Candidates in Ottawa’s upcoming mayoral race gathered at Carleton University Tuesday evening for a debate on student issues – with one notable absence. The race’s frontrunner, and the city’s incumbent mayor, Mark Sutcliffe, was not present.
Debate organizers from Carleton University and the University of Ottawa left out a name placard for the mayor, who had been invited to participate in the event.
Mayoral candidate Jeff Leiper drew attention to the mayor’s absence. “Where is Mark Sutcliffe?” Leiper said during his opening remarks as the event kicked off.
“This is the third or fourth debate that he has skipped out on, we are keen to discuss the policy issues, and he has simply not shown up,” Leiper, councillor for the Kitchissippi Ward, said.
A Liaison Strategies and Ottawa Compass poll conducted in July showed Sutcliffe as the leader in the race with 24 per cent expressing support for the incumbent mayor, with candidates Leiper and Alex Lawson tied for second with 17 per cent.
However, the poll found that 34 per cent of voters are undecided about who they will cast their ballots for in the mayoral election, which will see polls open on Oct. 26.
(Photo: Daniel Arnold/Ottawa CompassNews)
Student leaders also relayed frustration over Sutcliffe’s absence. “I think it is a disappointment, to see that the current mayor isn’t plugged in for students, and doesn’t want to show up,” said Norah Bello, the advocacy commissioner for the University of Ottawa’s student union.
“Tonight shows students which candidates care about the issues that surround students,” Bello told Ottawa CompassNews, “it also shows the candidates that students are interested, are watching them, and are engaged in municipal politics.”
The debate was moderated by members of Carleton University’s CKCU radio station and uOUrbanism, a student group at the University of Ottawa focused on city based issues.
Issues such as public transit, housing affordability, and the city’s nightlife took centre stage at the event. One thing that all three candidates could agree on was that Ottawa’s transit system is experiencing some serious financial and performance aches.
Carleton University student Jozef Vijayaratnam said transit is the single defining issue in his day to day life as a student. “We pay the highest amount of fares, and get the lowest service,” among Canada’s major cities, Vijayaratnam said.
“We are focused on our future, and we can’t keep on worrying about if the bus is gonna come,” Vijayaratnam told Ottawa CompassNews.
Waiting in the cold, frequent cancellations, and missing classes, have all become regular experiences for students across the city, he said.
“We have to accept that we have a transit system that is in crisis, and it’s going to require really bold and ambitious measures to get it right,” candidate Neil Saravanamuttoo said.
(Photo: Daniel Arnold/Ottawa CompassNews)
Affordability is the greatest hamper on OC Transpo’s performance, Saravanamuttoo said. A key promise in his campaign is the introduction of a transit fare cap at one dollar.
The proposal, which he calls “Buck-a-Ride,” would introduce a “price which reflects more the quality of the service” that transit riders are receiving.
Reliability was central to the concerns that Lawson raised about the city’s struggling transit system during the debate.
“It doesn’t matter what the price of that trip was if it didn’t show up,” Lawson said. OC Transpo does not have issues with revenue, but rather its management, he said.
Lawson criticized efforts to reduce fares as incapable of solving the logistical issues the city’s transit system faces. “I don’t think providing less funding is going to be the solution,” he said.
“I don’t think just saying it’s a terrible service and we should charge less for it is a solution,” Lawson said, adding that he doesn’t believe fare decreases would increase either reliability or ridership levels.
Increasing transit priority measures, which include steps such as dedicated bus lanes, is an affordable step to increase reliability and timeliness, Leiper said.
“These are really inexpensive interventions to help us get through congestion so that prediction time you’re seeing on the app is going to be a more accurate one,” he said.
Ottawa’s nightlife and the arts scene were also central themes in the debate, with candidates drawing attention to music and entertainment as a source of economic development for the city.
Bylaw enforcement needs to be adjusted to accommodate the needs of businesses in areas such as the ByWard Market, Saravanamuttoo said.
“If you go down to a place like ByWard Market, and talk to the shopkeepers there, they will say the enforcement of bylaw around parking is like their number one hit,” he said.
Saravanamuttoo said that parking tickets, alongside business permitting, were among the many bureaucratic issues facing businesses in the city’s downtown areas.
Noise bylaws were other issues that candidates raised during the debate, with both Leiper and Lawson arguing that, as long as nearby residents are informed, businesses like music venues and nightclubs should be granted greater freedom to play loud music.
Lawson said that staff at The Lafayette, Ottawa’s oldest bar, had told him they had been ticketed by ByLaw officers for noise, during a live music venue, in the city’s bustling ByWard Market.
“There are things we can do as a city, to protect our cultural venues,” Leiper said, pointing to an example in his own ward where he has asked residents near businesses playing loud music to refrain from complaining.
“When you put a condo building next to a venue,that condo building loses some rights to complain about the noise,” he said.
The candidates will next face off on Sept. 17, in Centretown to discuss climate change issues facing the city.
