ground game. So Yardy had better have an extraordinary ground game going on right now that nobody in Ottawa sees the totality of, and that isn’t being picked up — I’ll repeat myself — in the polling. And then we’ll be shocked when Jeff Leiper becomes mayor, because we didn’t see it coming, because we couldn’t see him perform.

He had to overperform from his baseline, and he wasn’t. And the campaign on comms isn’t overperforming either. Meanwhile you have competitors, Neil and Alex, who are overperforming from their baselines. They’re exceeding expectations. Jeff has not exceeded expectations, and he needed to.

And therein lies the problem for the Jeff campaign — from the outside looking in, not the inside. That’s why there’s disappointment around town.

(17:11) And that’s why, when I’ve asked people on council — I took the opportunity at the St. Elias launch event to ask some of the councillors, and then other councillors who weren’t there, people you’d think would be allies of Jeff Leiper — they did not have clear explanations as to why he doesn’t have endorsements from people with some public profile in Ottawa. And it’s five weeks before election day.

Brigitte Pellerin (17:32): It’s getting there. I mean — maybe that’s his big surprise at the end of the month. It’s on September twenty-eighth. I’ve registered for that, so I’m going to show up, and I want to know what the big surprise is. That could be it. And if so, that’s four weeks or so before voting day. That’s good timing.

Evan Potter (17:54): Here’s my riff on surprises. If you’re going to announce a big surprise in advance — and I have no idea what it is, I’ve not asked. Is it my call-out for the big, beautiful idea? Maybe.

But if you tell us you’re going to have a big surprise, when that surprise arrives, it had better be good.

Brigitte Pellerin (18:25): Knock my socks off.

Evan Potter (18:30): It has to knock your socks off. Everybody in Ottawa has to be talking about it. And if it’s just one big deflating moment where you’re going — that’s all you’ve got, Jeff?

I’m not going to say that’s the end of his campaign, because we don’t know what’s happening on the ground. That’s his salvation. That’s his one salvation: what’s happening on the ground, Jeff.

But I think it will turn off a lot of people. And if it’s a deflating moment — if the surprise isn’t big enough — the people you think would come out for Jeff, including members of council, they will not come out.

Brigitte Pellerin (19:14): Why would you? You’re not going to attach your name to someone you perceive to be a loser.

Evan Potter (19:19): They’re not going to attach their name to it. And then they’ll reconcile themselves — to themselves, and maybe to a few close colleagues on council — to another four years of Mark Sutcliffe as mayor.

Brigitte Pellerin (19:31): There’s one more salvation for Jeff Leiper, and it’s Alex Lawson.

Evan Potter (19:37): Yes, of course. I always say there are two: the ground game and Alex Lawson.

Brigitte Pellerin (19:42): There are two. And if both happen at the same time, then he’s good. But you’re relying on things you can’t control — except the ground game. Relying on Alex Lawson eating into Mark Sutcliffe’s support is not something you control. Great if it happens. If I’m Jeff Leiper’s campaign, I want it to happen. But I can’t control it. So I want to focus on the things I can control and go all out on those.

Evan Potter (20:02): The only thing the Jeff Leiper campaign controls — with an underperforming candidate, which he is relative to who he is, a three-term councillor — is the ground game.

So they have to hit a hundred thousand, a hundred and fifty thousand doors. He has to get the hundred and ten thousand votes in the bag that Catherine got in 2022. And then he has to add maybe ten thousand — young people, the forty thousand irregular voters I keep talking about. He’s got to be at a hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty thousand.

Then he has to hope that Alex Lawson knocks thirty or forty thousand off Mark Sutcliffe’s 2022 vote — he got a hundred and sixty thousand. And then Jeff has a very narrow path. And that would be, by all accounts, an incredible upset.

But everything I’ve seen over the past year of observing this campaign doesn’t give me great confidence for Jeff Leiper. Again — there are only about two people who know what’s really going on in the Leiper campaign, and that’s Jeff Leiper and Stephen Yardy.

Brigitte Pellerin (21:23): So this weekend I’m going to an event with Alex Lawson, somewhere near Manotick. I’m curious, because I have not seen his crowd. I want to see what the atmosphere is like, the kinds of questions people ask — and the kinds of things I’m going to go and ask. Like: why are you here, and what do you see in this? I’m really, really curious.

Evan Potter (22:00): You need to be very curious. Because I’ve been asking a lot of questions, as have you, about the polling — about Liaison’s August poll.

And I was reminded today that the poll was done. It went into the field, because there are results on homelessness. So if you look at the Liaison poll, it clearly went into the field, including on the mayor’s race. Somebody has decided not to release it.

And why? It’s created a lot of speculation, as we all know, about whether the Alex Lawson surge was ever real.

(22:49) So the public now needs to know, and the media needs to know, and the other campaigns need to know: is he at twenty-five or twenty-six percent, or is that a mirage?

As I noted in my column yesterday on the Mark Sutcliffe event with the ten councillors — I talked to one councillor, a Sutcliffe ally, and he was of the view that Alex was not making any inroads. He hadn’t seen him in his ward.

Brigitte Pellerin (23:15): I don’t believe in fifty percent for Mark Sutcliffe.

Evan Potter (23:19): In his ward — and you had seen signs for Alex there. But he said, and I put this in my column: you know what, I think the mayor can get to fifty or sixty percent, because I don’t believe in the Alex Lawson surge.

I don’t believe that myself. But he wasn’t kidding. He just did not believe it. So I put the word vaporous in his mouth, and he was happy with it. He said: yes, you can put that word in my mouth — Alex Lawson’s support is a mirage.

And you now need to see, Brigitte, whether Alex has support in those critical rural and outer suburban wards. Because if that is indeed a mirage, then Sutcliffe gets his second term.

Brigitte Pellerin (24:07): So I want to end on a local race.

I’ve been driving around. I went to Stittsville and Kanata South to see what the signs were like. And there are more signs in the wards that are competitive than in those that aren’t. Fair enough.

I’m also going this weekend to Matt Luloff’s ward — Orléans, Ward 1 — where I’m going to be shadowing Bob Bell. He’s a candidate there I didn’t really know much about until a friend told me about him, and about the videos he’s been making commuting from Orléans downtown — from Algonquin back to Orléans — documenting how long it takes. He’s also very present online.

And his team tells me he has knocked on almost ten thousand doors since May, which suggests to me that he’s not sleeping and he’s only knocking on doors. Really full-time.

So I’m going to shadow him this weekend. I want to get a feel for it. I don’t know Orléans as much as I should — I know that’s on me — so I’m going to go and listen very carefully.

Evan Potter (25:13): Well, that’s good. Because Bob Bell has become Matt Luloff’s best friend.

Again, a situation where you get the splitting of the opposing candidates’ votes. He’s going to split the vote with Barbara Gandolfo, who started much earlier — she was already unofficially campaigning last year. She wasn’t waiting till May.

So if Bob is in a full-court press, that is probably good news for Matt Luloff. And then we’re getting again into these split votes that almost always favour the incumbent.

Brigitte Pellerin (26:02): But people know that, right? You have to give credit to voters. They understand the dynamics. They understand the math. They understand strategic voting.

And sometimes they say: well, I don’t care about strategic voting, this is the person I want to vote for. And sometimes people say: there’s a person I really don’t want to win again, so I’m going to arrange accordingly. Both are valid. It’s your vote — you do what you want with it.

So it’s going to be very interesting to see what’s going on in that ward.

(26:39) Anything else you’re watching? We have about a minute left. Or are you just going to take a break, because it’s been a lot?

Evan Potter (26:39): There was a Stittsville debate — the Stittsville Village Association had one last night. I haven’t looked at it yet; it’s online. I’ll have a look. Chelsea — is it Walden? — seems to be one of the leading candidates.

And then we might look at Clarke Kelly, Ward 5. I am told to look at Ward 5, so I will. West Carleton-March, a rural ward. Something is apparently happening there. I don’t know exactly what, but I’m told we should have a look.

Brigitte Pellerin (27:30): It’s also fair season in the area — there are a bunch of fairs happening. So if you’re going to a fair, especially in the more rural wards, you can probably expect to see your candidates there. Along with the corn and the rides and all the fun at fairs — ask them questions. They’re there for you. They’re there to serve. That’s their job.

Take advantage of it and ask them pointed questions.

(27:58) I think there’s more interest and action now in this campaign than there was three weeks ago, and that’s a good thing to see. Maybe people were smarter than we were and they vacationed during the summer, and now they’re paying attention. I don’t know. But it’s good to see.

Evan Potter (28:15): Every four years this allows a citywide discussion about local issues. That is all good. It’s great.

Will it change the actual composition of council on October twenty-seventh? We’ll see in the mayor’s race. We’ll see in Kanata South. But it’s going to be the same council.

Brigitte Pellerin (28:39): Well, on that note — we’ll talk next week. Have a great weekend. Bye.

Evan Potter (28:41): Okay. You too. Bye-bye.6

Get full access to Random Acts of Urbanism by Brigitte Pellerin at randomactsofurbanism.substack.com/subscribe

This week: Signs Go Up, a Poll Goes Missing, and Lawson Pulls From Both Edges

Here is the piece Evan wrote about Alex Lawson.

Fact check: Near the end of the episode Evan said something about fundraising in the last election that neither he nor I were fully certain about. I went digging and it turns out Evan was accurate. In 2022, Catherine McKenney published their list of donors over $100 on Oct. 10 and updated it before election day; Mark Sutcliffe declined to release his before the legal filing deadline in March 2023 (CBC, Oct. 11, 2022). McKenney ultimately raised about $543,000 from roughly 3,100 donors; Sutcliffe raised $537,824 from about 750, with more than half coming from ~250 maximum donations (CBC, April 2023).

