Housing, transit, and safety key topics at Carleton University Mayoral debate

It was standing room only as more than 300 students packed into a Carleton University lecture hall last week to hear how Ottawa’s leading mayoral candidates would tackle the issues affecting young people — from soaring rents and unreliable buses to nightlife and public safety.

But one of the four leading candidates was missing.

Incumbent Mayor Mark Sutcliffe was invited to the Sept. 15 student mayoral debate but did not attend, leaving homebuilder Alex Lawson, current Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper and economist Neil Saravanamuttoo to make their cases for why they should lead the city after the Oct. 26 municipal election.

While the three candidates found areas of agreement — all opposed Lansdowne 2.0 and supported expanding alternatives to police for some mental-health calls — sharp differences emerged over how aggressively the city should intervene in the housing market and what it will take to repair OC Transpo.

Housing opened the debate, with moderators noting that while all of the candidates support building more homes, they differ on what should be constructed and what role the municipality should play.

Lawson, a homebuilder who has centred much of his campaign on what he calls “getting the basics right,” said he would first make it cheaper and easier for the private sector to build.

“Let’s cut the fees in half right away. Let’s do whatever we need to do to get it out of the way,” Lawson said. “But then we’re gonna give them 12 months. And if they’re not building the type of homes that students can afford to rent, that families can afford to rent, that we can afford to buy, that the city actually needs, then we’re gonna step in, and we’re going to do it.”

His proposal comes as Ottawa is already pursuing a major reduction in development charges. In July, council backed an application to a new federal-provincial program that included a commitment to reduce residential development charges by 54 per cent through March 2029. The program provides funding for infrastructure to municipalities that substantially reduce the fees they collect on new housing.

Leiper challenged the argument that lower development charges would directly translate into cheaper homes.

“I can pretty much guarantee you that when development charges are cut, those will flow to the developers’ bottom line,” he said. “The folks who are renting and buying the homes that get built as a result are not going to see the reduction in price.”

Leiper said the argument for reducing the fees is instead that improving project economics could convince builders to proceed with developments that otherwise would not be viable.

His own housing plan puts greater emphasis on the non-profit sector and preserving existing affordable rentals. Leiper said he would establish an acquisition fund that would allow the city and non-profit housing providers to buy existing rental properties and keep them affordable.

“The least expensive way for the city to provide affordable housing is to protect the affordable housing that we already have,” he said.

Saravanamuttoo, meanwhile, advocated for a substantially larger public role in the housing market.

Pointing to European cities such as Vienna, he argued Ottawa should establish a larger “public option” in which housing is built without the same profit requirements as private development.

“Say a typical two-bedroom rent in Ottawa is about $2,500. With the public option, we can do it for about $1,500,” Saravanamuttoo said. “So that’s the sort of affordability that we need with housing and renting.”

His campaign is proposing roughly doubling Ottawa’s share of non-market housing from about five to 10 per cent over the next decade, or approximately 25,000 additional units.

The candidates were also pressed on a problem particularly relevant to students: frequent moves. Ontario generally limits annual rent increases for existing tenants, but most units first occupied after Nov. 15, 2018, are exempt from the provincial guideline. Rent can also be reset to the market rate when a tenant leaves, meaning students who regularly change apartments or roommates repeatedly re-enter the market at current asking rents.

When pressed on what he could do as mayor, Lawson said the issue largely falls outside municipal jurisdiction.

Leiper and Saravanamuttoo similarly focused their answers on increasing non-profit or publicly controlled housing rather than attempting to regulate rents municipally.

Students at the debate described missed buses that caused them to be late for classes, work and exams, and asked what riders would actually notice during the next mayor’s first year.

Saravanamuttoo said Ottawa needs to acknowledge that its transit system is “in crisis. His most recognizable transit promise is a $1 fare, which he argues could help reverse declining ridership by making transit substantially more attractive.

Lawson quickly fired back by saying, “So it’s still gonna be terrible, but at least it’ll be cheaper.”

Saravanamuttoo’s plan proposes using future provincial savings, assuming responsibility for Ottawa’s LRT, to offset much of the lost fare revenue. The city and province signed an agreement in April to advance that upload, though a timeline and many of the financial details have not yet been finalized.

Both Lawson and Leiper questioned whether those savings could reliably fund a $1 fare.

