Why is the mayor running against the incumbent?

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.