Transcript

Brigitte Pellerin (00:02): Hi everyone. Hi Evan. Have you seen some signs, Evan?

Evan Potter (00:05): I have not seen any signs.

Brigitte Pellerin (00:07): As of midnight on Friday the 11th, crews and candidates were allowed to put up signs on private property, and on street corners and intersections.

I was out Thursday night playing late frisbee, and then there’s the obligatory beer after late frisbee. So I was coming home at about midnight from Kanata. I didn’t see anything out there — but by the time I got to my little Westboro neighbourhood, there was Joanne Chianello’s truck with her signs on it. They were hammering down signs at Byron and Island Park.

Evan Potter (00:47): A major intersection.

Brigitte Pellerin (00:49): A major intersection, in this little corner of the world. And it just goes to show that some people are out there early, fighting like they’re in second place — which I like to see.

Jeff Leiper also posted a picture of himself in front of a Kanata home, I think at about 12:30 last night.

Evan Potter (01:07): He was promising to be out there first, and he was, with a sign. I did a quick drive around the Glebe and Old Ottawa South. There may be some signs — I wasn’t doing a street-by-street sweep — but I didn’t see any. I don’t think there are any signs out yet.

(01:30) Interesting, in what we’ve said before feels like a dead election. We’re both, I think, concerned that there will be a lower turnout — which favours all incumbents, including the mayor. The challengers need a high turnout.

Brigitte Pellerin (01:55): And so does democracy. Come on, people. Go vote.

Evan Potter (02:19): One indicator of the energy of this electoral cycle is the degree to which you notice, or are aware, that there are signs.

There’s going to be a lot less incentive for many incumbent councillors — some of whom may as well be acclaimed, because they don’t have any real challengers. They have challengers on the books, but it won’t matter. So it’ll be interesting to see how much effort those incumbents make in the next five weeks. They might not be motivated to put out a lot of signs.

Brigitte Pellerin (02:48): It costs money to do that. So why would you spend money?

Evan Potter (02:51): It costs money and effort. And if they’re just going to cruise to another re-election, it’s hard to see why they’d go all out.

(03:01) Now, this goes to a topic I think we’ll come back to — not just today but in subsequent weeks — which is the lack of endorsements for the challengers.

Brigitte Pellerin (03:22): So far. I heard rumours we were going to see some endorsements earlier this week, but they didn’t come out.

Evan Potter (03:27): They didn’t happen. But here I’m going to link it to signage. Because if some of the current council members do not want to overtly support the challengers — and here I’m mostly thinking of Jeff Leiper — one way for them to support a challenge to Mayor Sutcliffe is to try to increase the vote share in their own wards. And one way to do that is for their teams to get the signs out, create some energy, try to increase the vote, and hopefully help their council colleague.

If we don’t see that extra effort — and having signs out there reflects that extra effort — then that sends a message about the relationship between challenger candidates like Jeff Leiper and his fellow council members.

Brigitte Pellerin (04:36): So I’m going to be driving around town to see about that, and we can report next week on what neighbourhoods have what.

Evan Potter (04:43): Let me take this one. I was thinking about how I’d put this to you today, and I thought about it this way.

Let’s say you and I are members of Ottawa council. We’ll take the personalities out of it — just pretend you and I are. We’ve known each other for two terms, eight years. We’ve mostly voted the same way, consistently. We may not be personal friends, but we respect each other and we’ve supported each other.

Now I decide to challenge the sitting mayor. I think it would be a fair expectation, for somebody like me, that other people on council with whom I have a similar worldview —

Brigitte Pellerin (05:36): Like me.

Evan Potter (05:37): Like you — would come, and if they couldn’t publicly endorse me, at least try to give me a helping hand by increasing the vote in their ward.

I think that would be a reasonable expectation. And if Jeff Leiper isn’t getting that, I have to say, that also sends a message.

Brigitte Pellerin (06:06): Are there other ways, other than signs, that would constitute helping? Maybe sharing volunteers, lists, things like that?

Evan Potter (06:13): Sharing volunteers, things like that, yeah.

Brigitte Pellerin (06:16): So we don’t know what may or may not be happening in the background. We’d love to hear about it.

Evan Potter (06:20): We don’t know. But we do know that nobody from council has endorsed Jeff Leiper — to my knowledge.

Brigitte Pellerin (06:32): No, you’re right. Not yet, anyway.

But he’s announced a surprise, right? I missed that announcement completely. What is this?

Evan Potter (06:38): He has announced a surprise. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the big, beautiful idea I’ve been talking about for a year — that a candidate needs a big, beautiful idea. We’ll have to wait. Two weeks. End of September.

Brigitte Pellerin (07:01): Okay. What could it be?

Evan Potter (07:04): Actually, I have no idea.

Brigitte Pellerin (07:05): I’m stumped too. But the timing would be perfect.

Evan Potter (07:17): They probably had this in mind for a long time. And if he’s announcing it as a surprise, it better be big. It better be good.

Brigitte Pellerin (07:22): It better be good.

Mark Sutcliffe, meanwhile, is planning his official launch on the 16th — which is next week sometime.

Evan Potter (07:34): Next week sometime. And this will be, I think, an effort for him to show — I’m just picturing it now. If you and I were the strategists, it should be a major media event for his campaign.

Brigitte Pellerin (07:55): Made for TV.

Evan Potter (07:56): A made-for-TV moment. He should have all the people who are endorsing him — the name personalities — in front of him. A phalanx of people endorsing him who are recognized by the community. A full room of supporters. Lots of signs. I don’t know if there will be balloons. Maybe there will be balloons.

Brigitte Pellerin (08:19): Come on, let’s have balloons.

Evan Potter (08:21): But this will definitely be a made-for-local-Ottawa-TV moment. And the message is designed to tell you and the audience that it’s coming — his victory is inevitable.

Brigitte Pellerin (08:37): That’s the typical incumbent posture, right? You don’t let them see that you’re scared.

(08:45) Now — I’ve left my tinfoil in the drawer where I keep my cooking implements, and I don’t want to start saying things that sound like I believe in conspiracies. But the August numbers from the Liaison poll have not been released. And we’re recording this on September eleventh.

So we’re going to have the September numbers soon, I assume. And I have not seen an explanation as to why there was no release for August. So we’re left to speculate. I’ve asked around, I’ve asked other people — what do you think? What’s going on? And we all kind of land in a similar place.

Two possibilities I can think of. One is that there was a problem with the poll. Nobody’s perfect; pollsters can make mistakes, or discover errors after the fact. I’m not casting any shade on David Valentin and his firm — they’ve got a great record. But if there had been an issue with the methodology, or some other problem — I don’t do polling, so I don’t know where it could go wrong — but imagine it went wrong for reasons outside their control. It would make sense not to release that poll.

Evan Potter (10:13): Well, there are rogue polls and there are problems with polls. I think we can say with certainty that polling was done in August.

Brigitte Pellerin (10:22): Right. So it’s not released. So either something went wrong with the poll, or the numbers show something so unexpected that people thought: we can’t release this, because people will think we’ve made a mistake.

Evan Potter (10:36): I’m told all roads lead to the client. The client is Ottawa Compass / iPolitics. And I put in an email to the publisher-editor asking whether the polling data would be released. I did not receive a response.

So it just creates some speculation about why. Hopefully another name-brand pollster will step in in a couple of weeks to provide at least one other public poll.

(11:23) Because we’re all relying on only one public poll. The campaigns are doing their own internal polling, so they have their numbers. But the public and the commentators only have the benefit of one poll. It’s always better to have multiple public polls so you can average out the results.

Brigitte Pellerin (11:29): And it’s probably even better for the polling firms themselves to have other polls, and other people in the same field doing the same work — because then you can check yourself against the other guys, and everybody gets better that way.

Evan Potter (12:00): I don’t know if we’ll ever have an answer about the August poll. I mentioned in my column yesterday that there are rumours about results from internal polling that have Alex Lawson vying for second place with Jeff Leiper. But it would be better for the local media and for opinion commentators if we had access to the actual polling results.

Brigitte Pellerin (12:33): So you sat down with Alex Lawson — that was on the record, for an interview — and you wrote a very interesting piece about it, which we can link to.

I tweeted it, and I was going to poke you a little. I said I think you have a tiny bit of a blind spot, because you’re the data guy, unlike the feelings reader over here.

Evan Potter (12:57): Well — I’m the data interpretation guy. I’m not the data acquisition guy.

Brigitte Pellerin (13:01): Right. But in forming your opinions — and correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t want to put words in your mouth — I think you put a fair amount of weight on data and what it tells you, and then you form your opinions from that. Which is good and reasonable. We need that.

Evan Potter (13:21): I believe in gut checks that are then validated by data.

Brigitte Pellerin (13:29): Right. And I’m kind of the other way around. I observe how people react. I like to read the energy in a room.

We were in the same place earlier this week — we didn’t go together — at the Eva James Community Centre, for a candidates’ meeting. Not really a debate; a question-and-answer session.

And I’m always at the back of the room, observing the body language: how people approach a candidate, how they react when the candidate sticks their hand out to shake.

(14:00) And I am starting to think that the Alex Lawson campaign could have something of a reverse Bernie Sanders from 2016.

Evan Potter (14:17): Okay.