Leiper instead pledged to reverse bus service cuts and gradually purchase more vehicles. He would also expand transit-priority measures that allow buses to move more quickly through congested corridors and implement a service guarantee that could compensate some riders when scheduled service repeatedly fails to arrive on time.

Lawson’s diagnosis was different. He repeatedly argued that OC Transpo’s core problem is management and scheduling.

He said conversations with operators have shown some routes are scheduled with runtimes that are effectively impossible to meet, causing delays to compound throughout a driver’s shift.

Lawson offered the example of a driver starting a route on time late at night, with little traffic or passenger activity, yet still arriving seven minutes late.

OC Transpo itself has acknowledged scheduling problems. An audit released this year produced 10 recommendations aimed at improving bus planning and scheduling, all of which management accepted. Since Aug. 30, the transit agency has also introduced adjusted schedules on 30 routes serving roughly half of its customers, using more realistic runtimes as part of its Customer-First Action Plan.

Lawson said some of those changes overlap with what he has proposed.

He argued that the immediate priority should not necessarily be promising more service, but ensuring that the advertised service can actually be delivered.

“If we can’t actually offer that bus every 15 minutes, but we can offer it every 20 minutes, and it will be reliable with the equipment that we have right now, eventually, you know, stepping up the equipment, but let’s be honest about what we have right now,” Lawson said.

Lawson said he would keep fares at their current level. In contrast, Leiper said riders could likely expect “very small, predictable increases” in the short term as the city attempts to stabilize the system, eventually working toward a fare freeze.

Ottawa as a no-fun city is a misconception it has been trying to fight for decades.

Leiper, who was previously dubbed Ottawa’s “music councillor,” argued arts and music should increasingly be treated as economic development rather than simply cultural spending.

The nightlife economy is significant. Ottawa’s 2026 budget documents cite 4,608 nightlife businesses supporting more than 38,000 jobs, based on earlier research conducted for the city.

Lawson agreed with Leiper that cultural spending can also be an economic-development tool.

Saravanamuttoo took a different approach, arguing Ottawa cannot substantially improve downtown nightlife without confronting homelessness and perceptions of public safety.

“If we want people to come downtown, we want them to come to places like the ByWard Market or Elgin Street, the reality is that a lot of people are scared to go there,” he said.

The candidates also heard concerns from venue operators about noise complaints and inconsistent bylaw enforcement.

Lawson said clearer standards were needed, including rules around where sound measurements are taken.

Leiper said politicians should never intervene in individual enforcement decisions, but can clarify bylaws and hold management accountable for ensuring officers enforce them consistently.

“The politicians should never be in the position of telling bylaw how to enforce bylaws,” Leiper said. “The potential for abuse is really huge.”

He said council could instead review the noise bylaw to establish clearer definitions and thresholds.

Despite their differences elsewhere, the candidates found considerable common ground when discussing how Ottawa should respond to mental-health and substance-use crises.

All three voiced support for expanding ANCHOR, Ottawa’s community-led alternative crisis-response program.

The program allows people experiencing some mental-health or substance-use crises to call 2-1-1 rather than police.

According to city figures, ANCHOR received 4,464 calls during its first year. Of the 1,874 calls dispatched to crisis-response workers, more than 92 per cent were handled without police involvement.

Leiper said police should focus on situations requiring a police response, while the city invests in alternatives for other calls.

“For every increase in the police budget that comes forward, we need an alternative response to mental health,” he said.

Saravanamuttoo, who previously served on the board of the Centretown Community Health Centre, also called for ANCHOR to be scaled citywide. Lawson agreed.

“We shouldn’t have police responding to somebody in a mental health crisis where there isn’t danger that exists as well,” he said. “Police showing up can make it a lot worse.”

Saravanamuttoo repeatedly tied public safety to homelessness and proposed exploring transitional tiny-home communities similar to a project in Gatineau.

Lawson put greater emphasis on addiction recovery and conditions within shelters, arguing that people need more than housing alone.

Leiper said the long-term goal needs to remain a focus on permanent housing while also ensuring adequate outreach and public-space services.

Ottawa continues to face significant pressure in its homelessness system. The city’s 2025 enumeration counted 4,569 people experiencing homelessness, including dependents, with 422 people counted in unsheltered locations and another 139 in encampments.

Election day is on Oct. 26. Advanced voting takes place Oct. 1-4. You can watch the full debate here.