Random Acts of Urbanism

Brigitte Pellerin
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Brigitte Pellerin and Evan Potter discuss City of Ottawa politics. randomactsofurbanism.substack.com

  1. 1d ago

    The flood response, part 2

    I do this work as an independent journalist. You, my readers, are the ones funding it through paid subscriptions. Help me dig into stories that matter to you by becoming a paid subscriber or, if Substack isn’t your thing, by making a one-time or recurring contribution on my website. Thank you. [Part one is here.] This is part two of my investigation into the response to the historic July 1 flooding that saw something like 6,600 homes in Ottawa flooded, some with overland water, some with sewer backups, some with both. There have been conflicting reports about whether the city asked for the right kinds of help from the province, and whether the province actually agreed. Last week I laid out what we knew. This week the picture is a little less blurry on some fronts, and a lot sharper on where the real problems are. Let’s dig in. July 1: the phone calls As Mayor Sutcliffe indicated — and I had no reason to doubt it — on the evening of July 1, somewhere between 7 and 8 p.m., there were already phone conversations between the premier and the mayor. Updates on the situation, the beginnings of “this is big, we’re going to need help,” agreements to keep each other posted. I’m paraphrasing; I don’t know exactly what was said but assume it was the typical kind of things that get said in a situation like that. Also, keep in mind that on the evening of July 1, the scale of the problem probably wasn’t as clear as it became in the days that followed. That’s normal. This is not where the response went wrong. July 3–4: the meetings, and the email that contradicts the minister The city’s written timeline, which it sent to me directly, fills in the next steps: on July 3, city officials agreed to a meeting with the provincial Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. On July 4, the city’s Ryan Perrault emailed the province formally requesting that DRAO — the Disaster Recovery Assistance for Ontarians program — be activated. Remember that date, because it matters. Emergency Preparedness Minister Jill Dunlop has suggested the city didn’t ask for help until eight days after the flood. The city’s paper trail says July 4. Three days, not eight. Now, a wrinkle: DRAO doesn’t fall under Dunlop’s ministry at all. It’s a Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing program; Rob Flack’s ministry, not Dunlop’s. So either Dunlop was talking about something else entirely, or she’s confused about which programs her own government runs. I find the second option hard to believe, which leaves the first, and the question of what, exactly, she was talking about. July 7: “we need more data” On July 7, city and province officials met to share information on the scale and impact of the floods. The province asked for more information: 311 call mapping (where were people calling from), technical assessments, and more details about affected properties and flood-related damage. I understand every word in that sentence and almost none of what it entails. What does a “technical assessment” mean, in practice, a week after 6,600 homes flood? I’m still trying to find out. But note the shape of this: the city asked on July 4; on July 7 the province said “show us more.” What happened in those three days, and what exactly was missing, is one of the open questions. Below is the timeline provided to me by the City of Ottawa: On July 1, 2026, an ongoing dialogue with the Province was initiated. The City maintained nearly daily contact with the Province during the emergency response, and provincial representatives participated in meetings at the City’s Emergency Coordination Centre. On July 3, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (MMAH), under Minister Flack, and Ryan Perrault, General Manager of Emergency and Protective Services, agreed to a meeting to assess the damage from the severe weather event. On July 4, Ryan Perrault requested the Province consider activating the DRAO program and other available provincial funding and supports. [That’s the email reproduced above — BP.] During a meeting on July 7 between the City and Province to share information on the scale and impacts of the extreme weather event, the Province requested additional information, including 3-1-1 call mapping, technical assessments, affected properties, and details of flood-related damage. On July 9, the Province advised the City that it could not deploy volunteers equipped with PPE into environments presenting biohazard risks, including mold or wastewater contamination. The three programs, and which ones are actually controversial There are essentially three provincial programs in play. Let me park the uncontroversial one first. 1. The Municipal Disaster Recovery Assistance program. This reimburses the city’s own costs — capital costs to repair public infrastructure, operating costs above and beyond normal budgets that can be traced to the disaster. Not insurance-covered costs, not things that would have been replaced anyway. It’s a process: the city has to demonstrate the expenses qualify, and as far as I know, city staff are still assembling that file. Complicated, slow, but no real controversy, so I’m setting this one aside for now. 2. DRAO — Disaster Recovery Assistance for Ontarians. This is the one for individuals and small business owners: homeowners, tenants, small businesses recovering costs from overland flooding that insurance won’t cover. Up to $250,000 per applicant for eligible expenses including emergency costs and cleanup. Two critical limits. First, DRAO covers overland flooding only, not sewer backup. If the river came over its banks into your basement, that’s DRAO. If your sewer backed up, that’s not. Second, it only covers the zones the province activates. And this is where it gets bad. When the province activated DRAO in mid-July, it covered exactly two areas: the zones around Graham Creek and Stillwater Creek. On the map, that’s the shape covering Bayshore, Qualicum, Leslie Park, and Trend-Arlington. It does not cover Crystal Beach, Centrepointe, Parkwood Hills, Bells Corners, Woodpark, Quensway Terrace, Kanata North, or parts of Nepean, all of which had flooded homes. So we have a big problem with two possible explanations, and I don’t know which one is true: either the city’s request wasn’t comprehensive enough, or the city asked for all the affected neighbourhoods and the province said no. That’s exactly the correspondence I want to see — who asked for what, when. What I do know is that since mid-July, city staff have been pushing the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing to expand the zone. The city is trying to fix this. But how we got here, I don’t know yet. The second DRAO problem is crueller. Say your home got both: sewer backup and overland flooding. You’re now expected to separate the damage, to stand in your basement in coveralls and big boots, in two and a half feet of sludge, and apportion which destruction came from the sewer and which from the river. I’ve dealt with one minor sewer backup in my life and I don’t wish it on anyone. I have no idea what these people are supposed to do, or what help exists to assist them in parsing it, with their insurance, with DRAO, with the city’s compassionate grants (the $1,000 compensation for sewer backups only). 3. Ontario Corps volunteers. This one I didn’t realize was an issue until I started digging last week. Ontario Corps is the province’s volunteer program — ordinary people sign up, get managed by recognized partners, and do low-qualification disaster work: cleanup, distributing supplies, boots-on-the-ground help. Here’s what the city told me: on July 9, the province advised it could not deploy volunteers with personal protective equipment into environments “presenting biohazard risks including mold or wastewater contamination.” Mold and wastewater contamination are, of course, exactly what you expect after a flood. I don’t know whether the city requested Ontario Corps volunteers, or when, or for what. I don’t know why the province said no — especially since the same volunteers have been deployed to floods in other cities where you’d expect exactly the same biohazards. The province hasn’t confirmed any of this from its side. Big unknown, actively chasing. The people falling through the cracks The city’s compassionate grant program, $1,000 for sewer backup expenses, with the usual once-every-five-years limit lifted for July 1 victims, and a bigger budget voted to match the scale, seems to be working decently. If your home “only” had a sewer backup, the city has you. So here’s the ledger as I see it: - Overland flooding, inside the DRAO zone, no sewer backup: covered. Apply by November 16. - Sewer backup only, anywhere: covered by the city’s compassionate grant. - Overland flooding outside the DRAO zone (Crystal Beach and the rest): nobody helping you right now. - Both sewer backup and overland flooding, anywhere: standing in the soup, literally and bureaucratically, with no clear path. That last pair of categories is the scandal-in-waiting. A disaster recovery program for Ontarians should cover Ontarians facing an unprecedented disaster. Right now it doesn’t. What I’m still chasing My requests for information are outstanding with both levels of government — the correspondence, the ask-and-answer trail, the decision memos. I want to know: 1. The July 4–7 gap: what “more data” did the province need, and why did the DRAO request take from July 4 to mid-July to activate? 2. The zone decision: did the city ask for the full flooded area, or did the province narrow it? Who decided, and on what basis? 3. Ontario Corps: did the city request volunteers, when, and why exactly did the province refuse? 4. The province’s side of all of this, which, so far and except for Jill Dunlop’s cryptic and at least partly contradicted declaration that the city wait

