Alex Lawson: The problem solver who wants to be a new voice as mayor

The exterior door wouldn’t open to Alex Lawson’s campaign office.

It was blocked by a sturdy fellow in jeans and a T-shirt, sitting on the stoop with his back against it. He was totally focused on lighting a crack pipe.

“Come on, dude” Lawson said, pushing the door outward as he addressed the uninvited person. “You can’t do that here.”

Without a word and hardly a glance, the man got up and walked away as if he knew there was no point arguing with the athletic-looking six-footer.

With our interview over, Lawson kindly offered to walk me to my car, a gesture that was appreciated but declined, since I perceived no threat on the sunny, warm afternoon in Centretown.

But the encounter was not unusual for the corner of Somerset and Booth Streets, one of several downtown areas plagued with open drug use.

In the few months since Lawson took over a former yoga studio on Eccles Street, located next to the Somerset West Community Health Centre, he’s had regular interactions with people who are dealing with homelessness, addictions, poverty and mental health issues.

After living in a rural corner of the city, Dunrobin, for the last few years, the first time Lawson saw people doing drugs on the street in broad daylight was an eye-opener.

It happened early in his campaign, while driving to a meeting at a Bank Street restaurant. He was shocked to see a group of addicts smoking and, as Lawson put it, “doing crack-related things.”

It was at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday, he remembers. “What the hell? How did we get to this point?”

Lawson, a 38-year-old business owner, husband and father of three daughters, knows what it’s like to live in poverty.

One of two sons born to a single mother, the family made their home in Ottawa Community Housing residences in the Heatherington Road neighbourhood. Lawson’s father was not around much, he said.

As a kid, Lawson remembers being excited when his mother brought home the monthly food bank allotment because it meant name-brand cereal and possibly even chocolate milk for the next few days. His mom also relied on the Snowsuit Fund for the boys’ winter clothing.

By the time he got to Ridgemont High School, teenage Alex was a smart but unambitious student with a serious aversion to homework. He was happy if he squeaked by with 50 per cent.

“My ambitions then were like a lot of kids in my neighbourhood,” he recalled. “When you’re 18, you can get your own welfare check and then you’ll get an Ottawa Community Housing spot in Heatherington, and that’s the way you go. The intergenerational cycle of social dependence is real.”

But his path changed in Grade 12 when he found himself in a class that introduced “troublesome” students to the construction trades.

“It was only 12 of us in the class,” Lawson said, “the ones that didn’t do their homework and didn’t seem to take things seriously but tested well. I figured out I had a knack for carpentry, and I enjoyed it.”

After high school and a part-time job sweeping floors, Lawson was hired by Nepean-based Spadaccini Carpentry, a residential framing company. He still considers owner Tony Spadaccini a friend and mentor, not to mention a big supporter, having hosted a campaign rally in his spacious backyard outside Manotick.

There were no university or college years for Lawson. He met the woman who became the love of his life, Kimberly, in high school, although they didn’t date until a few years later. Their first daughter was born when they were barely 20 years old.

One of the milestones of Lawson’s adult life was being able to move his family out of Heatherington and into a rented townhouse in Alta Vista, considered a better, safer neighbourhood. “Just changing our postal code dropped the car insurance by $70 a month,” Lawson noted.

After a decade with Spadaccini, Lawson and his wife started their own residential-framing business, Capital Framers Inc. They bought their first home in Kanata before moving to Dunrobin for a bit more space. Two younger daughters, a dog and a flock of chickens currently round out the family.

Until Lawson decided to run for mayor, it seems his primary claim to fame was providing porta-potties to the convoy protesters who occupied downtown Ottawa for weeks in 2022. Many Ottawa residents, it appears, do not forget.

Lawson does not downplay his role, but he’s careful to explain his perspective, as a resident of the city and a business owner.

For starters, he contends the porta-potties were absolutely necessary.

“The news was reporting that people were defecating in the streets so I sent some toilets,” Lawson said, adding that he had no idea the protest would go on for weeks and he’d be stuck with the porta-potty bill.

“It’s really as simple and uninteresting as that. I thought it was going to be two days, and then it was two weeks, and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’”

Keep in mind he was running a business, too, and could see the protesters’ points. With residential construction continuing during the COVID-19 shutdowns, Capital Framers kept framing, but the company’s costs kept going up, too.

“Nails tripled in cost. There were supply chain issues. Lumber was up. How much higher could it possibly go? If we weren’t going to be able to get material, we wouldn’t be able to work,” he said. “As a business owner with people that rely on you to feed their families, you get concerned.”

Lawson thinks of himself as a fixer of problems. Blue-eyed and well-dressed, he has an abundance of charisma, along with the ability to unpack the issues in conversation and propose solutions. He comes across on social media as a take-charge, no-nonsense guy who can think outside the box, and knock out a one-take walk-and-talk reel.

Lawson says he voted for Mark Sutcliffe in the 2022 municipal elections because of his “nice, simple campaign” resting on safety, reliability and affordability.

“And here we are three-and-a-half years later and we’ve got Lansdowne 2.0, a new dump, and a transit system that still isn’t working. The priorities don’t seem like they’re aligning with the average Ottawa taxpayer. So if he’s not the right person for the job, who can we put support behind? Who do I want to be my mayor?”

Lawson came to the conclusion that he should throw his hat in the race. His older brother, who is noted Conservative strategist Emrys Graefe, encouraged him by signing on as campaign director, while other prominent Conservative pundits lent their support, too.

Still, Lawson says he’s drawn to municipal politics because it’s not party based, so he doesn’t have to pick a side.

“If we’re talking about enabling small businesses, it’s probably going to be coming from somewhere on the right,” he said of his ideas. “But then once we’re get into the youth programming, to make sure that youth in the neighbourhoods like I came from actually have a fair shot and a fair opportunity, that’s going to look like it’s coming from somewhere on the left.”

Lawson says he researches the topics, talks to those involved, and crafts his own policies. “I don’t have to be prepped by somebody on my policies because I wrote them,” he said.

On the home front, Lawson said neither his mother nor wife were particularly surprised when he joined the mayoral race. After all, he’s a guy who likes to fix things and has the gift of gab.

“I see a problem and I want to find a solution to it,” Lawson said. “It’s why I’ve been successful in business and it’s fun. It’s fun solving problems.”

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