Brigitte Pellerin (14:18): Here’s what I mean, for those old enough to remember 2016. During the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton won and became the presidential candidate, but Bernie Sanders was doing quite well. Most people know Bernie — you could call him almost far-ish left of the spectrum. He also had a surprising amount of support from young people, a lot of them young men, who — when Bernie was not the nominee — went and voted for Donald Trump. So you could call them more on the right. He pulled from both edges of the spectrum.

And here’s why I think this may apply to this particular candidate. Of the four likely candidates, there’s only one who speaks like a guy who would not mind dismantling the system as it is. And that’s Alex Lawson.

I’m trying to be very fair in how I say this, because he’s not a Donald Trump. He’s not an institutional vandal. But his posture, his messages — you look at his videos — he’s the guy who will say —

Evan Potter (15:42): He’s a disrupter.

Brigitte Pellerin (15:45): That’s a much better word. Thank you. There’s a problem.

And the solutions everyone’s been trying — homelessness, safety on the streets, needles on the sidewalks, paid parking, garbage — now I’m putting words in his mouth, but the vibe you get from him is that all the other guys are trying the same solutions that don’t work, and it’s time to think of something that might. And I think there’s a huge appetite for that. On the left as much as on the right.

(16:20) There are people on the left — and I’m almost done with my TED talk — who cannot stand Mark Sutcliffe, don’t want to vote for him, and look at Jeff Leiper or Neil and say: yeah, but it wouldn’t be different. And then they look at Alex Lawson and think: well, at least it would be different.

That’s the impression. And I think that’s more widespread than we’re seeing in the numbers. Not that we’re seeing numbers.

Evan Potter (16:46): I think that’s a fair critique of my commentary. But we don’t see the numbers, so we can’t tell. And we don’t have the focus groups to know what progressives are thinking about Jeff Leiper, or who their second choice would be. Is their second choice Neil, or is it in fact Alex Lawson?

You’re right — it would be very interesting to see these Bernie Sanders people line up behind Alex Lawson. I could definitely see that if he has a campaign on the ground in the eastern suburbs, which he says he does. He’d be reaching some of those people. And he also mentioned — I didn’t point it out in my column — that he’s doing very well in the urban core, downtown, as well.

Brigitte Pellerin (17:50): Better than he expected, I think. Or better than we expected, that’s for sure.

(17:55) And I’m prepared to say: I did not see that coming.

Evan Potter (18:00): So if he is polling between 25 and 29 percent, that may be an indicator that he has cross-appeal across the urban, rural and suburban divides in this city.

Brigitte Pellerin (18:15): And that would make Mark Sutcliffe panic. If I were running Mark Sutcliffe’s campaign, I’d be panicking if I saw that.

Evan Potter (18:22): Yes. And I’m sure they are. David Coletto must be seeing something.

Brigitte Pellerin (18:29): That’s his job. That’s what he does.

Speaking of terrible segues — let’s go straight into the next topic, because it’s a big one. The extension to the east of the LRT.

(18:42) We don’t have a date. And at this point I’ll give this to the general manager, Rick Leary: I think he’s learned from other people’s mistakes, or maybe he already knew. Always under-promise and over-deliver. It’s so much better than the alternative. So he’s not raising expectations — we hope it’s coming soon, but we’re not promising you anything.

Evan Potter (19:06): He will not. When I went to Rick Leary’s information event in Orléans a couple of weeks ago, one of the audience members kept pressing him about a date for when the line would open. Rick Leary was adamant. He would not be moved. He would not give a date. He said he would give council an update — and apparently that’s what he did yesterday. But he would not give a date.

Brigitte Pellerin (19:37): Which is an improvement.

We also heard in that same update that the situation with cancelled buses was improving. That’s good — mind you, it was in the basement, so there was nowhere to go but up. But yay.

The ridership is still very low compared to pre-pandemic levels. So people are not coming back.

Evan Potter (19:57): 66 percent.

Brigitte Pellerin (20:01): They’re not coming back to transit even with mandatory return to office. So that’s a problem.

(20:06) But the east line extension — people in Orléans, and I hear from folks who work downtown and live especially in the farther reaches, out by Tenth Line and — what’s the other one? Innes? I don’t venture that far, which is my problem, I guess.

But out in the farther reaches of Orléans, they used to have one big express bus, and now it’s being replaced by two or three different ones, so they have to make a couple of transfers to get downtown and back home, and it takes forever. So having access to the LRT — especially if it worked — would be a game changer. It would make their lives overwhelmingly better overnight.

(20:51) So if you’re Mark Sutcliffe, you want that to happen before October 26.

Evan Potter (20:59): We were talking about Jeff Leiper’s end-of-September surprise. This would be a beautiful October surprise for the mayor — if the line just happened to be publicly open before October 26.

Brigitte Pellerin (21:19): Do you remember when the Confederation Line opened in September 2019? Was it the 14th? I think I even remember the day, because I was the only one not covering it — I’d been sent to do something else.

You had those pictures of the mayor and all the VIPs, everyone smiling on the train and holding on to whatever they could, because we didn’t have the —

Evan Potter (21:44): The straps.

Brigitte Pellerin (21:45): The hand straps. Those were added later. So people were holding on to things and laughing and smiling, and it was all great. And then it went to hell real quick, because you couldn’t touch the doors, and then all kinds of things started to happen.

But if the Orléans extension opens and all you see is smiling faces of people on it — yeah, that would do it. Except he’s running out of runway to make this happen, because there needs to be testing, and then so many days without a failure before you get approval.

Evan Potter (22:16): There are numbers involved here.

Brigitte Pellerin (22:20): Math again.

Evan Potter (22:22): So I think the expectation is November.

Brigitte Pellerin (22:28): So — too late.

Evan Potter (22:29): Too late, I think.

Brigitte Pellerin (22:31): I’ve had my heart broken too many times. When they say it’s coming soon, I have trouble believing it. I’ll wait to see it before I really believe it.

I worry we’re going to have the reverse — as with line one. And even when line two opened, it was not as dramatic as line one. But do you remember the messages, when the mayor had to go on TV and ask people not to touch the doors?

Evan Potter (22:58): I remember that. Very embarrassing.

Brigitte Pellerin (23:01): Right. So if something like that were to happen again, we’re going to have a big problem. Never mind the election — this is a serious and significant issue.

(23:10) I want to touch briefly on something that wasn’t in our notes, because it links transit to the next issue. A lot of Mark Sutcliffe’s plan on transit involves uploading the LRT to the province — which, as far as we know, is being talked about. But I don’t see anybody from the province lining up at a microphone to say, yeah, we’re in. So who knows if it’s really going to happen.

And then Sutcliffe came out with a plan to come together and discuss the possibility of a framework towards ending homelessness. I’m exaggerating a little. But that is heavily dependent on other levels of government doing their part — more specifically the feds, in this case. And similarly, I’m not seeing any evidence — and tell me if I’m missing it — that people from the federal government are lining up at the microphones saying: yeah, Mark, we’re in.

Evan Potter (24:07): Brigitte, that goes back to your point. Isn’t this part of what you said — that the mayor is running against himself?

Brigitte Pellerin (24:14): He’s running against the incumbent. If only the guy in charge was doing the right things.

Evan Potter (24:19): Because these are all issues that, as critics would say, he’s had four years to address. You can’t keep re-announcing a plan on homelessness.

Brigitte Pellerin (24:30): Well, it worked for Justin Trudeau for a couple of mandates, I have to say.

Evan Potter (24:33): Okay, maybe it did.

Brigitte Pellerin (24:35): But it’s not okay. I think people are sick of this. The people who are engaged and informed, at least. I don’t know about low-information voters — and by low-information I don’t mean dumb people, I mean people who don’t pay a lot of attention to the issues, don’t remember all the details, and don’t watch our podcast. They should watch, because then they’d know.

But seriously, there are a lot of people who hear that and think: that rings a bell, Mr. Sutcliffe. I’ve heard you say this before.

Evan Potter (25:00): How many plans have we seen about public safety? How many plans about the reinvigoration of downtown? How many plans about the ByWard Market? How many about youth homelessness? It’s the same thing over and over — announcement after announcement of a plan. And then the election comes along, and suddenly all the issues you’ve been announcing plans for, you’re announcing again as part of your election platform. I think that’s what bothers people.

Brigitte Pellerin (25:36): Because it feels like we’re being manipulated a little. Like we’re too dumb to follow what’s going on, so — here’s a new shiny thing. It’s not a great feeling.

Relying on your electorate not being on top of things is not my strategy. I like to assume my readers and my viewers are very smart people.

Evan Potter (25:55): Brigitte, how do you think the mayor is feeling these days? What’s your read on Mark Sutcliffe in September 2026?

Brigitte Pellerin (26:02): I think he’s confident. And I think he’s mistaken.

Evan Potter (26:08): Why is he mistaken?

Brigitte Pellerin (26:09): Because he’s not seeing what we’re seeing — because people are hiding that from him.

Running a city is a very time-consuming job. He’s also got a family, and he’s very involved — he’s a family man. Plus he runs every day. He’s got a lot on his plate. And that’s not a criticism; that’s just the man as I know him. He’s not on Twitter. He’s not out there listening to people, because he doesn’t have the time. So he’s not seeing the signs that we’re seeing.

And I don’t think his people are communicating that to him. I think they are deliberately keeping him confident. And for my money, that’s a mistake. But we’ll see if I’m right or wrong when the votes come in.

Evan Potter (26:55): We will see. Hopefully we’ll see some numbers coming out.

Brigitte Pellerin (26:58): We only have a minute or so left. Anything in particular you’re looking for, other than Mark Sutcliffe’s launch next week?

Evan Potter (27:07): I’d like to get a sense of whether Alex has any more popular initiatives up his sleeve. He’s had the parking meters, garbage. I wonder what else he’s got.