  2. 3d ago

    Forget the bloody polls

    I wish all candidates had this level of transparency. I do this work as an independent journalist. You, my readers, are the ones funding it through paid subscriptions. Help me dig into stories that matter to you by becoming a paid subscriber or, if Substack isn’t your thing, by making a one-time or recurring contribution on my website. Thank you. Transcript Brigitte Pellerin (00:05) Hi everyone. Hi Evan. We are down the stretch. How are you doing? Evan Potter (00:08) Final stretch, Brigitte. And I’m laughing, I’m grinning, because there have been amusing things this week, and also kind of troubling things this week. So we’ll get into it. You lead off. Brigitte Pellerin (00:24) Right. So I want to talk — we don’t need to repeat all the things that we’ve said about what the candidates need to do to really win for mayor, because I think people are familiar by now with — Evan Potter (00:30) But we might want to just say that it is all about the ground game now. You can’t change your comms now. You can’t revive your campaign, hello Jeff Leiper, with your comms. That opportunity has now passed, and now it’s all about the ground game. And that will affect Jeff Leiper more than anyone else in the campaign. Brigitte Pellerin (00:59) I’m going to push back just a little bit. I think it will also affect Mark Sutcliffe. If his people don’t show up to vote — if they say they will vote for him, but then forget to do so because they’re not that enthusiastic about him — that also affects him. So both of those two candidates really need to have their people. Because the point of elections — this may be a simplistic point, but it is nevertheless the case — the point of an election is to get the people who say they will vote for you to go out and actually vote for you. Evan Potter (01:26) Yeah. And Jeff needs a lot of votes. He needs more votes than Catherine McKenney got in 2022. So he needs more than their hundred and ten thousand votes. Brigitte Pellerin (01:37) And what’s really surprising to me about all the polls showing, you know, weird things — honestly, how can — I mean, there are different polls, different methodologies, and I get that, but how can a guy like Alex Lawson be swinging between 4% and, was it 27%, his high water mark? Something is really wrong here. Mark Sutcliffe — I saw him as low as 24 in one of those polls, just for decided voters, mind you. And then as high as 49. Again, there’s just not — okay. Evan Potter (02:07) You know what I’m going to tell everybody right now? Forget the polls. Forget the bloody polls. The polls have not served the public interest in the 2026 Ottawa municipal election. Let’s just say it, let’s be brutal, let’s be honest about this. And we can only hope now that in 2030 the public gets more public polls. That would be really good. Based on probability-based polls. Brigitte Pellerin (02:35) That’s right. I’m just going to say again, for people who may be looking for a way to think their way through how to vote: if you’re super happy with the status quo, vote Mark Sutcliffe. That’s the easy one. If you’re super happy, you have the easiest job. If you really want to kick Mark Sutcliffe out of office, you can either go for Jeff Leiper or Alex Lawson. Both of those candidates take away from Mark Sutcliffe. And if you want to vote for someone you really care about — and you like Neil Saravanamuttoo’s ideas and proposals, or his experience, his background, the way he shows up — if you like anything about him, and you want to actually vote for something and for someone, for a program, instead of voting strategically against someone else, he’s your guy. That’s it. Evan Potter (03:15) Well said. I don’t have anything to add to that. Brigitte Pellerin (03:18) And I will have a column in the Ottawa Citizen coming up shortly too — next week — about if you want to vote by issue. So I’m having a bit of a longer column going issue by issue. So you can go and say, well, I care the most about infrastructure. It’s a bit more of a condensed version of what the different platforms are, so you can try and make up your mind that way as well. I’m trying to offer an easy-to-swallow package to compare the four main candidates, so that people who don’t have the time — Evan Potter (03:51) And there are a lot of people who would benefit from that, because probably one in five residents still have not made up their minds. Brigitte Pellerin (04:01) Yes. Well, maybe even more than that, if we look at the polls that we just said we shouldn’t look at. And the idea is that we’re all learning together out loud here, right? So we’re working through the issues and the conversations and what we’ve seen of the politics. So there was a big debate — well, there are debate-paloozas these days, but the one that we wanted to talk about this week was the CFRA/CTV News debate on Wednesday. An hour and a half-ish, or even a bit longer than that. I did appreciate the format very much. They had questions from the audience, a question from a panel, a question from the moderator. Each candidate had a chance to present their views or ask a question of somebody else on the panel. And then they also had little brawls. So that was good. Evan Potter (04:42) Yeah, I found that really refreshing. But late in the campaign — I mean, some of the earlier all-candidates debates didn’t really offer any exchanges. And we’re not talking about vicious ad hominem personal attacks. That’s not what we’re talking about. Just ways of seeing the differences and the contrast among the candidates. And you couldn’t tell, because of the way the organizers had the format. It was just, here’s a question, you answer, and then they go down the line, and people just basically have memorized answers, or they’re reading off some pre-prepared answers. And that’s not a debate. That’s an information session. Not a debate. Brigitte Pellerin (05:24) Yeah. But then sometimes you have debates and there’s so much yelling that you can’t figure out what people are saying. So I did like the CTV one. I think it was a very successful debate that way, because we had some of each. We had the best of all the different formats, without too much of the negatives from the various formats. So, well done, CTV News and CFRA. Evan Potter (05:44) It was a good model. So what did you think about the caliber of the exchanges? Brigitte Pellerin (05:50) Okay. So I’ll put a caveat to this, because you and I are swimming in this stuff. I’m doing deep dives into everything. Mark Sutcliffe just released a 70-page platform — comprehensive, no kidding, platform — this week, that I still haven’t read in detail. But we’re in this stuff so much, we know the issues so much, that to people like you and I, and some of the nerdier listeners that we have, the level of exchange was not deep enough, was not comprehensive. They stayed a little bit too much on the surface, by and large. Evan Potter (06:20) Yeah. My view was they didn’t add anything. There wasn’t anything new. They repeated the main points from their platforms. And because I look at it from this kind of campaign communication perspective rather than a pure policy perspective, there were no knockout punches, nobody got thrown off their game. I think the mayor was composed. He didn’t like Neil needling him, obviously, but he was composed. Composed, and he got out his messages. And again — I’m sorry, not Jeff-bashing, not Jeff-bashing — but Jeff again had to overperform relative to the mayor and his challengers. And once again, I did not see Jeff overperforming. I want to quote something. As I was thinking about what I was going to say to you on this, I think there was a great opportunity for Jeff Leiper. And he could have said — and this just came right out of me, and I’m sorry, probably because we’re swimming in this stuff, it’s coming out of our pores now — all Jeff had to say was, to Mark Sutcliffe: “You had a choice, sir. You could have saved residents of Ottawa four hundred and nineteen million dollars on the vanity project called Lansdowne 2.0. Instead, you handed your developer friends a lifeline with our money. That’s not leadership. Is that how you plan affordability? Not repairing arenas and giving our money to your friends.” Boom. That came out of me in five seconds. I didn’t have to put it through ChatGPT. I didn’t have to consult you on that. That just came out of me. If Jeff had said even something approximating what I just said, that’s what we’d be talking about. Brigitte Pellerin (08:13) And that line, just for the record — “you had a choice, sir” — that was Brian Mulroney to John Turner in the ‘84 election. Evan Potter (08:21) That’s right. “You had a choice, sir.” It was about Trudeau. It just knocked the wind out of Turner. He never recovered. Brigitte Pellerin (08:30) He never recovered. And you’re right that there was no knockout punch at that debate. But there was a punch in the face — Mark Sutcliffe punched himself in the face a little bit, when he started an intervention by saying, quoting loosely, “When I came into office four years ago, transit was a dumpster fire.” And everyone on the panel said, “It’s a bigger dumpster fire now.” What the heck idea was that, to start — against the incumbent. Evan Potter (08:54) He’s campaigning, as you have said repeatedly, against the incumbent. Mark Sutcliffe is campaigning against himself. I love your line. That’s a great line that you had. Brigitte Pellerin (08:59) It might just work too. So his campaign came out with an internal poll — so we have no idea what the methodology behind this poll is, who they sampled, what questions. We don’t really know. That showed — okay, there’s a technical term for this, and I can’t use it here, because they’re going to

  3. Oct 12

    Flood: Who asked for what, when?

