Voters in Ottawa will choose a new mayor and city council on Monday, October 24.
As the campaign enters its home stretch, a commission of inquiry is getting underway into the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act to end last winter’s occupation by the so-called Freedom Convoy.
The commission should put the protest and the disruption it wrought onto the candidates’ and the voters’ agendas.
So far, there has been little talk on the Ottawa campaign trail about the convoy that paralyzed Canada’s capital for more than three weeks.
Only one of the candidates for mayor had any significant role during the occupation: Catherine McKenney, councillor for the downtown Somerset ward.
McKenney, who uses the pronouns they/them, played a near heroic role.
For about three weeks, McKenney spent most of their days on the streets of Ottawa’s Centretown, in the heart of the action.
McKenney helped besieged residents in need of food and encouragement, documented the behaviour of the invaders and the passivity of the police, and endeavoured to engage constructively with the truckers and their allies.
The councillor was also a near-constant presence on local media.
McKenney clearly and calmly channelled residents’ frustration and anger at the city government’s inability to do anything to bring relief. (It took legal action by one young downtown resident to put a stop to hundreds of gigantic monster trucks’ honking 24-7.)
McKenney’s prominence earned them frontrunner status at the outset of the current campaign.
McKenney had both widespread name recognition and the respect of fellow councillors, regardless of their political leanings.
The downtown councillor earned that respect not only through their comportment during the occupation but as a result of eight years as a constructive and collaborative member of council.
Robust policies for bicycling and housing
Still, McKenney is an unapologetic urban progressive.
Among mayoral candidate McKenney’s bold policy proposals is to spend a quarter of a billion dollars over four years to build “25 years’ of cycling infrastructure.”
McKenney has also pledged to eliminate zoning rules that restrict development in much of the city to single-family, detached homes.
Echoing most urban planning experts, McKenney argues zoning of that sort prevents construction of the much-needed ‘missing middle’ in Ottawa housing: duplexes, triplexes, low-rise apartment buildings, and attached townhomes.
As well, as a mayoral candidate, McKenney has made public the entire list of those who donated over $100 to their campaign.
McKenney’s policies don’t please city residents who favour a more car-focused local government, and who don’t fancy changes to zoning they fear would lower the re-sale value of their homes.
And powerful business interests in the city don’t like what they see as McKenney’s over-the-top financial transparency. They prefer candidates who will take their money but keep it hush-hush. (No other major mayoral candidate has taken up McKenney’s challenge to release their donors’ list.)
Months ago, the folks who would not be happy with a Mayor Catherine McKenney were casting about for a pliable and acceptable candidate to take on the frontrunner.
There is one candidate, aside from McKenney, who has significant political experience: Bob Chiarelli. He was Ottawa mayor for one term and a cabinet minister in Dalton McGuinty’s and Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal Ontario governments.
But in the eyes of those seeking an alternative to McKenney, Chiarelli might have too much experience. He turned 81 during the campaign, and, if elected, would be over 85 at the end of his term.
Instead of the veteran politico, the let’s-keep-things-as-they-are voters have coalesced behind Mark Sutcliffe, sometime journalist and serial entrepreneur, who has never held elected office of any sort.
Sutcliffe makes a virtue of his inexperience. In fact, Sutcliffe boasts he is “not a politician”.
Candidates on the political right seem to favour the “not-a-politician” trope. Even Pierre Poilievre tries to make that claim, although he has never been anything but a politician.
Many Ottawa voters have bitter memories of another non-politician who won the mayoralty more than a decade and a half ago. Larry O’Brien, the CEO of a human resources outsourcing company, entered the race late in 2006, then swept into office with a healthy plurality.
O’Brien’s single term is now widely regarded as something close to a disaster. He had an erratic and confrontational style, typical of someone not used to the give-and-take of democratic governance.
Supporters of Sutcliffe are mindful of the obvious parallels to a failed mayor of the recent past. What those supporters tell fence-sitting voters is that while their man might not have a political track record, he is smarter than O’Brien.
Some might say that is a low bar.
A central casting candidate
Sutcliffe’s campaign material prominently features his traditional family, some populist small-bore promises (such as increasing the number of off-leash dog parks), vague generalities on most big issues, and frequent attacks on McKenney, not all of them founded on fact.