Brigitte Pellerin (27:22): I’m going to put a suggestion in his ear, because I know he’s watching: release your list of donors.

Evan Potter (27:31): Okay.

Brigitte Pellerin (27:32): People are asking: is he funded by developers?

Evan Potter (27:38): That’s fair.

Brigitte Pellerin (27:39): He has said — I don’t know if it’s a promise-promise — that he would release his list and put it against the lobbyist registry. That’s not exactly the same as releasing your donors.

And I don’t mean everybody who gave you four or five hundred dollars. I mean anybody who gave the maximum, or over a certain amount that’s considered a large donation. I guess we all have a different number in mind for that. I don’t need to know everybody who gave 50 bucks. But anybody who’s given 750 dollars or more — yeah, I’d probably want to know about that.

And I think it would help him. Assuming, of course, that his list is full of normal people.

Evan Potter (28:25): That’s interesting. So Alex, if you’re watching, we look forward to hearing whether you’ll release your list.

As I recall, in 2022 Mark Sutcliffe did not release his list during the campaign, but Catherine McKenney did. I just remember that.

Brigitte Pellerin (28:42): I don’t remember that. We’ll have to check. I’ll put it in the show notes — I’ll go check.

Evan Potter (28:49): There was a promise to release. Were they released? They are public now — you can see who contributed to the campaigns.

Brigitte Pellerin (28:54): Yes. But it’s good to know before you vote, more than after.

Evan Potter (28:58): It’s good to know before you vote.

I’d also say that at last count, I think Leiper’s donations were close to $200,000. And just for comparative purposes: at the end of their campaign, Catherine McKenney was over $500,000 — and Catherine had collected more donations than Mark Sutcliffe four years ago.

Brigitte Pellerin (29:22): Interesting. More numbers to crunch. This is great.

So we’ll talk to each other next week. And in the meantime — let’s go count some signs.

Evan Potter (29:28): Absolutely. Let’s go count some signs. Bye.

Brigitte Pellerin (29:32): Bye.

Get full access to Random Acts of Urbanism by Brigitte Pellerin at randomactsofurbanism.substack.com/subscribe

Philip shared some stats he put together from police reports comparing 2014 to 2024 and no, it’s not pretty.

There are events and incidents that make the news, and these need to be included. But there are other incidents that don’t make the news and yet make us feel less safe. Like that time your toddler almost pricked her fingers on a dirty needle. Or the constant speeding on residential streets that nobody ever does anything about. Vandalism on your vehicle or home. Bike theft. Someone peeing in your backyard. Or trying to break into your house.

These are incidents that happen on a daily basis. I know this because people complain to me about it. But we don’t have a way of tracking those — hell, they’re not even newsworthy enough for journalists to write about — and they don’t get reported to police because there’s nothing the cops can do about them.

I hear from people who work, live or do business downtown that the situation on the street has degenerated in the last year and a half or so, to the point where people are thinking of leaving. If they do, what’s going to hold this downtown together? Federal public servants frog-marched to the office?

Oh, and safety is not just a concern for those of us who are in or near downtown. When I shadow people running for municipal councillors in some of the newer and nicer suburbs, I hear a lot of people complaining about cars speeding and not respecting stop signs, right when little kids are out running around between houses. You don’t need anyone actually getting hurt to feel threatened by a driver going 70km/h on a Stittsville residential street.

I want to count those incidents and have them tell the story. I want to use that story to force candidates for office into taking this issue seriously, and work together — with experts in the field, residents, business owners — to find solutions that work. Ignoring the problem won’t work. Neither will appointing a safety czar.

Know someone who has a safety incident to include in the database? Send them this link.

Get full access to Random Acts of Urbanism by Brigitte Pellerin at randomactsofurbanism.substack.com/subscribe

Here is a link to my parking column from July.

A Safety Czar, Free Parking, and the Two Things That Have to Happen for Leiper to Win

Brigitte Pellerin (00:01): Hi everyone, hi Evan. It’s almost Labour Day — I’m still enjoying my backyard studio for a little longer. How are you?

Evan Potter (00:06): I’m still in my home office. I haven’t transitioned to the Desmarais building on the Ottawa U campus yet.

Brigitte Pellerin (00:14): Well, if it’s working, why would you change it?

So the real campaign is about to begin. How do we feel about that?

Evan Potter (00:23): I’m not feeling anything. It feels — I don’t want to use the D-E-A-D word. Dead. But I don’t feel any wave happening anytime soon, in any direction.

Brigitte Pellerin (00:40): Right. For anyone.

Evan Potter (00:45): For anyone.

So let me get my Jeff Leiper comment out of the way, and then I will not come back to it. I think I’ve overanalyzed Jeff Leiper’s campaign and people are tired of me saying things. So I’ve been thinking about what to say here, and then to leave him alone for a while.

Here’s what I’m going to say. For Jeff Leiper to win, he would have to overperform against Mark Sutcliffe — because he was the underdog to begin with, against an incumbent mayor. So it’s just logical that he’d have to overperform as a political candidate. And thus far, going into the quote-unquote real election, he has not overperformed. Therefore he’s kind of underperformed.

And of course his underperformance is relative to his competitors, Neil Saravanamuttoo and Alex Lawson. I’ve said that both of them are the real winners of this election up until now. They’re the big winners. Because we expected Mark Sutcliffe to win, and he may indeed still win. It’s his election to lose.

(02:00) And here’s my last comment on Jeff Leiper for now.

If he can’t overperform, and hasn’t overperformed, there are only two conditions under which — having watched him now for a year as a candidate — he could win on October twenty-sixth. And they’d have to happen concurrently, in tandem.

The first is that Stephen Yardy, his campaign manager, would have to have an incredible ground game going on right now. I don’t know if he does. But it would have to be an incredible ground game, with thousands of volunteers. I’ve said that before.

And at the same time, the Alex Lawson surge would have to be real — and we’ll find out when Liaison releases the August polling. If the twenty-five, twenty-six percent is real — David Coletto didn’t think it was real when it was released — but if it is real, Alex would then have to overperform in the next six weeks. In other words, steal so many Mark Sutcliffe votes that it puts the mayor’s victory in danger.

So for Jeff Leiper to win: Stephen Yardy would have to be running, right now as we speak, an incredible ground campaign that we can’t see, getting those forty thousand irregular voters into their data banks. And at the same time, Alex Lawson would have to overperform even more over the next six weeks and push his support to twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty percent.

If those two things are happening together going into the second week of October, towards election day on the twenty-sixth — then yes, Jeff Leiper, an underperforming candidate relative to the other people in the mayoral race, could have a path to victory.

Brigitte Pellerin (04:09): That’s his path. That’s the only one I can think of, too.

Evan Potter (04:13): I’ve been thinking about this while walking my dog in the park.

Brigitte Pellerin (04:17): Your poor dog must be so sick of Jeff Leiper right now.

Evan Potter (04:18): My poor dog. Why is this guy talking to himself?

So I’ve come to the conclusion that if those two things aren’t happening right now, Jeff Leiper isn’t winning this campaign. Okay. I don’t want to talk about Jeff Leiper anymore.

Brigitte Pellerin (04:30): Game over.

So — debates. Debates are coming, right? That’s the other variable you didn’t mention in your spiel. Because what if — I mean, it’s rare, it almost literally never happens — but what if there’s a bit of an upset in a debate? That can also throw the deck of cards up into the air. And we know there are a couple coming.

There’s the — was it the Home Builders Association?

Evan Potter (04:56): The Greater Ottawa Home Builders.

Brigitte Pellerin (04:58): Right. They have one, I think with all four. The top four.

Evan Potter (05:00): Yeah, all four.

Brigitte Pellerin (05:01): And I know there’s also the Board of Trade, which has one — that one’s October first, if I’m not mistaken. And it’s with only the two top-polling candidates. So I’m curious to see the numbers, because what if it’s Mark Sutcliffe against Alex Lawson? Whew. Wild card.

Evan Potter (05:20): Okay — there, you’ve now injected some excitement. Wow. That would be really — yeah.

Brigitte Pellerin (05:27): I’m trying to wake this thing up. I don’t like it when it’s dead.

Evan Potter (05:31): Absolutely. This feels like a dead campaign, and that would turn things around. You’re right, it would inject some excitement. The way Lisa MacLeod would have injected some excitement into the campaign.

Brigitte Pellerin (05:45): Right. Remember Lisa?

Evan Potter (05:49): So yes, I agree with you now. Can debates change momentum fundamentally? Maybe. But you have to think about who’s watching those debates. It’s people who are already active. And who’s determining the election? Hundreds of thousands of low-information voters who are only going to pay attention the last week before the election.

So even if it’s a tense debate, an exciting debate — even if the media gives it significant coverage — I’m still not sure it would change momentum. It could. But I agree with you, Brigitte: maybe something will happen at the debate.

I was going to say Jeff Leiper’s name. I won’t say his name.

Brigitte Pellerin (06:32): Poor Jeff. Let’s leave him alone.

(06:32) So I want to talk a little about the mayor. He came out with a plan earlier this week for safety — saying that everybody deserves to be safe and to feel safe in their city. I’m paraphrasing a little. And as part of that plan there’ll be more funding for the police, and a safety czar.

And I thought: all right. What is this? What year is this? What decade is this? I think Alex Lawson, at thirty-eight years old, is too young to remember when we had czars for everything. That’s how long ago that was.

And of course people are making jokes — there are a couple I’m stealing from my Twitter feed — about the safety czar and the night mayor pairing up and doing something together.