    I do this work as an independent journalist and no outlet is paying me for it. You, my readers, are the ones funding it through paid subscriptions. Help me dig into stories that matter to you by becoming a paid subscriber or, if Substack isn’t your thing, by making a one-time or recurring contribution on my website. Thank you. If you were affected by the July 1 flood, you don’t need me to tell you how hard the past three months have been. The storm dropped 118 mm of rain on Ottawa, roughly double the previous July 1 record, set in 1959, and well over 140 mm in some neighbourhoods. The city called it a one-in-200-year event. By late July, 6,600 households had reported flooded basements. This wasn’t ordinary flooding. An enormous amount of rain fell in a very short time, and in many cases the city’s infrastructure simply couldn’t handle it. Sewers backed up into basements. Belongings were destroyed. Even if insurance eventually covers everything, going through that process is a nightmare. Which is why, when you lead a city, your first job in a moment like that is to get residents as much of the available help as possible, as fast as possible. Last week, Ontario’s Minister of Emergency Preparedness and Response, Jill Dunlop, said the City of Ottawa didn’t formally ask the province for help until July 9, eight days after the storm. She said it in answer to a question from Ottawa West–Nepean NDP MPP Chandra Pasma. Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s campaign denies it. They say the city asked right away, and that the mayor was on the phone with Premier Doug Ford on the evening of July 1. And again on July 3. I have no reason to doubt the mayor was on the phone those nights, probably with other officials too. That’s normal; it’s what you’d expect. But a phone call isn’t necessarily a formal request for assistance. It may have been a heads-up that a request was coming. On the evening of July 1, everyone knew this was going to be a big problem, but nobody knew yet just how big. So the question is simple: who asked whom, for what, and when? I’ve filed access-to-information requests with both the city and the province, and I’ve put questions directly to the people involved. Formal requests can take a long time. With the election on October 26, I don’t think we should have to wait. Here’s what we know so far, and what we don’t. Two provincial programs, two very different jobs Ontario has two programs that matter here. Disaster Recovery Assistance for Ontarians (DRAO) helps residents, tenants, small owner-run businesses, farms and non-profits pay for disaster damage that insurance doesn’t cover. It’s not money that shows up right away: it comes after you’ve been through your insurance, which can take months on its own. It covers basic needs in a primary residence, with caps and deductibles, up to $250,000 per claimant. And it only applies inside an area the province designates. Crucially, the province doesn’t need a municipality to ask. The Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Rob Flack (not Dunlop), decides whether and where to activate it, informed by the province’s own damage assessments and by information from the municipality. In practice, the city’s input carries a lot of weight. If everyone in the city’s emergency management, the mayor’s office and whoever else needs to weigh in shows up with a detailed formal request explaining why the program applies, surely that helps the province conclude that yes, this is what the program is for. Municipal Disaster Recovery Assistance (MDRA) reimburses the city for its own extraordinary costs, such as emergency response and repairs to roads, bridges and public buildings. This one does require the city to act: council must pass a resolution and submit an initial claim within 120 days of the disaster. The city’s eligible costs must reach at least 3% of its own-purpose tax levy. Above that threshold, the province pays 75% of eligible costs up to it and 95% beyond. What happened, day by day * July 1: The storm hits. According to the mayor’s campaign, Sutcliffe is on the phone with the Premier that evening. * July 3: Sutcliffe says he has spoken with Premier Ford about support for the city and residents. * July 5: Councillors Laine Johnson, Wilson Lo, David Hill and Sean Devine, along with MPPs Tyler Watt, Karen McCrimmon, Stephen Blais, Lucille Collard and John Fraser, publish an open letter asking the province to send its disaster assessment team and activate DRAO. The mayor is not a signatory. The ministry says it is assessing the situation. * July 6: At a news conference, Sutcliffe says he has spoken with ministers Dunlop and Flack about getting DRAO for residents. He also announces motions to boost the city’s Compassionate Grant, which pays $1,000 for sewer-backup flooding and had a budget of $150,000 a year. * July 9: The first formal request for help reaches the province, according to Dunlop. * July 10: Flack says he’s confident DRAO will be activated but gives no timeline. Coun. Laine Johnson says that eight days after the floods she is still looking for action and answers from both the city and the province, that the city was responsible for starting some of the requests, and that “all of that took too long.” * Around July 14: The province activates DRAO, but only around Graham Creek and Stillwater Creek: Bayshore, Qualicum, Leslie Park and Trend-Arlington. Residents there have until November 16 to apply. * July 15: Council approves the mayor’s motions: a partnership with the Red Cross worth up to $400,000, waived fees including building and demolition permits, more Compassionate Grant funding, more money for sump pumps and backflow valves, and legal help with insurance claims. Council also drops the rule limiting the grant to once every five years. * July 16: The Red Cross launches its Ottawa Floods Appeal. Around the same time, at the mayor’s request, the federal government agrees to match donations. * July 24: The city formally asks the province to expand the DRAO area. Paramedic Chief Pierre Poirier admits the first map the city gave the province was “fairly restrictive,” drawn before staff understood the full scope of the event. By then the city has received 1,679 grant applications and approved 824. * September 23: Council unanimously passes the mayor’s motion to apply for MDRA, seconded by Johnson, provided costs meet the threshold. The city is still tallying them. A second motion asks the province to review DRAO’s eligibility rules. CTV reports that the DRAO area still hasn’t been expanded. As far as I can tell, that small zone is still the only part of Ottawa approved for DRAO. If I’m wrong, I’d love to hear it. The people who fall through the cracks The two main programs were designed for different kinds of water. The city’s Compassionate Grant covers sewer backup only and explicitly excludes overland flooding. DRAO covers overland flooding, but sewer backup generally isn’t eligible, and it only applies inside the designated zone. So if water came in through your window wells and you live outside that zone, you may qualify for neither. That zone left out flooded neighbourhoods including Centrepointe, Crystal Beach and Parkwood Hills. It also excluded Kanata North, which had the highest number of storm-related service requests in the city. The province says it drew the area using information the city provided. How many households are in that gap? Nobody has said. What we don’t know When the city formally asked, and for what. Show us the email, the letter, the form, whatever it was. Surely somebody put a formal request for assistance in writing. I’d like to know what was asked, by whom and when. The minister says nothing arrived before July 9; the mayor says that’s not accurate. They can’t both be right, and we need the paperwork to settle it. That’s also why Jeff Leiper, the mayor’s main challenger, has asked for the paper trail. A lot of people want to see it. One wrinkle: Dunlop is the emergency preparedness minister, but it’s the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing who activates DRAO. So which ministry received what? That’s part of what my requests ask. What it could mean for the LRT Here I’m thinking out loud about the possible consequences. The storm also flooded O-Train stations under construction on the western extension. I believe Moodie was among the worst hit, though I could be wrong, and I don’t know that the full extent of the damage has been made public. That matters because of the proposed upload of the LRT to the province. Sutcliffe and Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria signed a memorandum of understanding on April 21, and the mayor says the upload is close. The city says it would save $85 million a year, and its 2026 transit budget counts on $47 million from the province that still hasn’t been announced. If you’re Metrolinx, the provincial agency looking at taking over the LRT, and you discover significant damage, the conditions could change. And this next part is pure speculation, but I’ll be honest with you. I rarely see this kind of dynamic. If you’ve watched the video of Minister Dunlop answering Chandra Pasma’s question about the city applying for help eight days late, she was almost smiling. I can’t speak for the whole Ontario government, but this one minister appeared not unwilling to throw the mayor of Ottawa under a bus. I don’t know what the relationship between the two administrations looks like behind closed doors. But if you’ve lived in Ottawa long enough, you know the Ford government can be slow to remember that Ottawa is in Ontario. We certainly remember it from the occupation. I’m not putting all of this on Mark Sutcliffe; the Ford government has a lot to answer for too. But the city now has three asks open at Queen’s Park at once: the DRAO expansion, its MDRA claim, and the LRT money. That rais

