The campaign officially began on May 1. Evan writes the popular City of Ottawa Politics Substack and whenever we meet we seem to have a lot of things to talk about so I asked him to join me on a semi-regular video series dissecting the Ottawa municipal race.
In this first episode we discuss the big themes of the campaign so far. By which we mean mobility and artificially low taxes — we’ll certainly talk a lot more about the infrastructure deficit, fear not. Starting with my column in the Ottawa Citizen today.
We also touch on mayoral candidate Alex Lawson’s sweeping allegations of mild (my word) lobbying irregularities against Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, which he details on his website. It led to this comprehensive news story by the always excellent Arthur White-Crummey. I should point out that Sutcliffe is denying everything, as you expected he would.
I’m not a lobbying expert and I will leave it to others to parse the fine print. These allegations will not likely change anybody’s mind, but they are good to raise Lawson’s profile. And maybe it’s also good to shine a spotlight on current practices and ask ourselves whether we’re OK with them or whether we might want different rules for who gets to have the mayor show up at their event or who has lunch with his chief of staff.
As Evan puts it, Lawson is doing the kind of campaigning Jeff Leiper is studiously avoiding. It’s negative but not nasty; Leiper pledged to be positive. I’m not convinced positive campaigning works. Matter of fact, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. Nasty doesn’t either — just look at Pierre Poilievre. But positive can easily be mistaken for meek, and nobody votes for that.
Anyhow, hope you enjoy this chat. Feedback welcome. Anything in particular you’d like us to discuss? Shoot me a line.