On housing, Sutcliffe promises to build 100,000 new homes in the city, without a clear road map to that goal. He says he will remove “bureaucratic, and ideological barriers and red tape that prevent housing from being built,” but does not say what those barriers are.
“Ideological” is a word Sutcliffe uses often. It seems to be his code word for any measures connected to the environment or social justice that might annoy the more conservative suburban and exurbanites whose votes he is seeking.
On taxes, Sutcliffe promises to reduce the annual rate of increase from the current three per cent to two or 2.5 per cent.
How will he compensate for the loss of revenue? Sutcliffe tells voters he will spend only on “priority areas that serve all of Ottawa”.
As with “ideological”, the phrase “all of Ottawa” is a Sutcliffe code word which means: “If it’s not good for the suburbs, forget about it.”
Sutcliffe also says he would save money by allowing the city staff to shrink by attrition. But he does not say which jobs he wants to eliminate.
And Sutfliffe claims he can, miraculously, find $60 million in savings by doing a line-by-line examination of city spending. He offers not a single example to support that fanciful claim.
Finally, when it comes to transit, Sutcliffe rejects McKenney’s plan for bicycles, arguing, without factual evidence, that it “prioritizes bicycles over cars” and is a “plan for downtown Ottawa, not all of Ottawa”. Attacking downtown is a recurring theme for Sutcliffe, as it was for the late mayor Rob Ford of Toronto, who is something of an unintentional role model for Catherine McKenney’s main challenger.
Sutcliffe is quite open about his pro-car bias. He promises a paltry $1.5 million per year to improve pedestrian infrastructure while pledging to increase spending on roads by $100 million over four years.
At one point in the campaign, Sutcliffe borrowed another of Rob Ford’s favourite slogans when he denounced what he called the “war on the car”.
McKenney has promised a freeze on public transit fares, and free transit for children under 17. Sutcliffe had originally favoured only a limited freeze for certain classes of transit users, but then adopted McKenney’s proposal – without giving his opponent any credit.
Instead, Sutcliffe’s campaign tries to tell voters that, if elected, McKenney would seek to make transit free for everyone, overnight.
He knows that’s not true.
At one time, McKenney proposed free public transit as a long-term aspiration, not a short-term goal. But Sutcliffe doesn’t care about that nuance and has made his opposition to the chimera of “free transit” a principal theme of his campaign.
A high-risk choice vs an experienced and respected politician
Catherine McKenney focuses almost exclusively on a positive message, telling voters what they would do without tearing down other candidates’ policies.
McKenney has robust plans for transit, affordable housing (including housing for the homeless, entirely absent from Sutcliffe’s priority list), small business, social and recreational services, and for making city hall work more transparently.
Plus, McKenney has put out a detailed financial plan which experts such as former Parliamentary Budget officer Kevin Page say is solid. (Page also gave the nod to Sutcliffe’s financial plan.)
Sutcliffe, on the other hand, is running an unusually negative campaign by Ottawa municipal standards.
There are 29 media releases on Sutcliffe’s website. Seven are devoted to attacks on McKenney .
Of the 15 releases McKenney has issued only two focus on Sutcliffe – both on the deep cuts to city services his fiscal plan would necessitate.
Sutcliffe seems to be pursuing what political professionals call a “bomb the bridge” strategy. He is trying to destroy the bridge of trust between McKenney and the voters.
If opinion polls can be trusted, Sutcliffe’s gambit is having an effect. A couple of recent polls say he has narrowed what was once a wide gap between him and McKenney.
But polls also show that the largest bloc of voters are still undecided.
Those undecided voters would do well to consider the following:
Policy is important, but no mayor is – or should aspire to be – a dictator. Whatever aspirations or ideas candidates have, once elected they’ll have to learn to compromise with others who have different views and other perspectives if they hope to get anything done.
McKenney has experience working with others, within the framework of a democratically elected institution. Sutcliffe does not.
Sutcliffe seems to believe being mayor of a city of more than a million is an entry level position.
If voters elect Sutcliffe, they just might get yet another over-confident businessman who never learned the art of compromise.
The best you could say about Mark Sutcliffe is that he is an unknown quantity, a blank slate, who would be a high-risk choice.
McKenney might be the candidate of the political left. In this race, however, Catherine McKenney is the experienced and known quantity, who has proved their mettle under fire.
Ironically, this is a case where the progressive candidate would be the lower risk and more small-c conservative choice.
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