  4. Oct 10

    The Eight-Day Delay

    Timing note: Between recording the podcast and broadcasting it, this poll came out. TL;DR: plus full transcript below. * The flood delay: the province says the mayor’s office took 8 days to request assistance after the July 1 flood. Leiper’s campaign wants the paper trail — potential October surprise, and Brigitte notes that just asking the question may be damage enough. * 27,553 early voters: up 46% from 2022, 76% from 2018. Only the Leiper campaign told Brigitte they’re happy with their early-voter data — a confident ground game. High turnout favors challengers. * The engaged are really engaged: notebook-toting crowds at Saravanamuttoo events, young volunteers canvassing for Leiper. But most voters will still vote on trust and name recognition, not policy (see: Gore vs. Bush, 2000). * Watch the undecideds: a third of voters were undecided in summer polling. If they’ve broken, they’ve likely broken away from the mayor. The coming public poll tells all. * The soft-win scenario: Sutcliffe could win with 32–36% — “a win is a win, but it’s a soft win,” and a diminished mandate has council colleagues already eyeing 2030. * Lawson’s week: the zero-tax-increase plan is “beautiful politics” — his big beautiful idea — and his homelessness/addiction treatment plan is one Brigitte wants every candidate to steal. If you like this work, please consider supporting it. Transcript: Brigitte Pellerin (00:00): Hi everyone. Hi Evan. How are you doing this week? Evan Potter (00:04): Great. I’m doing great this week. And you know why I’m doing great this week? Brigitte Pellerin (00:07): Tell me. Tell the people why you’re doing great this week. Evan Potter (00:12): Because I know there is at least one public poll coming up. And there may be more — it could be up to three public polls. One for sure. Brigitte Pellerin (00:16): Woo. All right. Evan Potter (00:24): We’re going to find out things, Brigitte. Things will be confirmed — or things will be contradicted. But there will be — Brigitte Pellerin (00:28): Is that all you want to say for now? (00:35) No, that’s great. You’re making everyone sit on this cliffhanger so they have to watch us again next week. It’s perfect. Great marketing. You’re the best. Evan Potter (00:41): There might be a real surprise. Brigitte Pellerin (00:47): Well — before I go into what we decided to talk about this week, just one thing about what came out earlier this week. I believe it was Tuesday. The minister responsible — I forget her first name; Dunlop is her last name — was explaining that, you know, with the floods, the July 1 flood. When there’s a problem like this and the city requests the assistance of the provincial government with an extreme event, it’s up to the city to request assistance. That’s the way things work in this country. (01:17) But the provinces typically will remind the city that there are resources available. And so this is what happened. As we understand it, as we record this, the province did remind the city that there were resources available. And apparently — not confirmed, but this is from the mouth of the minister of the Ontario government — the mayor’s office took eight days to request assistance after the July 1 flood. I don’t know why they would do that. So Jeff Leiper’s campaign is asking for the paper trail showing that. (01:55) If indeed it is true — and I don’t know why she’d be lying about this on camera — but if that is true, there has to be a really, really good reason why it took eight days to request assistance. Because the people whose basements were flooded, they won’t find it funny at all. Evan Potter (02:08): I’m sure there’s an explanation. And the only question now is whether the Leiper campaign can get the paperwork before election day. Brigitte Pellerin (02:17): Maybe they don’t need that. Because if you sow enough doubt in voters’ minds that there was a delay, and that it’s unexplained as of yet — that’s enough. I don’t think you need the paper trail. Evan Potter (02:26): But the media needs the paper trail. Brigitte Pellerin (02:30): Of course. But for people to decide how they want to vote, maybe just asking the question is enough damage to the Sutcliffe campaign. So maybe that’s our October surprise. We’ll find out. (02:37) Meanwhile — and I want to say that we’ve been saying this all wrong. This was not the advance poll. The advance poll is October sixteenth. What we had last week was early voting. Am I correct? Evan Potter (02:54): Yes, that’s correct. Brigitte Pellerin (02:57): Not that it really matters. Anyway, we had four days of early voting. (03:02) And I think we may have — I don’t know if it’s a record we’ve beaten, but let’s call it a high-water mark. We had 27,553 voters who voted in those early voting days last week. Which is a 46 per cent increase from four years ago, and a 76 per cent increase from eight years ago, 2018. So that’s a good number. (03:18) Now, I have to say something for folks who may not understand how this works. So Elections Ottawa — big shout-out. I love these people. They do the work of angels and they’re great. When you go and vote, please thank them for their work. That’s all they really — they don’t get paid that much to do this work, and it’s critically important. Anyway: when Elections Ottawa tallies everything, they share with all the campaigns a list of who voted in those early voting days. But of course, they don’t say anything about how those people voted. (03:47) So the campaigns get the list of who voted early. And then I’m assuming they cross-reference it with their own list of known supporters — people who told them yes, who have a sign on the front lawn, who said I’m going to vote for you, or I might vote for you. So they have those lists, and that gives them an indication of how they’re doing in their campaign. Because if their voters have already voted for them — that’s good. (04:21) Well. All the campaigns have my number. They know how to get hold of me. And there’s only one that reached out to say they were happy with the data they received from Elections Ottawa. That’s the Jeff Leiper campaign. Evan Potter (04:36): Okay. That’s the open and transparent campaign. Brigitte Pellerin (04:39): That’s right. And so I’m sharing this — the campaign is, how could I say this, going into this holiday weekend feeling confident that their voters are going out and doing what they said they would do, which is vote for Jeff Leiper. That’s my interpretation of the message I received earlier. But if that’s true in the other campaigns — guys, you can reach out. If you’re also happy with your numbers, I’d love to report that. (05:00) It’s an interesting phenomenon. And it goes to what we’ve been saying for weeks: what Jeff Leiper needed was a superior ground game. Evan Potter (05:20): Not just superior. Incredible. Brigitte Pellerin (05:23): Okay. And a dissatisfaction with Mark Sutcliffe, and everyone else voting strategically for Leiper. Evan Potter (05:27): Yes, of course. And a lot of people loving Alex Lawson. He needed those things together. He needs an incredible ground game, an unbelievable ground game — and he needs Alex Lawson in the high twenties. That’s what he needs. Brigitte Pellerin (05:47): Right. So we’ll find out about that part, the Lawson numbers — and I believe that’s what you want to talk about, how that’s the one number we should all look at. But if all of this is happening, then we may be looking at an upset. Evan Potter (06:02): You may be very, very happy. (06:06) But just a comment on the early voting. 27,000 — that’s great, it’s a high number. Let’s say there are three hundred and thirty thousand people who vote on October twenty-sixth. So that’s about eight per cent, nine per cent — don’t call me on the math — somewhere between eight and ten per cent who’ve gone for the early vote. (06:30) I was told this week by someone that a higher percentage of Toronto municipal voters went to the polls for the early vote. Just an interesting factoid — that more Toronto voters, as a percentage of the total vote, took advantage of their early vote. Brigitte Pellerin (06:54): This means something. We just don’t know what it is. Evan Potter (06:57): But let’s carry it through. Let’s say the high early vote is an indicator of an unusually high turnout on voting day. It doesn’t mean it will be — but let’s play a thought game. High voter turnout is good for challengers. Low voter turnout is good for incumbents. Brigitte Pellerin (07:21): Always. That’s right. (07:26) That’s usually true. It won’t be true in the US midterms, but it’s usually true — because the Republican voters are not going to go out. That’s my point. Anyway, we don’t need to talk about this, because this is a municipal podcast. Evan Potter (07:34): So that’s no surprise. Mark Sutcliffe is running a status quo campaign. His campaign would prefer there to be a lower voter turnout, of course. Brigitte Pellerin (07:42): Of course. (07:48) Just again for numbers: last election the voter turnout was 43-ish per cent. And it was up a little bit, because the one before that was 41 or 42-ish. And I’m gunning for 45. I’d like to keep this increasing, and to be reasonable in my ambitions — I’d love to have over 50 per cent, but maybe in a couple of cycles we can have that. (08:10) But here’s what I’m noticing, and this is the subject of my upcoming Ottawa Citizen column. I’ve been going out to events, canvasses, town halls, church basements, what have you — and we’ve been at some of the same ones; we see each other in real life. What I’ve noticed is — I don’t want to say there are huge numbers of people very engaged with the campaign, because that’s not true. But the people who ar

