Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper has confirmed rumours that he plans to run for mayor in 2026.
But Leiper also points out that the next municipal election is still a year and a half away.
“There are still a lot of bridges to clear before nomination day,” he said in an interview Wednesday.
Leiper, known as a progressive voice on city council, is a cycling advocate, the former president of the Hintonburg Community Association and was a trade journalist and an executive with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
He was first elected in 2014, when he unseated then-incumbent Katherine Hobbs by over 3,300 votes, then winning easily in 2018 and 2022, when he cruised to victory with almost 72 per cent of the vote.
Leiper admits that he had started to muse about how this was likely his last term as a city councillor. But he said has serious concerns about the direction in which the city is going.
“I’m worried that the transit in place is not the reliable, convenient, affordable transit that this city needs,” said Leiper.
“As a city councillor, I hear concerns about the lack of snow removal, overflowing garbage bins in city parks. Services are getting worse, not better.”
In January 2023, he was named the chair of the newly-named planning and housing committee.
“The committee now has a significantly broader mandate to achieve affordable housing in the city,” he said at the time.
“We’ve heard the message from the province that it wants cities in Ontario to build more units of housing, and the shift in name, I think, is partly to reflect the clear mandate that we have now from the province to approve housing development.”
Later that year, Leiper opposed Lansdowne 2.0, calling the $3.9-million funding for affordable housing a “drop in the bucket.” City-owned land needs to be put at the service of building deeply affordable housing, and that was not the case here, he argued.
Last November, he was one of three councillors to vote against the 2025 budget, which included a 3.9 per cent tax hike.
OC Transpo faced a $120-million shortfall, leading to controversial proposal for a
120-per-cent increase in the price of monthly OC Transpo passes for seniors that was later scaled back.
Leiper said if he does put his name on the ballot, it will be incumbent on him to explain how he plans to pay for better services. But he hasn’t laid out his plans yet.
He has created a small team as he contemplates his bid for mayor.
“It’s important for me to listen to people in rural, suburban and urban wards,” said Leiper.
