In an election that has largely hinged on big, existential questions about our country and our relationship with our neighbours to the south, one could be forgiven for not focusing on local issues.
But elections are about more than just one thing. The people who win on election day will represent the people of Ottawa on issues big and small. The federal government makes laws and policies that touch many aspects of daily life, particularly here in the capital.
This is why we asked you, our readers, for input on what you wanted to hear from candidates. We wanted to include feedback from our Citizens’ Agenda, as we’re calling it, in questions we put to candidates across the city and the region.
The idea was simple: voters want to know where candidates stand on issues that matter to them. Which is why we distilled the Citizens’ Agenda to five key questions:
- How do you plan to improve Canada’s economic competitiveness?
- What is one locally-focused campaign pledge that you would implement as MP?
- What are your thoughts on the current size of the federal public service?
- How do you propose helping fix the housing crisis in Ottawa?
- And lastly, on a lighter note, what’s your favourite season in Ottawa and why?
Not every candidate we reached out to participated, but a good many did from all four of the major parties (the Conservatives, Greens, Liberals, and NDP, as well as the Bloc Québécois in our Outaouais ridings). Reporters from throughout the newsroom talked with the candidates who agreed to speak one-on-one to hear their vision for what they’d do if elected.
Keeping the country competitive in such a tumultuous time is one of the key challenges for whoever sits in parliament in the coming years.
For Blair Turner, the Conservative candidate in Ottawa South, high taxes were a major concern affecting competitiveness. “There’s a halal meat shop in the Findlay Creek area, and the owner was telling me the price of the fresh meat that he gets delivered a couple of times a week is getting more and more expensive for him to buy, and in turn, he’s passing it to the customers. It was the cost of everything — the cost of the carbon tax increase to heat the store, the cost for transport and delivery.”
In the Quebec riding of Pontiac-Kitigan Zibi, the NDP’s Gilbert Whiteduck said the current crisis exposed how reliant this country is on our southern neighbours. “Trump has exposed how vulnerable Canada is to the U.S., which is mainly just interested in taking our resources. Our economy is overly dominated by large firms that extract large monopoly and rentier profits while squashing competition and innovation. We need to invest in people, education, infrastructure, developing value-added products, increasing true competition, and collaboration, too,” Whiteduck said.
The downtown core is a part of the city that has struggled since the changes brought on by the pandemic. What to do with underused buildings is particularly top of mind in this part of town. Two of the leading candidates in the Ottawa Centre riding that encompasses the downtown want to see the buildings given another life.
“The one important thing I really want to see is to create housing for Indigenous people in our downtown core. I want to see the Jackson Building, on Bank and Slater, converted into housing. I’m working with the Ottawa Aboriginal Coalition, we’ve done a lot of work on it together, and I want to bring it to completion if re-elected as the member of Parliament for Ottawa Centre.” Liberal candidate Yasir Naqvi said.
One of his main competitors in the riding, the NDP’s Joel Harden, also said the Jackson building should be turned into housing or a shelter. He also pointed to vacant office space in the core that could be repurposed. “It is brutal as a small business to pay the current going commercial rent prices in Centretown and in the downtown. The prices have gone well beyond what small business owners can afford. What the federal government could do, as other municipalities have done, is re-offer those spaces for creative startups,” Harden said.
It’s impossible not to talk about the public service in a federal election. As the region’s biggest employer, it was important for us to ask what candidates thought about the size of the public service.
Liberal candidate Mona Fortier for Ottawa-Vanier-Gloucester emphasized the importance of the public service to the city. “I have been at many doors, and of course, many public servants are concerned about what will happen in the next chapter following this election, and I strongly believe that we need a strong public service here in the National Capital Region, because it also has an effect on the rest of our economy in the region,” Fortier said.
In Kanata, Conservative candidate Greg Kung was concerned with getting Canadians the services they deserve. “Obviously, this comes up a lot at the doors. My thoughts are that people are starting to recognize that we need to improve on service delivery… that when you call CRA, you can talk to somebody, that you can get a passport, that your veteran’s benefits are actually processed, that your disability benefits are processed in a timely manner,” Kung said.
While most of the questions were focused on policies that affect everyone in the city, but we also wanted to ask something that brought out a little bit of the person behind the politician. The parties may offer competing policy visions, but one thing a great many of them agree on is that fall is Ottawa’s favourite season. (It’s a tough one to argue against.)
Fall was particularly popular with NDP candidate Pascale Matecki in Hull-Aylmer, who sent in a poem to show her love for fall, including these lines:
The trees are in their final dance
Of gold and red
In tune with the crisp air of the cedar’s song
And the geese singing farewell
You can find all of the responses we received for each riding:
- Ottawa-Vanier-Gloucester
- Ottawa West-Nepean
- Ottawa South
- Ottawa Centre
- Orléans
- Kanata
- Hull-Aylmer
- Pontiac-Kitigan Zibi
- Gatineau
In two ridings, we did something a little different. Because the two party leaders most likely to become prime minister are running in Ottawa ridings, we wanted to go even deeper into their stories and connections to this city. Two of our veteran reporters, Elizabeth Payne and Andrew Duffy, set out to profile the major players vying to represent Nepean and Carleton. Those you can find here:
- ‘Pierre Poilievre owns the area’: Conservative supporters stand firm in Carleton
- Could a Liberal defeat Pierre Poilievre in his own riding? Bruce Fanjoy thinks so
- Will progressive voters support the NDP’s Beth Prokaska in Carleton?
- ‘Undaunted’ Liberal Leader Mark Carney faces an extraordinary moment in Nepean
- Conservative candidate Barbara Bal seeks to play giant killer against Mark Carney
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