    The Eight-Day Delay

  5. Oct 3

    The job was not even started

    I asked the three main challengers what they thought of Mark Sutcliffe’s $10-billion infrastructure plan. Neil Saravanamuttoo did not answer, but we can safely assume he’s not especially impressed. Jeff Leiper: “Sutcliffe’s infrastructure plan is a hodge-podge of projects already approved by Council, projects Council has already rejected, and projects that depend on funds not yet (and maybe never) secured. Revenues available to build infrastructure will be reduced under his reckless tax cap promise and fulfilling his promises will require massive cuts to other city spending. Leiper's commitment is to increase the funding available for infrastructure projects with a $46 yearly levy on households. “Sutcliffe's plan is a wish list, not a budget. We've tried his approach for four years, and our infrastructure fell further behind. Ottawa deserves a mayor who tells the truth about what it costs.” Alex Lawson: “Mark had 4 years to invest in critical infrastructure but instead he let it rot in the ground while he spent our money on things we didn’t need. Now he’s asking us to believe he’ll fix the problems he let linger using debt instead of the money he already wasted. My fiscal plan will be out soon, and it will focus the city’s spending on getting the basics right, so I don’t need to come begging hat-in-hand for another chance four years from now.” This is what I do for a living. Support my work by becoming a subscriber. Thanks! Transcript Brigitte Pellerin (00:06): Hi everyone, hi Evan — hope you’re doing well. This is a busy one. We’ve got a bit of froth in our eyebrows, because there’s a lot going on and a lot to get to. But first, a little housekeeping. I want to thank our viewers, because people are watching and listening — I hear it wherever I go. People say, I listen to you and Evan, and I really like the format. They appreciate the conversational format. They appreciate that we’re not partisan — I mean, not that there’s partisan politics in municipal politics — but they appreciate that we talk openly, and as honestly as we know how, about the race. So that’s useful, and I’m grateful, and I love hearing it. When you see me out there, come and talk to me. I like that. Evan Potter (00:53): And come out to the Big Rig. Brigitte Pellerin (00:56): That’s right. When we go out for beers — and this time I tried to be a bit more ahead of it and made a reservation and everything. It’s always good to see people. I also want to say that the good folks at Rogers TV run this podcast on the television network, so if you have Rogers at home, go and watch us there if you like. And we’re now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — I always want to say Shopify. They’re not the same thing. I know that. So if you like what we do and want to support us: share it, rate the podcast. It helps other people find us. (01:29) And people do talk to me. A woman came up to me at a Neil Saravanamuttoo event earlier this week, and she had some good criticism. She started with: maybe you don’t care. And I said, no — I do care. I want to hear what you have to say. I won’t share what she said, because she said it to me, not for public consumption. But she had a valid point to make, and I gave her that. And then we had a good evening. So it was good. Anyway — let’s go. What are we talking about first? What’s really got your goat this week? Evan Potter (02:02): Well, before I get to my regular Jeff Leiper grievances — which I keep saying I won’t do, and then he or his campaign does something that drives me nuts — Brigitte Pellerin (02:08): You’re Jeff-bashing? Evan Potter (02:16): No, we’ll come to that. But first: hot off the press this morning, the Globe and Mail runs the first national story on the mayoral race, to my knowledge. I don’t think the National Post has written anything on the Ottawa mayoral race. And it was very fair, very factual. It was a news piece, not an opinion piece, and it gives the rest of the country a sense of what the four top contenders are saying and what their intentions are for the city. I think that’s really good. It’s good for Ottawa. It’s good for the candidates. (03:07) What struck me, Brigitte, was David Valentin’s direct quote. He’s the principal at Liaison Strategies, who’s been doing the Ottawa tracking poll. Brigitte Pellerin (03:13): He’s the head of the Liaison polling firm. Evan Potter (03:21): The Globe journalists went to him and asked his view. And he said that the mayor — I’ll use the conditional — could win, and the number he ascribed to that win for Mark Sutcliffe was 35 per cent. Which I note is the same number Liaison was polling the mayor at over the summer. So it’s interesting that David would throw that 35 per cent winning number out there. He was conditional. And as David has done in the past, he leaves the door open for a surprise. Brigitte Pellerin (04:01): Well, of course they always do that — which bothers me, because I go out there and stick my neck out and make predictions. I’m wrong more often than not. But I think it’s more fun when you go out and make predictions. Evan Potter (04:13): I’ve been predicting, based on public polling and my own sense of the campaign, that the mayor could win anywhere from 32 to 39 per cent. Now, the mayor’s closest supporters and his allies on council have privately told me they think he’ll win more than 40 per cent — and one said even over 50. I don’t think that’s the case. I’m going to stick with David’s conditional prediction of somewhere in the mid to high thirties, all things being equal. Because the mayor has been leading in the public polling since the beginning, all the way through. Brigitte Pellerin (04:23): And in a four-way race, that’s kind of enough. (04:58) And traditionally, as we’ve said over and over again, in Ontario municipal politics the incumbent tends to win. That’s just because people don’t — well, it’s a lot to pay attention to, right? Evan Potter (05:02): So for all the viewers who are champions of the challenger candidates: I’m not trying to throw cold water on the aspirations of your candidate. Brigitte and I are just telling you the reality, which is that in municipal races incumbents almost always win. It’s literally over 85 per cent, sometimes a 90 per cent chance that the incumbent wins. And in our case, we don’t see a change election. This is more a status quo election. So in that case, all things being equal, all the predictions point to Mark Sutcliffe. Brigitte Pellerin (05:50): Except — okay, here’s where I stick my neck out. Advance polling is usually an indication. In most elections, when you have high voter turnout, and especially a lot of people showing up to vote early, that tends to be a sign of a change election. (06:09) Now, early voting for the municipal race just opened this week. I don’t know that we have numbers yet, and that’s fine — we’ll be able to talk about this more next week if they’re out. But anecdotally, there were some — not everywhere. I’ve been to places where it was kind of deserted. Evan Potter (06:28): Not at City Hall. At City Hall, not. But other places. Brigitte Pellerin (06:30): I was at Richcraft the other evening — mind you, it was the evening — and there was nobody there for the advance vote. But it was nice. There were signs and everything, so it was clear. If you were there to vote, they make it clear and easy to do that, and I appreciate that. A big shout-out, now that we’re here, to the people who run Elections Ottawa. They do fantastic work. I just love them. (07:00) Some people have reported to us privately that they’ve seen biggish lines. Maybe. I don’t know — I didn’t see that with my own eyes, so I can’t confirm it. But if it’s true that advance turnout is high, to me that signifies more of a change election than not. So that’s one thing. Evan Potter (07:14): I will respectfully disagree with you on that. Brigitte Pellerin (07:18): Okay. You and your numbers and your data. The other thing is that I think the polls underestimate the dissatisfaction with Mark Sutcliffe. And I say this from my observations, from what people tell me, from what I see with my eyes. I don’t think people are excited to have Mark Sutcliffe as mayor. Even his supporters. Evan Potter (07:43): No, they’re not excited. Brigitte Pellerin (07:48): They’re like: it’s better than the others. This is the devil we know. And I don’t mean he’s a devil — it’s just the expression. The guy we know. It’s okay. We know what to expect. People like predictability, especially business owners. They like to know that if he’s re-elected, what they’ve been doing for four years will continue to work for the next four. That’s very valuable when you’re a business owner. So that’s the core of his support, as far as I can see. Evan Potter (08:13): Can I say something on that? It’s interesting that you say devil you know — that was one of the commentaries from Globe readers under this morning’s article. Someone wrote: Mark Sutcliffe, better the devil you know. Brigitte Pellerin (08:26): Right. Exactly. Or: meh, it’s all right. Or: could be worse. Evan Potter (08:26): And you’re absolutely right. There has never been great enthusiasm. He can talk about Team Ottawa all he wants, but there’s no great enthusiasm for him personally. But as an incumbent mayor, he doesn’t need to have that. My sense with Mark Sutcliffe is that his campaign is doing enough to get him over the finish line. He’s not overperforming. He’s just doing what he needs to do to get a second term. And because his main opponent is Jeff Leiper, who has not overperformed — and who needed to — it makes the mayor’s job much easier. Brigitte Pellerin (09:15): So from the preliminary information I’m gathering from a number of sources, I’m

