As one of the latest attempts to bolster nightlife in the ByWard Market, the nightlife commissioner’s office is launching a night ambassador program to be run and operated by the ByWard Market District Authority (BMDA). The program will be launched with $35,000 from the office of the commissioner and bring a new presence to the Market to assist tourists, visitors and workers overnight.

The funding is part of the 2025 City of Ottawa budget allocated to safety programs within the nightlife commissioner’s office.

The initiative has been inspired by similar programs in other Canadian cities, namely Montreal and Vancouver, nightlife commissioner Mathieu Grondin told Ottawa Compass, and is an extension of the current day ambassador program in the Market.

The ambassadors serve a specific nightlife district — in this case, the ByWard Market — as a “friendly presence”, said Grondin.

“They can help you at the beginning of the night, help you orient, make your recommendations on where to go out, and then later at night, they can act as first-line responders for minor incidents,” he explained. “So for instance, someone might have drank a little bit too much, and a venue wants them out of their venue but security doesn’t feel safe to just kick them out in the public realm.

“The ambassadors can take care of them and put them in a cab to get home safely.”

The ambassador program is meant to improve the perception of community safety and wellbeing within the Market, which can in turn boost the district’s nightlife economy.

Ambassadors will be a liaison between the Ottawa Police and community organizations and the public. They will be practising bystander intervention and de-escalation, help patrons and employees find a safe ride or route home, connect people with emergency and social services, and support people to charge phones and access essential items like first aid and water.

Melanie Anderson, general manager at the BMDA, will be overseeing the initiative. She said she hopes the program will have a “streamlining effect” and be more “eyes on the street”. 

Once the program launches on June 27, there will be four ambassadors on shift each night working in pairs — one pair will be stationary at the ByWard Market Square, and the other will be circulating the district.

Part of the ambassadors’ job could be in diverting non-emergent or non-criminal issues away from the OPS satellite station in the Market, Anderson added, so that the police officers are “freed up”. That said, ambassadors can help to connect people to the police as needed.

“They will be kind of addressing and connecting with their other resources in the area,’ said Anderson. “We absolutely don’t want them breaking up fights, but they could be assisting and reporting that to the officers who are already working.”

The training for the ambassadors will connect them with OPS and successful night ambassador programs in other cities to teach them “lessons learned” and firsthand experience. The idea is also to build off the day program, said communications manager Victoria Williston.

“We have a really good day program right now that will seamlessly continue through the evening, and we’re really hoping to continue that good customer service into the evening hours,” she said. “Once we get that going for a bit, we plan on surveying the businesses, seeing how it’s going, and we are going to eventually connect the night ambassadors with the establishments themselves.

“But in the beginning of the pilot phase, we are just letting them get started before we do that connection,” she continued. “But we will be surveying the businesses to see how they feel about it, and really surveying our night ambassadors too, to see where we can improve on the program.”

The BMDA is currently hiring for the program, which will launch in time for Canada Day events.

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To support downtown improvements and revitalization, the provincial government is providing Ottawa with $18.5 million over five years, committee heard, which can also help improve public spaces and assist projects included in the ByWard Market public realm plan.

Additionally, the city has developed a tariff toolkit to address new tariffs and is in the process of creating a similar online dashboard. The idea is to assist residents and local businesses in understanding how the tariffs might impact them. City staff added that in March, the Conference Board of Canada indicated that Ottawa’s economy, relative to other Canadian cities, would not be overly impacted by tariffs, relative to other cities in Canada, given that Ottawa’s economy is largely service-focused. However, the tariffs’ impacts to the technology and construction sectors are “evolving”, staff said.

Meanwhile, all 10 recommendations in the Nightlife Economy Action Plan are underway, committee heard, under the guidance of nightlife commissioner Mathieu Grondin.

Currently, nightlife is a big part of the Economic Development Strategy’s goal of creating a more diverse local economy. So far, a lot of focus has been put on the downtown core, especially as the city gears up to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the founding of Bytown in 2026 and the ByWard Market in 2027.

That said, Orléans East-Cumberland Coun. Matt Luloff was especially pleased to hear that progress has been made with the Orléans Economic Action Plan, which he has been advocating for.

He said Sparks Street downtown and many Orléans neighbourhoods, like near St. Joseph Boulevard, have the same challenge: “People don’t really live there.”

“Frankly, they suffer from the same affliction,” he told Ottawa Compass. “Once the businesses close at the end of the day and whatnot, there’s no one there to sustain anything after-hours.”

Now, he said things are changing, and local business owners can “feel the support” from the city.

As a former musician, Luloff is passionate about the live music scene in Ottawa, and said that the city needs to take an “equitable approach” that supports entertainment infrastructure across the city.

“It is very important that we make great efforts to revitalize the ByWard Market and recognize the great live music venues downtown,” he said. “However, in Orleans, we have more than three great live music venues that are working right now and creating vibrancy in our neighbourhood.”

He also argues that Ottawa nightlife should be considered from a suburban perspective, too, to ensure it can benefit the whole city. This includes cohesive transit to bring people around the city smoothly, he explained, and increase access for local musicians. Both of these are among the top priorities for the nightlife council.

But beyond that, he said it is vital to have a holistic approach that taps into the unique economies of each area of the city — and the Orléans Economics Action Plan is a step in the right direction.

“I think that economic development and all of its forms, is incredibly important, especially if you want to have a prosperous city and a city where people can work in different industries,” he said. “I think that kind of local economy is very important. That’s how people live, work and play in their own area, and then, of course, go downtown for bigger shows or special occasions or to hang out with friends or to meet up with people that are coming to visit. I think that’s entirely normal.

“But if we’re developing a nightlife strategy, it can’t just be about one area of the city.”

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