But the impression I was left with from Sutcliffe’s announcement was that he’s campaigning against himself. It’s like: if only the incumbent mayor had done something for safety.

And then of course the other guys — Jeff and Alex Lawson. I don’t know what Neil said about it; I didn’t catch anything.

Evan Potter (07:41): He had a safety piece too.

Brigitte Pellerin (07:43): He did, but Neil had a different announcement about homelessness and tiny villages, which was great, by the way.

But both Jeff Leiper and Alex Lawson commented similarly: well, Mark, you’ve had four years and you didn’t do any of it — and suddenly you’re going to do something. And Lawson had the line. Several people sent it to me. I’m paraphrasing, because I don’t remember the exact quote, but he said: if Sutcliffe had done what’s in his plan, I’d be knocking on doors for him instead of running against him.

Evan Potter (08:15): Brigitte, that was a great line. That was a great line. I wish Jeff Leiper would come up with lines like that.

I said his name again. Stop it.

Brigitte Pellerin (08:27): So the other exciting thing this week — and it just happened at the end of the week — was Alex Lawson. He’s going to be our star this week, I guess. He’s proposing to do away with parking meters.

I wrote about this in the Ottawa Citizen in July, and I’ll put a link to it, because I think I was right back then. So now he’s almost stealing my idea. I didn’t say get rid of the parking meters — but here’s the problem with the parking meters: it’s not making money.

(09:00) And I had this talk with Joanne Chianello as well, off the record — I won’t share the possible alternatives we discussed. But there are other ways to make sure that — this is valuable real estate, right? Space on the street. People should pay for parking their vehicle there. But it should be as frictionless as possible. Because if there’s one thing I hate when I need to take my car to run six different errands in central Ottawa, it’s having to get on the app every single time I park somewhere. All right, I need twenty minutes here, I need fifteen minutes there, and it’s a dollar-ten, it’s two dollars, whatever it is. It’s a pain in the butt.

So just on that, to remove the meters — I think everyone says yay. You don’t want to allow people to park for six hours at a time, because you want to encourage some turnover.

Evan Potter (09:45): No, of course not.

Brigitte Pellerin (09:46): So Lawson’s idea, if I’ve got it right, would be a two-hour limit — or more, depending on where it is — to encourage that turnover. Which is fine.

(10:03) One of the things I remember talking about with Joanne — and I don’t mind sharing this one, because it was my idea — was to give everyone who’s a taxpayer in Ottawa one or two stickers, or some kind of thing, which would allow you to park in those metered spaces, even if there are no meters, for two or three hours.

We already pay to live here as residents. Why not give us a certain amount of free on-street parking? And tourists can pay through the nose, because I don’t care — they’re tourists and they expect it anyway.

So there are different ways to manage this. But here’s the thing with the current system, and this was in a report that I quoted in my column, and that Lawson is also quoting in his policy proposal: we generate, as profit from those parking meters, less than two million dollars a year.

Evan Potter (10:52): Nothing.

Brigitte Pellerin (10:54): I don’t want to spit on it — two million dollars is still a lot of money for most people. But in the grand scheme of things, most of the money generated through the fees you pay when you park goes to generating the fees you pay when you park. Which feels stupid.

Evan Potter (11:08): It’s the program management.

So I read the news release his campaign posted, and I have to say — I assumed, like most residents, that the parking meters were making a lot of money for the city, as were the parking infractions. So I was quite surprised to see: actually, this is not making much money at all, relatively speaking.

(11:31) And then the next thought that occurred to me was: nobody on council thought to ask about this? Nobody noticed?

Brigitte Pellerin (11:43): Not that I noticed. Nobody reached out when I published a column about it to say, actually, we’ve been working on it. Nothing.

Evan Potter (11:52): And I think this goes to another — and we don’t have to get into it, it’s a broader discussion — about perceptions of this council.

True, it’s not as poisonous and conflict-ridden as the last two years of the Jim Watson council. True. A more peaceable kingdom.

Brigitte Pellerin (12:17): Less bickering.

Evan Potter (12:18): Less bickering. But still divided — and it will be divided, because we’re going to get the same council on October twenty-seventh, basically.

So let me project us forward beyond election day. Since we’re going to get pretty well the same council, minus one to four people — are issues like, I won’t call it oversight, but just not asking the questions, going to continue with our new-but-not-new council?

(12:58) And coming back to Alex’s proposal: it’s not a crazy proposal. He says it would be the first thing he brings forward at council on day one. I think we have to give his campaign credit. They picked up on something that’s relatively low-hanging fruit. It’s right there.

Brigitte Pellerin (13:25): It’s right there.

And this is weird for me, because I’m usually not on the side of making parking and driving easier. I would like active transportation to be easier. But even bicycle-woke person over here sometimes takes the car, because there are times when you need your car. And that’s okay. You’re allowed to.

It just feels like nickel-and-diming, all the time. You go support local. You get your dry cleaning, you get a dozen bagels, you go to the grocery store and then Shoppers and then this other thing — and that costs you an extra ten, fifteen dollars depending on how many errands you’re running on your weekend. And you feel like: why did I have to pay an extra fifteen dollars to shop local?

Evan Potter (14:09): It drives me crazy when I’m going to multiple places — but even just going to City Hall to pay property taxes, or whatever I do there. There’s no real fifteen-minute short-term parking. So I have to park, and then I have to pay, and then I have to go in — and I don’t know how long I’m going to be there.

Brigitte Pellerin (14:39): And then you get a ticket.

Evan Potter (14:41): Like many of us, we just go: really? Give me a couple of fifteen-minute parking spaces. That’s all we need. But you can’t even do that.

Brigitte Pellerin (14:48): Or — we have computers now, right? So as a taxpayer you could enter one or two licence plates into your City of Ottawa account, and those get three hours of free parking wherever you want in the city that’s metered. And you could change those plate numbers when you change cars, or when you have a guest coming over — put their car in, then remove it. You just go into your account on the City of Ottawa website.

Then at City Hall, or anywhere else there’s a meter, you park. And when the enforcement people come by and scan your licence plate, it says: yes, this is a taxpayer. And maybe they leave a flower on your windshield.

(15:40) There are other cities that do this — San Francisco does. That’s why I’ll put the link to the column. And not just for residential parking, but for on-street metered parking in business areas.

Evan Potter (15:55): So the message is: don’t nickel-and-dime the residents of Ottawa on parking if you’re not actually making a lot of money on the parking and reinvesting it somewhere.

I’ll give the Alex Lawson campaign a gold star. They hit low-hanging fruit.

Brigitte Pellerin (16:13): They’re good at finding that really annoying little thing right there, where people say: yeah, why do we have to pay this? So that’s good for them.

(16:22) He should be a columnist. If this works — no, I shouldn’t say that. I don’t want him to take my job.

But this is good: being able to find something so concrete that everybody deals with. Everybody who parks. And merchants as well.

Evan Potter (16:37): Merchants as well.

Brigitte Pellerin (16:38): For them, less friction would mean people would make the extra stop at the bagel shop — go get bagels in between Shoppers and the dry cleaner — instead of saying, I’d like a dozen bagels, but I don’t feel like paying for parking one more time.

Evan Potter (16:53): I want to go downtown to my favourite pizza place, but I think twice, because I can’t find parking and there’s no temporary parking anywhere. So they lose sales. Just like that. Because we want to go, but the city makes it inconvenient, and so we don’t go.

Brigitte Pellerin (17:13): And I don’t like inconvenient.

All right. Let’s talk about Neil. You were at an event in Orléans — tell us about that. And this is post-Gaza video, right?

Evan Potter (17:26): Yes, post-Gaza. And there doesn’t seem to be — I thought there would be more post-Gaza-video blowback. I don’t feel it. I don’t see as much online as I thought I’d see.

Brigitte Pellerin (17:40): I’ve heard from people about it, I have to say. Not a wave, but yeah.

Evan Potter (17:48): So I was recently in Orléans, as is my wont. And I found there were people who were Saravanamuttoo curious.

Brigitte Pellerin (18:01): What does that mean? How were you able to tell?

Evan Potter (18:03): What it means is that people started to ask me what I thought about Neil Saravanamuttoo. And I didn’t think they would ask me about him. I found myself saying: really? Why are you interested in Neil?

And then — as I tweeted a couple of days ago — one said, well, he looks handsome. He’s a handsome man. I thought: interesting. Okay.

And then somebody else said he’s a technocrat. And I said, well, where are you going with this? And then they connected the word technocrat with Mark Carney. So it was a good thing.

Brigitte Pellerin (18:44): So that’s a good thing now. Okay. Not a time warp anymore.

Evan Potter (18:46): They said Neil reminded them of Mark Carney — as a positive.

Brigitte Pellerin (18:56): Someone who knows what they’re doing. Who knows their policy. Because Jeff — sorry — Jeff is a technocrat too.

Evan Potter (19:05): So it was interesting. These people were asking about Neil, wanting to know more about Neil. He has broken through to people who live in the eastern suburbs. This is not a probability sample — but I found that interesting.

(19:23) It motivated me to use AI to create a collage of Cary Grant, Mark Sutcliffe and Neil. And my point was: these are good-looking men, and it matters in an election campaign. Neil seems to have broken through. That’s why I said some people are Saravanamuttoo curious — in a place I didn’t think he would have broken through.

Which means — and we’ll see it in the polling — Neil only has to get between ten and fifteen percent to be a player.That’s it. If he holds somewhere between ten and fifteen percent, he’s not only a winner by definition right now, because of his name recognition and his personal brand — he actually affects the race by holding ten to fifteen percent of the vote.