    The job was not even started

  6. Sep 26

    Seven polls, two realities, and a surprise that better be monumental

    Let’s have beer! Evan and I will be at Big Rig in Gloucester Centre Friday October 2, from 6-6:30 pm (traffic depending). Come see us! CRIC database that lists polling firms, as we discuss in the first few minutes. Below is the image the Leiper campaign has of where people have requested lawn signs. Support my work by becoming a subscriber. Transcript Brigitte Pellerin (00:02): Hi Evan, how are you today? Evan Potter (00:03): Fine, fine. Again, there’s a briskness in the air, and it’s hard to deny. Brigitte Pellerin (00:08): Hard to deny — this time it’s coming. I want to start by saying a great thank you to the viewers and listeners who came to have a beer with us last week at Irene’s Pub in the Glebe. Almost a dozen people showed up, which — for something announced on Twitter at the last minute — I can admit now, I was a little bit scared nobody would come and it would just be you and me having a beer. Which would have been fine, obviously. So we went in with low expectations, and I was blown away. It was lovely to meet people, talk to them, hear them, have those conversations. So we want to do it again. Evan Potter (00:49): Come one, come all. Brigitte Pellerin (00:52): We will be at the Big Rig at Gloucester Centre next Friday — October second. I should have looked at the calendar before announcing it, but yes: Friday, October second. I’ll try to be there around six-ish, traffic depending. I was a bit sad that I got to Irene’s late — I had a problem with my bike, so I arrived eight minutes late and people were already waiting for us. So I’ll aim for six-ish and announce it on Twitter. And you’ll get there when you get there, after your class, traffic depending. We’re being a little loosey-goosey with the timeline. But we’ll be there, have a beer, and hear what people have to say out in the east end. Evan Potter (01:32): Absolutely. I love travelling around the wards. I don’t know why I’m so interested in all this stuff, to be honest with you. I’m fascinated, because I want to know what people think. Maybe that’s the inner political scientist in me. Brigitte Pellerin (01:50): There’s a beautiful series on the CTV Ottawa news site. Leah Larocque went walking around in all twenty-four wards. She talks to people about their concerns, and then she explains the wards a little — where they are, what’s important there. Really interesting, and very well done. Look it up, folks, if you’re interested. Maybe just your ward, or go explore the others. (02:18) And now, from the sublime to the ridiculous — sorry, I needed a transition, and it’s not always elegant — that polling. What is going on? Evan Potter (02:26): People have a lot of views on the polling. And I’m going to say that the polling situation right now is an under-reported story by Ottawa’s local media. I’m looking for CBC, CTV, the Ottawa Citizen, whoever else, to have a look at what’s going on. Brigitte Pellerin (02:53): Do you want to catch people up first on what’s happening? Evan Potter (02:57): I was thinking about how to address this today, and I’ll keep it as fact-based as I can. We’ve had seven public polls since April. Liaison Strategies did five of them. Of those five, four reported polling on the mayor’s race — and the August Liaison poll did not release the numbers for the candidates for mayor. Brigitte Pellerin (03:35): But it talked about other issues, like safety and homelessness. Just not the mayor’s race. Evan Potter (03:40): Exactly. Then we had Corus Consulting [name to verify] in June — that was poll number six. And most recently, ElectRight [name to verify], reporting from September seventeenth and eighteenth, did a poll. Both of those also included numbers for the candidates for mayor. Brigitte Pellerin (04:02): I have one question before we move on, and it’s a factual thing. There’s a group — I forget the name of it — a group of established pollsters. Because everyone can go out and measure things, but polling is actually a science. To be accepted into that group, you presumably have to show you’re a real pollster. Liaison is in that group. Evan Potter (04:23): Yes, it is. Abacus is in there. Brigitte Pellerin (04:30): Abacus is in there. Mainstreet Strategy — would they be in there? Evan Potter (04:34): Mainstreet, yes. They’re all there. All the major pollsters are there, and those who typically do public polls are there. Brigitte Pellerin (04:45): But not ElectRight. This latest poll. Evan Potter (04:47): I did not see ElectRight on the members list. Brigitte Pellerin (04:55): Okay. So if we’re wrong about this, someone can correct us — but you don’t see it on the list that’s publicly available. Evan Potter (04:55): No, it’s not on CRIC’s member list. As I’ve been told this week, it’s a voter identification firm. And if you go on the website, as a service, it provides public opinion research. Brigitte Pellerin (05:08): And by highlighting this, I’m not trying to throw shade at them or question their work. I’m just saying there’s a factual difference between the established polling firms — let’s call them that — and other people who do research that can also be polling, but who aren’t recognized established pollsters. Evan Potter (05:31): Well — they are not the pollsters included in the CRIC membership. I think they would probably say they’re professional pollsters, or that they provide those services. (05:59) So here’s what I would conclude, without getting into questions of methodology, which will vary from pollster to pollster. Sample sets, weighting averages — all of that will vary from firm to firm. What I can say is that in all six of the polls in which the mayoral results were released publicly, Mark Sutcliffe was ahead. That’s incontrovertible. (06:42) And I think intuitively we know that. He’s the incumbent — I always come back to this — he’s the incumbent mayor with no quote-unquote personal scandal attached to him. To be able to unseat somebody like that — you don’t even have to say Mark Sutcliffe, we’ll just call him the mayor — is incredibly difficult for challengers. The incumbent advantage, and I’ll say it for the next four weeks, is huge. We’re not saying it’s insurmountable. We’re not throwing shade, as you said, on all the many people who are putting aside their personal lives to be challengers. We need that for democracy. But to challenge incumbents, whether at the ward level or the mayoral level, is a huge bar to surmount. So you would expect Mark Sutcliffe to be ahead, and by all accounts he has been, and probably is as we speak. Now the question is: is he ahead by eight points, ten points, sixteen points? Brigitte Pellerin (07:35): So what’s the issue, then? Evan Potter (07:42): We don’t know. But he’s ahead. Jeff Leiper — if you look across all the polling in terms of committed and leaning, his variation has not been that great. If we were to do a census, which we’re not going to do, it would probably be between twenty-two and twenty-six percent. Brigitte Pellerin (08:10): Which is his natural base, basically. Evan Potter (08:11): I like that word you used — natural. You’d say the progressive voting base in Ottawa is probably about that size. So he’s probably capturing it. They have no other place to go. He’s their guy, he’s their candidate. And of course he’s sharing some of that — we don’t know what percentage — with Neil Saravanamuttoo. I’ve always said the two of them probably take forty percent. Brigitte Pellerin (08:44): So they would win if there were one guy. Evan Potter (08:48): They could win if they were one guy. And Neil was always the primary threat to Jeff Leiper’s underdog attempt to unseat Mark Sutcliffe. Brigitte Pellerin (08:55): Because he’s fishing in the same waters, so to speak. Not that voters are fish. (09:07) Our viewers are very smart. They’re very well informed. They understand things. Evan Potter (09:15): So we’re telling people things they already pretty well know. The real question now becomes Alex Lawson. What is his number? When you have Liaison having him at twenty-six percent — let’s say in the high twenties — Brigitte Pellerin (09:35): That was in July. Evan Potter (09:36): In July. And people around town apparently know what the August number was, but it’s not public, and I’m not going to say anything. So we’ll just say mid to high twenties. And then ElectRight — Brigitte Pellerin (09:52): Had him at four percent. Evan Potter (09:52): Four. Or six to seven if you distribute the undecideds. So it’s still single digits. And a huge difference, obviously. A huge swing. (10:05) Is that a realistic swing in two months? Pollsters would probably say no. Brigitte Pellerin (10:13): I’ve seen nothing on the campaign trail that would suggest it. He didn’t say something outrageous. Somebody could have a gaffe of such magnitude that people turn away from them — but none of that happened. Evan Potter (10:31): I don’t know what the sampling set was. There are so many missing pieces to the puzzle here. Brigitte Pellerin (10:39): Well, we do know some of it. The September one, by ElectRight, had a sample of about six hundred folks. Evan Potter (10:46): Six hundred — that’s a margin of error of about four. Brigitte Pellerin (10:50): And it was heavily weighted toward older people, older than fifty-five. And about a third, or a bit more than a third — I forget the exact number — with a household income between a hundred and a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Which is not everyone. Evan Potter (11:01): So does that mean they weren’t doing random dialling? The level of probability sampling — well, I won’t get into that. Brigitte Pellerin (11:14): I don’t know what that means. But that’s the information we do know. Evan Potter (11:24): We’re not going t

  7. Sep 19

    Does Jeff want the job?

