'I can win' Neil Saravanamuttoo is ignoring the polls

Neil Saravanamuttoo isn’t putting much stock into local polling numbers circulated by rival mayoral candidates and their campaign teams.

Incumbent Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s team released an internal poll from Abacus Data showing Saravanamuttoo had narrowly overtaken Coun. Jeff Leiper for second place in the race among likely voters.

Challenger Alex Lawson’s team responded by releasing a poll of their own on the weekend, conducted by Mainstreet Research, that showed a much tighter race between Sutcliffe and Leiper, with Lawson in third and Saravanamuttoo fourth.

Both polls showed a large number of voters who remain undecided with the Oct. 26 election day rapidly approaching.

“We are not doing internal polling directly, for the very simple reason that polling at the municipal level is highly unreliable,” Saravanamuttoo said at a campaign event in Crystal Beach on Tuesday, where he unveiled his environmental policies in one of the neighbourhoods hardest hit by the July 1 flooding.

“There’s considerable differences between the polling produced by the Sutcliffe camp compared to that produced by the Lawson camp, and it just speaks to the unreliability of polling data. What is very encouraging for us is that we have seen early voting data that is very strong,” he said. “We’ve got strong indications that our supporters have been showing up in force to bank their votes early, and so that’s why I’m very confident about this race.”

Saravanamuttoo pointed to the recent municipal election in Surrey, B.C., where recent polling had incumbent Brenda Locke winning a second term, only to be soundly defeated by former mayor Doug McCallum.

In Ottawa’s race, where Sutcliffe is the front-runner in public and internal polling, Saravanamuttoo has been positioning himself as the most viable alternative.

“People that are considering voting strategically, quite frankly, you need to vote for me for the simple reason that I can win across the entire city,” Saravanamuttoo said. “Other candidates cannot. We’ve got one candidate (Leiper) that is more concentrated in the downtown area. We’ve got another (Lawson) that seems to be more concentrated in some rural areas.

“But I’ve got support across the entire city in the urban centres, in the suburban centres and in the rural areas. And so I am the challenger for Mr. Sutcliffe and I am the one that can defeat him,” he said.

Saravanamuttoo’s environmental protection policies are the final pieces in his wide-ranging platform, which he has been rolling out in campaign stops across the city since he registered his candidacy on the first day of the nomination period on May 1.

An economist by trade, Saravanamuttoo said his environmental policies would offer both protection and savings for taxpayers.

“The Canada Day floodings were a wake-up call for our city,” he said Tuesday. “Weather events that we brushed off as once in a century are now happening every few years. We are seeing firsthand the devastating toll these storms take on Ottawa households, from flooded basements to prolonged power outages.”

Ottawa is also facing a cost of living crisis and families are “stretched to the breaking point,” Saravanamuttoo said.

“When we talk about climate change, people rightfully wonder how they are going to pay for it … I believe we must focus our efforts on environmental protection that guards against severe weather and that actively saves you money.”

Saravanamuttoo said, if elected mayor, he would move quickly to replace aging sewer and stormwater infrastructure instead of spending city resources on “distant subdivisions” that have yet to be built.

He singled out the controversial Tewin development as an example that would require the city to extend water and sewer lines to accommodate a project that would be left for future generations of taxpayers to manage.

“I will focus our capital investments firmly on maintaining existing infrastructure in our existing neighbourhoods,” he said.

He pledged to improve “nature-based solutions” like strategic tree planting and stormwater ponds to protect homes from flood damage, and proposed a city-managed “neighbourhood-scale” retrofit program that would help homeowners replace aging heating equipment and install heat pumps to reduce household energy bills.

The city would establish a dedicated project team to manage retrofits on a neighbourhood by neighbourhood basis, Saravanamuttoo said.

He also came out strongly against data centres, including the $1.5-billion data centre planned for Ottawa by the federal government.

“Ottawa residents should not foot the bill for building new power generation capacity just to run data centres,” he said. “You should not have to risk higher water bills so that multinational tech companies can expand their footprint on our grid.”

He promised to place a moratorium on new data centres within city limits “until we have a clear, unambiguous understanding of the long-term impacts on our electrical system and water infrastructure.”

Saravanamuttoo said the pause would remain in place “until we have ironclad solutions” and assurance that each data centre bears the full cost of its own utility usage and electrical capacity generation.

A “frequent flyer” among the public delegates at committee meetings, Saravanamuttoo has been an outspoken critic of several high-profile capital investments approved during the last term of council, from Tewin to the Lansdowne 2.0 redevelopment.

Among his policy priorities is what he is calling “a new era of responsible city spending.”

He is promising to rein in city spending by benchmarking projects against other cities to ensure Ottawa is getting value for its investments, and by opening the financial books so residents will “know where their money goes.”

He has refused to accept any donations from developers and said any councillor — or mayor — that does accept developer-linked contributions should be recused from any decision involving that developer. He has also called for more affordable housing in the city and outlined his ideas on making the capital a safer city.

Saravanamuttoo opposes the federal return-to-office mandate and said, as mayor, he would ask the feds to reconsider, or to at least co-ordinate shuttle services at the edge of downtown.

He proposed a “people’s office” for better construction to help co-ordinate major projects between the city, the province and the National Capital Commission to reduce construction-related congestion.

And he has put forward a four-point “transit recovery plan” that would involve a complete redesign of the transit network and an overhaul of the real-time data on bus locations and scheduling.

His transit overhaul is rooted in his proposed “buck-a-ride citywide” proposal that would attract riders back to OC Transpo with one-dollar fares capped at $40 per month. That’s nearly $100 less than the current ($138.50) adult monthly pass.

He has promised to implement the plan at no new cost to taxpayers.