Brigitte Pellerin (20:21): So now that we’re getting close to Labour Day — and it’s been maybe a week or two that I’ve started noticing this — people online, especially on Twitter. That awful place, but it’s still useful for politics.

People who are not necessarily surrogates, but who tweet a lot in favour of their candidate without necessarily saying whether they’re involved with the campaign. I mean, it’s fine. It’s a free world, it’s a free country. People are allowed to do this. I know David Coletto, for instance — a pollster — has been tweeting in favour of Mark Sutcliffe a lot. There are a couple of others.

Evan Potter (20:53): Brigitte, I think we should consider David Coletto to be a de facto spokesman for the Sutcliffe campaign.

Brigitte Pellerin (21:04): He will probably push back on that.

Evan Potter (21:08): He may push back. But when you read his tweets, you certainly feel that he is acting — not perhaps in an official capacity, but unofficially — as a spokesperson for the campaign.

Brigitte Pellerin (21:24): There’s no rule against it. It’s fine. People can do it.

I wish, however — and I do this myself, and I know it’s not a difficult thing to do — because I’m in opinion journalism. I’m paid for my opinion. So of course I’m biased. I have opinions. That’s part of my job. I always try to be honest about where I stand and what I believe, and transparent, so people can say: well, she believes this, and therefore she’ll think that about this potential policy.

I’d like — and I know it’s just an ask — some of those folks to add something to that effect in their bio. It might help the general public not feel like they’re being manipulated. I think it would be a good thing for the health of our little democracy at the local level. If people like David, and there are others, said: I support Mark Sutcliffe. Or, I’m a Jeff Leiper guy. Something.

Evan Potter (22:19): Well, he has said that. David Coletto has said that Mark Sutcliffe is his friend and that he’s a hundred percent behind his friend Mark Sutcliffe.

Brigitte Pellerin (22:28): Right. So — making that more generally obvious. And I don’t want to just pick on David. More generally, for all the other folks who are tempted to go — not regular people who just find a great idea and push it because they like it, and it doesn’t matter who came up with it. That’s fine. But if you’re going to be almost campaigning for someone on social networks, I think it would be healthier if we all had a bit more of a disclaimer.

Evan Potter (22:57): Well, I see members of — the co-chair of the Mark Sutcliffe campaign, DG Stringer, is active on X. He is pushing back, mostly, against Jeff Leiper.

I said that word again. But I’m just saying: he pushes back against Jeff Leiper online, and he is the co-chair of the Mark Sutcliffe campaign.

(23:28) I’m also interested when I see sitting members of council. Notably, I saw it again today — I don’t know how many times he’s done it — Councillor David Hill has challenged Jeff Leiper.

I said Jeff Leiper’s name again.

So on X, Councillor Hill has decided that he is apparently not going to be taking a neutral position. He challenged Jeff Leiper on — I think it was on policing. On defunding the police.

Brigitte Pellerin (23:56): Talking about defunding the police — talking about a time warp again. Can we just move on to 2026, please?

Evan Potter (24:05): But it also raises another question I’ve been writing about in my Substack column: wondering when other councillors will publicly enter the mayoral race. If David Hill feels comfortable enough challenging Mark Sutcliffe’s opponent, then I presume other councillors may come out and, under their own names, challenge some of the competitors in the mayor’s race.

I don’t know if that will happen. And if it does not happen, that is going to be significant. If the pragmatic progressive councillors on council — and we all know who they are — don’t say one word in the next six weeks in defence of Jeff Leiper... I’ve said the name again... that is —

Brigitte Pellerin (25:02): Speaks volumes.

Evan Potter (25:03): That speaks volumes. Yes.

Brigitte Pellerin (25:03): We only have about two minutes left. So I just wanted to do a little shout-out to Joanne Chinello, who — after campaigning for eight, nine months — had her campaign launch this week.

Evan Potter (25:12): Eight months.

Brigitte Pellerin (25:15): I want to mention it, not just because she’s running in my ward, but because she had a big turnout.

Evan Potter (25:24): She had a big turnout. And thank you to Bell’s Corners for providing video of the event, which I then reposted. It turns out the Who’s Who of local politics showed up. The mayor was there. Jeff Leiper was there.

Brigitte Pellerin (25:41): The mayor was there with his wife, I believe. I think I saw her.

Evan Potter (25:49): Other notables were there.

Brigitte Pellerin (25:51): Yasir Naqvi, the MP for Ottawa Centre.

Evan Potter (25:53): Yes, Yasir Naqvi. And I believe Mark Sutcliffe’s campaign office is in the same building as Yasir Naqvi’s constituency office. That’s a fun fact.

Brigitte Pellerin (26:04): Well, there are only so many buildings used for this purpose.

Evan Potter (26:08): Only so many buildings. Exactly. But the point is, it was a very cozy crowd. People all knew each other.

Brigitte Pellerin (26:14): That’s Westboro for you.

Evan Potter (26:18): And I just felt that we might as well call Joanne “Councillor Chianello.”

Brigitte Pellerin (26:22): It feels like it. But good for her — I see her still campaigning online, still out there. And you always want to campaign like you’re in second place.

Evan Potter (26:34): Exactly. Let me comment on that. I always felt — and I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again — that Joanne was doing exactly what you said. Fighting like she was in second place, from the time she started eight months ago.

Brigitte Pellerin (26:49): Train like you’re in second place, fight like you’re in second place. That’s from my kickboxing days — that’s always how we did it.

Evan Potter (27:00): Fight like you’re in second place. And I felt she did that from the beginning. I don’t want anybody to take this the wrong way — I just feel she has the killer instinct. The killer political instinct, even as a novice. And I think it will take her to council in seven weeks.

Brigitte Pellerin (27:20): All right. What else are you watching for this coming week — which will be a shorter week, but probably packed?

Evan Potter (27:27): It’s going to be packed. Actually, I’m going to be going out in the field, like you have been, so I’m looking forward to knocking on doors and talking to people. We’ll be doing our survey — non-scientific. It’s not a probability sample. We’ll be going into various neighbourhoods, east and west and south, and just asking a basic question: who do people intend to vote for in the mayoral race.

(27:57) And I want to say something to people who have DMed me about us not talking enough about the ward races. Certainly we want to talk about them — but we want to talk about the more competitive races. So maybe that’s what I’ll be looking at next week: a couple of competitive ward races.

Brigitte Pellerin (28:20): Excellent. Maybe even the one in Orléans where Matt Luloff is running, just because of the conviction, and see what happens there.

Evan Potter (28:27): Yeah — Orléans East-Cumberland. And Kanata South.

Brigitte Pellerin (28:35): Yes, that’s going to be one to watch.

All right then. I hope you have a lovely barbecue, whatever you’re doing on Labour Day. Not too much tariff talk — even though the trade wars are everywhere. And school starts.

Evan Potter (28:45): School starts.

Brigitte Pellerin (28:47): School starts. My two kids in university. Busy times. I look forward to talking.

Evan Potter (28:53): Brigitte — tell your kids to come to class.

Brigitte Pellerin (28:58): I do. They will, don’t worry. Okay, I’ll talk to you next week.

Evan Potter (29:00): Okay, bye.

Brigitte Pellerin (29:02): Bye.

Get full access to Random Acts of Urbanism by Brigitte Pellerin at randomactsofurbanism.substack.com/subscribe

The real campaign starts now. Evan lays out the four scenarios that could each explain how this election ends (fragmentation, sleepwalking, consolidation, and the Lawson shock) and reaches an uncomfortable conclusion: of the four candidates, the one with the lowest probability of winning is Jeff Leiper, because everybody else has already won something. I counter with my blow-up scenario, the one nobody’s talking about because it hasn’t happened yet: tens of thousands of public servants, students, and commuters all converging downtown after Labour Day on a transit system that isn’t ready. Plus two genuinely good policy releases from the challengers, a debate format nobody liked, and the metric that actually matters: 1,150 volunteers and $200,000 are inputs, not conversions.

Neil Saravanamutto’s fourth housing option is here. Alex Lawson’s jobs and growth plan is here.

The transcript of the episode is below:

Brigitte Pellerin (00:01): Hi everyone, hi Evan — how are you?

Evan Potter (00:04): Greetings. It’s the end of August. We’re on the way to Labour Day.

Brigitte Pellerin (00:07): And it’s the beginning of the real campaign. We have a lot to get to today, so let’s bust right into it.

You have a couple of distinct theories about what may happen. Now, we still don’t have the August Liaison poll — unless you’ve seen it. So we’re still running with numbers from several weeks ago. But things are moving, things are happening. And you sent me these four distinct scenarios. How about you run through them, and then I’ll tell you what my blow-up scenario might be.

Evan Potter (00:41): So it’s month number four of a long campaign, and there are a number of narratives, or theories of the election. But the first big theory you and I have to discuss is whether this is really a change election.

If you look at what we see at the ward level, it can’t be considered one — because twenty-one out of the twenty-two councillors seeking re-election will likely get re-elected. The only question mark is around Allan Hubley, and even he might get re-elected. And we have two open races: Kitchissippi, where Joanne Chianello will almost certainly be elected, and Stittsville.

Brigitte Pellerin (01:31): Where there are nine people or so. That one’s wide open.

Evan Potter (01:31): So based on the ward level, this is not a change election. We can only consider it one under a single real condition: if there’s a change in mayor.

We think Mark Sutcliffe is ahead. We don’t know if he’s ahead by six points, eight points, ten points — we won’t know until we see David Valentin’s public poll, and to my knowledge those numbers haven’t been released yet.

Brigitte Pellerin (02:04): No, I haven’t seen them either. I’m really curious.