    For debates on Rogers TV, start here. The Ottawa Student Debate is here. Evan’s piece on the councillors supporting Mark Sutcliffe is here. Transcript Brigitte Pellerin (00:01): Hi everyone, hi Evan — how are you doing today? Evan Potter (00:04): Very well. I feel a bit of coolness, a briskness in the air. Brigitte Pellerin (00:08): Yes — enjoy the last bits of summer, when it comes, between noon and two every day. But this is a great time of year, and it’s a sign the election is coming. So is the flurry of activity. We have a lot to talk about this week, because stuff is happening. But before we get into that, I want to put in a good plug for our friends at Rogers TV, who have produced — I don’t know how they got this done — candidate debates, not just for the mayor’s race but for all the wards. And when you look at the videos, you see interesting view numbers. I think people are more interested than you and I have been giving them credit for. We’ve been calling this a bit of a dead campaign, and I want to hope and believe there’s more interest than we can see. I’ll put a link to where you can find those debates. Go find your ward — and feel free to listen to all the ward races if you want. There are really good, interesting debates there to watch. Evan Potter (01:15): I totally agree. Kudos to Rogers. I’ve been watching the debates on YouTube, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised that there’s actually been a debate. Remember, we said that in some of our experiences people were just reading out their answers — they’d received the questions in advance, and they were sitting at a table reading the answers out. I think in one debate that actually happened. It wasn’t really a debate, and that was disappointing. But then I watched other local debates where that wasn’t the case, and there was an actual debate among the candidates — which is what people are looking for. Brigitte Pellerin (01:58): Exactly. And then there was the Ottawa students’ mayoral debate earlier this week, which — I have to give them massive kudos. I couldn’t be there in person, but I watched the recording, and I’ll add the link to the show notes. It’s long. But the format was wonderful. The questions were really smart and knowledgeable, and the answers were interesting. Unfortunately, only three candidates were present. The mayor didn’t show up, and didn’t offer an explanation as to why he wasn’t there. The other three tended to agree a lot on what they’d do differently, so we didn’t get big clashes — but there were some really good moments. They laughed. It was a smart debate. I’m like: yay! It’s really worth watching. Evan Potter (02:47): I read the media report on it, and I understand it was a packed hall — people had to be turned away. That’s good. We’ve talked a little about the quote-unquote youth vote, the younger vote, first-time voters, throughout these podcasts. And I’ve asked a few people along the way whether there was any major effort underway to encourage younger people to vote. It looks like there is no formal effort by an interest group to do this. So it really is up to the individual campaigns, when they’re door-knocking, to ask — literally, as we’ve said before on the podcast — whether there’s a younger member in the household and whether they intend to vote. Brigitte Pellerin (03:41): I know. I have two newish voters. One has voted before, but not at the city level — this would be her third election — and one for whom this is the first. So I’ve been leaning on them: I don’t care who you vote for, but please vote. Evan Potter (03:52): And one of the stats that came out in the local coverage — the journalist was interviewing the student organizer — is that there are something like 160,000 young people in the Ottawa area. So if one of the mayoral candidates has mobilized part of that vote, it could be significant. Brigitte Pellerin (04:21): And this is one reason I was really surprised not to see Mark Sutcliffe at that debate. As I understand it, he didn’t offer an explanation. He’s not talking to me much these days, so I don’t know what was on his mind. But the optics were awful. Evan Potter (04:30): The standard explanation from the comms people — take it for what you will — is that there were scheduling conflicts. Brigitte Pellerin (04:44): Right. As I understand it, this came as last-minute news to the organizing committee. Now, if I’m wrong, somebody can point me to the right answer — but as I understand it, the organizers expected him up until that day. That’s what I’ve been led to believe. And that’s not a great thing, especially when you’re looking at polls showing you have competition. It’s a four-way race. If you can’t attend, that’s one thing — but then you let people know as early as you can, and you make some kind of statement saying: I’m sorry I couldn’t be there, it’s not a show of disrespect, there’s legitimately a lot happening and I can’t make this one. Evan Potter (05:27): There is a way of doing this. You can submit a statement to the organizers that they read out at the event. There are all sorts of communications ways to protect yourself. But just not showing up will be interpreted as a lack of respect. It will be interpreted as the front-runner assuming he doesn’t need the youth vote, and doesn’t care. Brigitte Pellerin (06:12): What do you gain by being disrespectful? Evan Potter (06:02): So you don’t want that to be the narrative. Even if, in fact, the youth vote does not matter to you, you don’t want that to be the narrative. And the fact that the mayor lets that be the narrative also tells us something about the mayor. Brigitte Pellerin (06:18): It’s a message. And it’s very loud. (06:18) By contrast, earlier this week — on a different day — there was another debate organized by another group, mostly on environmental issues. The mayor was there, and so were Neil Saravanamuttoo and Jeff Leiper. But not Alex Lawson. And on Twitter, one of the mayor’s communications people — I’m not going to out him; people can go look for it themselves — poked at Alex Lawson and said, well, big tough guy on Twitter was too scared to show up. I’m paraphrasing. Evan Potter (06:52): No, we can name names, Brigitte. It’s DG Stringer. We all saw that tweet. He’s the co-chair. He’s a public person — he’s made himself a public person — so we can call him by name. Brigitte Pellerin (06:55): It’s public. It’s on Twitter. He knows what he’s doing. (07:00) So I reached out to Alex Lawson and gave him the opportunity: do you want to explain why you weren’t there? What he said to me was: look, there are a lot of events and I can’t make all of them. He did not explain why this one in particular got cut. But he did add that he had told the organizers well ahead of time that he wasn’t going to make it — so this was not a surprise. People can believe what they want and interpret it any way they like. But for the mayor’s team to not give much of an explanation beyond scheduling issues, and then poke the other guy as the big tough guy who’s not here — which was a childish tweet anyway. Evan Potter (07:42): We’ve seen this before from the mayor’s team, from the mayor’s comms. And what it says is: we don’t care. That’s the message it sends — that you don’t matter enough to us for us to actually give an explanation. Again, it speaks volumes. Brigitte Pellerin (08:09): And the mayor was also busy this week. On Wednesday he had his official launch party. We were both there in person. I was talking to the people organizing it, and they said they had maybe about four hundred people registered. I think we can agree it was somewhere between two hundred and fifty and three hundred in the room — including just about half the Liberal Party of the Ottawa area. We could talk about that in a second. And you were there with your notebook. How many city councillors? Evan Potter (08:45): I did a column on that yesterday. A whopping — almost half of city council showed up. Ten councillors. And the ones who showed up, almost all of them would be considered by you and me and others as allies of the mayor on council. Let’s not mince words: this may not be the poisonous council of late 2022 under Jim Watson, but this is a split council. So the ten we saw there — these are the allies. They weren’t there for the piece of pizza and a glass of water. Brigitte Pellerin (09:21): I’ll link to your column so people can go see who was there. If it’s one of your councillors, that gives you an indication. Evan Potter (09:34): That, or the shawarma. That’s not what they were there for. They were there to stand for Mark. Let’s be clear. And as I said in my column, this is fine. Brigitte Pellerin (09:41): And that’s fine. I like that, actually — show your colours. Let people make their decision based on your behaviour and what you’re doing. (09:59) I did comment on the ambience. I was there four years ago — were you? Same room, same place, at St. Elias. Four years ago there were a lot more people in that room, and the energy was a lot stronger. This time people were happy and they clapped, but it was like a six or seven intensity. Four years ago it was tilting. It was good. Evan Potter (10:20): I like the number you gave it. It was a kind of seven. Brigitte Pellerin (10:26): Yeah. Good-ish. Evan Potter (10:28): Brigitte, it was a made-for-local-TV, made-for-print-journalism event. That’s the entire purpose. He’s been campaigning since June, and he had his official staff campaign launch a few weeks ago. So this was just a made-for-TV moment to get a headline. Brigitte Pellerin (10:52): I know you don’t want to talk about Jeff Leiper too much, because you’ve said so many things so many times. So I’m going to talk about Jeff Leiper a

    Does Jeff want the job?

  8. Sep 12

    A reverse Bernie Sanders?

    This week: Signs Go Up, a Poll Goes Missing, and Lawson Pulls From Both Edges Here is the piece Evan wrote about Alex Lawson. Fact check: Near the end of the episode Evan said something about fundraising in the last election that neither he nor I were fully certain about. I went digging and it turns out Evan was accurate. In 2022, Catherine McKenney published their list of donors over $100 on Oct. 10 and updated it before election day; Mark Sutcliffe declined to release his before the legal filing deadline in March 2023 (CBC, Oct. 11, 2022). McKenney ultimately raised about $543,000 from roughly 3,100 donors; Sutcliffe raised $537,824 from about 750, with more than half coming from ~250 maximum donations (CBC, April 2023). Transcript Brigitte Pellerin (00:02): Hi everyone. Hi Evan. Have you seen some signs, Evan? Evan Potter (00:05): I have not seen any signs. Brigitte Pellerin (00:07): As of midnight on Friday the 11th, crews and candidates were allowed to put up signs on private property, and on street corners and intersections. I was out Thursday night playing late frisbee, and then there’s the obligatory beer after late frisbee. So I was coming home at about midnight from Kanata. I didn’t see anything out there — but by the time I got to my little Westboro neighbourhood, there was Joanne Chianello’s truck with her signs on it. They were hammering down signs at Byron and Island Park. Evan Potter (00:47): A major intersection. Brigitte Pellerin (00:49): A major intersection, in this little corner of the world. And it just goes to show that some people are out there early, fighting like they’re in second place — which I like to see. Jeff Leiper also posted a picture of himself in front of a Kanata home, I think at about 12:30 last night. Evan Potter (01:07): He was promising to be out there first, and he was, with a sign. I did a quick drive around the Glebe and Old Ottawa South. There may be some signs — I wasn’t doing a street-by-street sweep — but I didn’t see any. I don’t think there are any signs out yet. (01:30) Interesting, in what we’ve said before feels like a dead election. We’re both, I think, concerned that there will be a lower turnout — which favours all incumbents, including the mayor. The challengers need a high turnout. Brigitte Pellerin (01:55): And so does democracy. Come on, people. Go vote. Evan Potter (02:19): One indicator of the energy of this electoral cycle is the degree to which you notice, or are aware, that there are signs. There’s going to be a lot less incentive for many incumbent councillors — some of whom may as well be acclaimed, because they don’t have any real challengers. They have challengers on the books, but it won’t matter. So it’ll be interesting to see how much effort those incumbents make in the next five weeks. They might not be motivated to put out a lot of signs. Brigitte Pellerin (02:48): It costs money to do that. So why would you spend money? Evan Potter (02:51): It costs money and effort. And if they’re just going to cruise to another re-election, it’s hard to see why they’d go all out. (03:01) Now, this goes to a topic I think we’ll come back to — not just today but in subsequent weeks — which is the lack of endorsements for the challengers. Brigitte Pellerin (03:22): So far. I heard rumours we were going to see some endorsements earlier this week, but they didn’t come out. Evan Potter (03:27): They didn’t happen. But here I’m going to link it to signage. Because if some of the current council members do not want to overtly support the challengers — and here I’m mostly thinking of Jeff Leiper — one way for them to support a challenge to Mayor Sutcliffe is to try to increase the vote share in their own wards. And one way to do that is for their teams to get the signs out, create some energy, try to increase the vote, and hopefully help their council colleague. If we don’t see that extra effort — and having signs out there reflects that extra effort — then that sends a message about the relationship between challenger candidates like Jeff Leiper and his fellow council members. Brigitte Pellerin (04:36): So I’m going to be driving around town to see about that, and we can report next week on what neighbourhoods have what. Evan Potter (04:43): Let me take this one. I was thinking about how I’d put this to you today, and I thought about it this way. Let’s say you and I are members of Ottawa council. We’ll take the personalities out of it — just pretend you and I are. We’ve known each other for two terms, eight years. We’ve mostly voted the same way, consistently. We may not be personal friends, but we respect each other and we’ve supported each other. Now I decide to challenge the sitting mayor. I think it would be a fair expectation, for somebody like me, that other people on council with whom I have a similar worldview — Brigitte Pellerin (05:36): Like me. Evan Potter (05:37): Like you — would come, and if they couldn’t publicly endorse me, at least try to give me a helping hand by increasing the vote in their ward. I think that would be a reasonable expectation. And if Jeff Leiper isn’t getting that, I have to say, that also sends a message. Brigitte Pellerin (06:06): Are there other ways, other than signs, that would constitute helping? Maybe sharing volunteers, lists, things like that? Evan Potter (06:13): Sharing volunteers, things like that, yeah. Brigitte Pellerin (06:16): So we don’t know what may or may not be happening in the background. We’d love to hear about it. Evan Potter (06:20): We don’t know. But we do know that nobody from council has endorsed Jeff Leiper — to my knowledge. Brigitte Pellerin (06:32): No, you’re right. Not yet, anyway. But he’s announced a surprise, right? I missed that announcement completely. What is this? Evan Potter (06:38): He has announced a surprise. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the big, beautiful idea I’ve been talking about for a year — that a candidate needs a big, beautiful idea. We’ll have to wait. Two weeks. End of September. Brigitte Pellerin (07:01): Okay. What could it be? Evan Potter (07:04): Actually, I have no idea. Brigitte Pellerin (07:05): I’m stumped too. But the timing would be perfect. Evan Potter (07:17): They probably had this in mind for a long time. And if he’s announcing it as a surprise, it better be big. It better be good. Brigitte Pellerin (07:22): It better be good. Mark Sutcliffe, meanwhile, is planning his official launch on the 16th — which is next week sometime. Evan Potter (07:34): Next week sometime. And this will be, I think, an effort for him to show — I’m just picturing it now. If you and I were the strategists, it should be a major media event for his campaign. Brigitte Pellerin (07:55): Made for TV. Evan Potter (07:56): A made-for-TV moment. He should have all the people who are endorsing him — the name personalities — in front of him. A phalanx of people endorsing him who are recognized by the community. A full room of supporters. Lots of signs. I don’t know if there will be balloons. Maybe there will be balloons. Brigitte Pellerin (08:19): Come on, let’s have balloons. Evan Potter (08:21): But this will definitely be a made-for-local-Ottawa-TV moment. And the message is designed to tell you and the audience that it’s coming — his victory is inevitable. Brigitte Pellerin (08:37): That’s the typical incumbent posture, right? You don’t let them see that you’re scared. (08:45) Now — I’ve left my tinfoil in the drawer where I keep my cooking implements, and I don’t want to start saying things that sound like I believe in conspiracies. But the August numbers from the Liaison poll have not been released. And we’re recording this on September eleventh. So we’re going to have the September numbers soon, I assume. And I have not seen an explanation as to why there was no release for August. So we’re left to speculate. I’ve asked around, I’ve asked other people — what do you think? What’s going on? And we all kind of land in a similar place. Two possibilities I can think of. One is that there was a problem with the poll. Nobody’s perfect; pollsters can make mistakes, or discover errors after the fact. I’m not casting any shade on David Valentin and his firm — they’ve got a great record. But if there had been an issue with the methodology, or some other problem — I don’t do polling, so I don’t know where it could go wrong — but imagine it went wrong for reasons outside their control. It would make sense not to release that poll. Evan Potter (10:13): Well, there are rogue polls and there are problems with polls. I think we can say with certainty that polling was done in August. Brigitte Pellerin (10:22): Right. So it’s not released. So either something went wrong with the poll, or the numbers show something so unexpected that people thought: we can’t release this, because people will think we’ve made a mistake. Evan Potter (10:36): I’m told all roads lead to the client. The client is Ottawa Compass / iPolitics. And I put in an email to the publisher-editor asking whether the polling data would be released. I did not receive a response. So it just creates some speculation about why. Hopefully another name-brand pollster will step in in a couple of weeks to provide at least one other public poll. (11:23) Because we’re all relying on only one public poll. The campaigns are doing their own internal polling, so they have their numbers. But the public and the commentators only have the benefit of one poll. It’s always better to have multiple public polls so you can average out the results. Brigitte Pellerin (11:29): And it’s probably even better for the polling firms themselves to have other polls, and other people in the same field doing the same work — because then you can check yourself against

    A reverse Bernie Sanders?
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About

Brigitte Pellerin and Evan Potter discuss City of Ottawa politics. randomactsofurbanism.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Brigitte Pellerin
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    26
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Brigitte Pellerin
  • Show Website
    Random Acts of Urbanism