Evan Potter (02:19): So: at the big-picture level, not a change election at the ward level; maybe a change election at the mayoral level.

Now let’s look at the four scenarios — the four theories of the case that I see having emerged over the last four months.

First: the fragmentation scenario. The entry of Neil Saravanamuttoo into the race fragmented the centre-left coalition that we assume Jeff Leiper was hoping to lead — combined with the fact that Leiper, based on everyone I’ve been talking to, is seen as underwhelming. And as I’ve said before, expectations were much higher for Jeff Leiper than for Alex Lawson or Neil Saravanamuttoo. That’s fair — it’s always relative to your opponents. But the feeling, even within the progressive community, is that Jeff has been underwhelming. They expected more. That’s scenario number one.

(03:32) Second: what I’d call sleepwalking to Mark Sutcliffe’s second term.

Brigitte Pellerin (03:40): Gross. That’s not a good thing.

Evan Potter (03:57): It’s related to fragmentation, but a little different. This is where the centre-left voices in Ottawa don’t row in the same direction — they’re not mobilizing, not coordinating. It’s the collective action problem. Classic. We saw it on Lansdowne 2.0. Jeff Leiper goes one way, Neil Saravanamuttoo goes another, and then other advocacy groups — maybe Horizon — go still another way. Nobody’s rowing in the same direction, and that leaves the lane open for Mark Sutcliffe to get his second term.

(04:36) Third: the consolidation scenario. This is where strategic voting comes in — and this goes to the open meeting I attended last night. The theory is that the Leiper ground campaign is so powerful that it has accumulated tens of thousands of votes that aren’t being picked up in the polling. They’re not showing up. But his ground game is so well organized, with infrastructure across all twenty-four wards, that at some point in late September people begin to realize the implications of scenario number one — the fragmentation thesis — and they consolidate around Jeff Leiper. They migrate away from Neil Saravanamuttoo to Jeff Leiper, and Leiper becomes mayor.

(05:43) And fourth: the shock scenario — the Lawson shock. Here the theory is that Alex Lawson’s surge, which was noted in July, is not a figment of anybody’s imagination. It’s not a mirage. It’s real, and it gains force throughout September, to the point where Valentin’s September poll has him in the high twenties, closing in on thirty, even before October. In this thesis, Alex Lawson supplants Jeff Leiper and becomes the mayor’s main opponent going into the last three weeks of the race — and perhaps beats the mayor at the end of it.

So those are the four theories I’ve seen emerging. And I think we should state quite honestly that Neil Saravanamuttoo and Alex Lawson have already won by losing. They’ve made their case. They’ve got their name recognition. They’ve won.

Brigitte Pellerin (06:59): They’ve made their case. People know who they are, and they’re set up for any other election.

Evan Potter (07:09): Even if Neil takes ten percent, he’s won. Alex takes twenty-five percent, he’s won. It’s huge. And the mayor wins if he runs a conventional front-runner campaign and gets thirty-five percent.

So, sadly for those supporting Jeff Leiper — the person with the least winning probability in this election is Jeff Leiper. It puts a lot of pressure on his campaign. And for those supporting him, they have to hope his infrastructure on the ground is as solid as his campaign manager Stephen Yardy says it is.

Brigitte Pellerin (08:04): And thank you — I like this more academic way of looking at things, analyzing it, putting it in little boxes.

Evan Potter (08:10): And Brigitte, the dominant narrative is of course scenarios one and two.

Brigitte Pellerin (08:22): Well, I was about to say: it looks to me like the Sutcliffe campaign is reading things the way you are. Because the mayor is running what I think is the world’s most boring political campaign. Not doing much of anything. It’s not exciting. There are no balloons, there’s nothing. There’s really nothing going on.

Evan Potter (08:35): Because he doesn’t need to. If his internal polling is showing him eight to ten points ahead of his nearest competitor, he just continues to do what he does. He doesn’t have to show up at any community mayoral events. Doesn’t have to do anything.

Brigitte Pellerin (08:57): That’s right.

Let me talk about my blow-up scenario. My blow-up scenario — and it’s the subject of my next Ottawa Citizen column — is the return to office, and the mess a lot of people are expecting.

I don’t know who you hang out with in this city when you go out for drinks with friends, but in my circles there are a lot of people in the federal public service. And whenever you mention return to office, people go —

(09:27) All right, let’s thrash this out. And I’m going to say up front that this is a problem that disproportionately affects women. Because — I know it’s a gendered thing to say, but it’s still the reality for a lot of families — the mom is still taking care of more of the administrative things at home. Guys aren’t quite caught up yet, though they’re trying. Anyway, it does affect women more than men. And they’re not the ones out there talking to pollsters as much. But they vote.

Here’s the problem I see: we have tens of thousands of people about to start trying to get to the office downtown, along with students. The French school board has started already, the English school board starts next week, and then uOttawa starts right after Labour Day. And then tens of thousands of public servants.

And as you know, if you’ve been awake at any point in the last five years, the transit system is not ready for this influx of people. Neither are the roads. Neither are the parking spots downtown. It is going to be a colossal mess, with people really, really upset at wasting so many hours of every single day.

And this is where the three challengers all agree. First of all, the city’s own return-to-office mandate — everyone, five days a week — only affects about two thousand people, more or less, because most city jobs are already in-person.

Evan Potter (11:02): Yeah, fifteen percent.

Brigitte Pellerin (11:24): It’s the federal public service that matters. Now, it’s not up to the city to decide that. But the city — or anybody running for mayor right now — should be making a big show of imploring, like Jeff Leiper did earlier this week and the other two chimed in on. Get on your knees. I don’t know. Do something. Try to lead, and get the federal government to say: this is not going to work. Please, at the very least, pause this. Give us three months, six months, something. Just don’t do it right now.

And Mark Sutcliffe is the only one who is not only not resisting this — he’s been championing the issue, saying that return to office would be good both for downtown and for the transit system. Which is probably the stupidest thing Mark Sutcliffe has ever said. Also the most wrong. Maybe it will benefit downtown — but at the expense of restaurant owners in Barrhaven and coffee shops in Stittsville and what have you.

This is going to be the big one. We don’t talk about it right now because it hasn’t happened yet. But it’s coming.

Evan Potter (12:08): So you call it the sleeper issue, and it may yet be the sleeper issue. I see an enormous amount of pressure on general manager Rick Leary, the head of our transit service, because all eyes will be on him — as part of the city’s senior leadership — to help ensure it doesn’t become one. That the system is flexible enough to absorb the increased traffic. That there will not be lots of unfortunate headlines for the mayor.

Rick Leary, effectively just by his position — and it could be any GM of our transit system — is a political heat shield for the mayor. This is Leary’s fourth major transit job. I’m thinking that, coming from Toronto, he can handle it, that he has a plan in place, and that it does not turn into a sleeper issue in the election campaign.

Brigitte Pellerin (13:38): I’m going to put you right on the spot. What are the odds that the system — transit, traffic, and parking — is working well enough to avoid this becoming a massive issue between now and election day?

Evan Potter (13:57): Okay. There’s one element of that trifecta that Rick Leary cannot control, and that’s downtown parking. He can control the number of buses, the special lanes, how many trains. He cannot control the finite number of parking spaces.

Brigitte Pellerin (14:24): There’s only so much space.

Evan Potter (14:25): There’s only so much space. And as you and I and many of our viewers know, every time I get on the Queensway, at some point there’s congestion.

Brigitte Pellerin (14:38): That’s the best parking lot in the city, incidentally.

Evan Potter (14:44): There were years when I could sail down the Queensway. And I haven’t seen that in about five years.

Brigitte Pellerin (14:48): Maybe not at eight a.m., but by ten you were fine, right? I’m old enough to remember that too. I remember trying to get to CFRA radio in the Market for eight a.m. on a weekday, from Westboro — ten, twelve minutes. Try that today.

Evan Potter (15:02): It was amazing. Though I have to say, driving to Orléans from downtown, I’m still impressed that on some occasions I can get to my destination in fourteen minutes on the Queensway. Going east has been a lot quicker than going west.

But I take your point. Will this be a sleeper issue? If I’m in Mark Sutcliffe’s campaign office, of course I’m preparing for all of this — trying to get assurances, being reassured by the senior leadership that they have all contingencies planned.

Brigitte Pellerin (15:57): All you need to screw this up is one photo on the news, or one video, of people having to get off a train between stations and trudge along the tracks. We’ve seen videos like this — people lining up, that human sea of people at Tunney’s. You just need one of those. We’ve had it with transit in this town. We’re done.

Evan Potter (16:22): We know that transit is Mark Sutcliffe’s Achilles heel, and he knows it. And everybody around him in Sutcliffe world knows it. So we’ll know in about ten days.

Brigitte Pellerin (16:35): I think they’re trying to deny it, though. That’s my sense — but I could be wrong about that.

Fun times. All right — let’s move on, because in addition to the big RTO announcement this week, there were two other announcements from the challengers.

Let’s start with Neil Saravanamuttoo’s announcement of a fourth option for people finding housing — beyond buying a house, renting from a commercial landlord, and being in social housing. His fourth option would be renting from public, not-for-profit owners: high-quality apartments with mixed-income units, on a cost-recovery basis. Which I assume means charging enough rent to break even but not make a profit. I’m not an economist, but that’s probably what it means.

Evan Potter (17:27): Break even. Yes.

Brigitte Pellerin (17:38): I like that idea. I think I’m going to be one of twenty-two people in the city who likes it, though. What do you think? You think it’s a great idea? Okay — prove me wrong. Go.

Evan Potter (17:43): It’s a great idea. Of course. Let’s be frank about this: the proposals being put forward by the challenger candidates are mostly eminently reasonable. It’s hard for people to say, Alex Lawson, that’s a really dumb idea. Using apprenticeships to increase job opportunities in the city. Or, Neil, public-option housing — that’s a radical idea. No, it’s not radical. It’s eminently doable.

And I think the only question, for a lot of people, is: what’s taken the City of Ottawa so long? Neil is putting forward reasonable, not radical, policy proposals that the city should have — could have — been working on for years. When I read the proposal, I find myself nodding my head. It’s reasonable. We should have more of it.

Brigitte Pellerin (18:56): I didn’t see much of a reaction anywhere — on social networks it didn’t seem to grab people. Maybe they’re still on vacation and haven’t noticed.

Evan Potter (19:00): In most West European cities, this is just normal. This is what a normal, large metropolitan city does to support affordable housing. It’s not radical.

Brigitte Pellerin (19:19): All right. So that’s a good one.

Alex Lawson released on Thursday, I believe, a comprehensive — I’m going to put it that way — seventeen-page jobs and growth platform. I read through it. And I should say that this past week I had conversations with both Jeff Leiper and Alex Lawson, including a long conversation with Alex Lawson, so I knew this was coming. He didn’t tell me everything that was in it, but I knew it was coming.

Reading it earlier this week, I was struck — and I’m not an economist and I’m not a growth expert — by how he’d managed to identify gaps in what we’re doing as a city on job creation, on the growth of the job market, and on bringing in new employers.

The part I liked most is how to use the skills of the people we already have in this city. We have a lot of highly educated people, often bilingual — a large proportion of bilingual people — people who either have a security clearance or could get one. So why not try to attract employers who would benefit from that? He mentioned using Quebec City as an example, and that’s true: Quebec City does that, and they have this massive insurance marketplace. So: target employers who would benefit from the qualifications people here have, make it easier for them to come here, and then match them with people looking for work.

And again, like you were saying a minute ago — why aren’t we doing that? That was my reaction reading Alex Lawson’s plan. So what did you think of it?

Evan Potter (21:03): Why aren’t we doing that? It’s a great idea. And again — not radical. Some of it is just common sense.

I recall trying to find line cooks for a restaurant. I called Algonquin College, the culinary school there, and I tried for a couple of years. I just couldn’t get any apprentice cooks for the restaurant. And I thought, this is bizarre. It always bothered me that there wasn’t a place in Ottawa where there would be a funnel — like Alex talks about — a channelling of talent. The apprenticeship programs.

Now, I know that overlaps into provincial educational jurisdiction. I understand that. But I also understand the point Alex Lawson is making: surely the City of Ottawa, this five-billion-dollar corporation, has some tools at its disposal to — I’ll use the word — facilitate the development of those connections between talented young people, or people of all ages seeking employment, and employers.

So once again, none of this is radical. A lot of it is common sense, and I hope people at the door pay attention.

Brigitte Pellerin (22:48): He also talks a lot in this plan about young people and unemployment — and this touches my own household. It’s very difficult for teenagers these days to find entry-level jobs. The McDonald’s jobs. They don’t even hire seventeen-year-olds anymore, because there’s this pool of older folks, adults, who are out of work, available full-time, and will take that job — because they’re really desperate, either for a first job or a second one, because of the affordability crisis.

So you have your seventeen-year-old with little or no experience trying to get an entry-level job, competing against someone who has experience and will get hired like that over the teenager.

Evan Potter (23:49): Experience. They need experience.

Brigitte Pellerin (23:40): And I’m sure I’m not the only parent in this situation in this town, or in this province. But the pathway to getting a job right now is almost a brick wall in their face. First of all, it makes it hard for them to get ahead. You remember being seventeen and being broke all the time — and you don’t want to be broke and dependent on your parents. You can tell your kid to go find a job. And I can tell you it’s not because they’re not trying. It’s just very hard to find jobs. He talks about that a lot, and I appreciate it, because it’s a real problem.

(24:07) I’m not expert enough to know whether the solution he’s proposing would help, so I welcome the opinion of people who know more about this. But naming the issue, naming the problem — you can’t fix it if you don’t know it’s there. So it was necessary to do that, and I’m grateful for it as a mom.

Evan Potter (24:31): We both think Lawson and Saravanamuttoo are coming up with some good ideas.

Brigitte Pellerin (24:37): The ideas are very good. And I think the RTO pause that Jeff Leiper proposed is also good — other people had already talked about this, so they’re kind of stealing each other’s ideas, which is great. If an idea is good, steal it.

Another good one, which I think they all agree on except Sutcliffe, is encouraging the federal government to have more satellite offices — in Barrhaven, Gloucester, wherever — so people can go work at an office without spending three hours a day getting to and from the office.

Evan Potter (25:07): Yeah. Good idea.

Brigitte Pellerin (25:05): We only have a few more minutes. Did you want to talk about the open Leiper campaign meeting, and the mayoral debate at the Sportsplex you went to?

Evan Potter (25:15): Let’s get the mayoral debate at the Sportsplex over with. I went. It was a full house. It was what you would expect — the progressive community came out. Seven candidates, but only two of the front-runners: Neil Saravanamuttoo and Jeff Leiper.

I don’t like that format. I saw it last year in the Osgoode by-election, where candidates literally had prepared answers, which some of them read off a page. That’s not a debate. To be fair, they didn’t do that this week. But “give me your vision of Ottawa in thirty seconds, or a minute and a half” — and as a number of commentators have already said, putting the front-runners on the same stage as quote-unquote fringe candidates... I don’t like to use the word fringe. But they have no hope in hell of becoming mayor.

Brigitte Pellerin (26:11): There are two tiers here.

Evan Potter (26:21): They’re two different tiers. So on the one hand, we don’t want to discourage people from running for public office. But on the other hand, what’s required is a real debate among the four front-runners: the mayor, Saravanamuttoo, Lawson, and Leiper. That’s what the city wants to hear.

Brigitte Pellerin (26:28): I love fringe candidates. They’re great. But you’re right. All right — let’s put the call out there. Somebody do it.

Evan Potter (26:50): Hopefully CBC local or CTV will do that.

Now, on last night’s open campaign discussion with Jeff Leiper and his team — this is the second or third open campaign meeting. Here’s my impression.

Brigitte Pellerin (27:07): At least the second. I may have missed one.

Evan Potter (27:15): Stephen Yardy, his campaign manager, made a presentation on the process — again showing us, on the basis of campaign metrics, how many signs, how many volunteers, how many donations. The campaign is doing very well.

When I teach my courses on public relations at the University of Ottawa, these would be called the campaign inputs: all the promotion you’re doing, the volunteers you’re getting to move your persuasive campaign forward. But I always remind students: the only metric that counts is your conversions. People who are buying what you’re selling. And in a political context, there’s a one-day sale, and that sale is on October twenty-sixth. You’re either going to win or you’re going to lose.

So it’s great that the Leiper campaign had eleven hundred and fifty volunteers in August. It’s great that it’s almost hitting two hundred thousand dollars in donations. But, Brigitte —

Brigitte Pellerin (28:29): That’s not what wins elections yet.

Evan Potter (28:35): If your polling shows that you’re locked — and I’m not saying he’s going to be locked into twenty-five percent until election day — but if the probability-based polling is accurate, or relatively accurate within a margin of error, and it’s showing Jeff Leiper locked in at twenty-five percent, that means that seemingly high level of support is coming from the twenty-five percent, the progressive community in Ottawa, that was already persuaded he was their only choice.

Brigitte Pellerin (29:10): Right. So it’s not conversion. It’s confirmation.

Evan Potter (29:13): What conversion means is going from having all those volunteers pulling your campaign from twenty-five percent to thirty-one, thirty-two percent. If you can show that correlation, then yes — those metrics are very impressive. So the jury’s still out, because we need to see the polling.

Can I also say one other thing?

Brigitte Pellerin (29:41): We’re almost out of time, but — okay.

Evan Potter (29:43): This is important for you and for everyone. Jeff did not say one word in French last night. Nothing. He had a chance to read something out in French, and there was a question about what he would do for the francophone community — he did not address it.

(30:09) And this illustrates to me why some people have reservations about Jeff Leiper as a candidate. These are the kind of — I don’t know, mistakes, oversights. It’s hard for me to imagine that somebody who is going to take this city forward will not even say a few words in French at his own open campaign meeting.

Brigitte Pellerin (30:14): All right. Well, that’s good to know.

(30:29) Yeah — that’s an unforced error.

All right then. Lots to chew on, and we have lots more to look at this coming week. So we’ll look forward to seeing you next week. And thanks again for this — I think people will have had their heads set buzzing, because there was a lot of substance in this one. Thanks very much for that. Talk to you later. Bye.

Evan Potter (30:45): Great. We’ll see you next week. Bye-bye.

Get full access to Random Acts of Urbanism by Brigitte Pellerin at randomactsofurbanism.substack.com/subscribe

The video about Neil Saravanamuttoo’s position on Gaza is here.

If you want to consult the complete and final list of candidates for the October 26 election, you can find the list for council here, and the list of mayoral candidates here.

Get full access to Random Acts of Urbanism by Brigitte Pellerin at randomactsofurbanism.substack.com/subscribe

Evan’s piece on the communications problems at the city of Ottawa is here.

Carolyn Mackenzie’s piece on half truths and infrastructure deficit is here.

My viral moment of the week, on the Nightmayor on Wellington St., is here.

Get full access to Random Acts of Urbanism by Brigitte Pellerin at randomactsofurbanism.substack.com/subscribe