Who won the final Ottawa mayoral debate?

The four leading candidates for Ottawa mayor squared off in their final debate on Oct. 21 before voters head to the polls. Here’s what our analysts Bruce Deachman, Brigitte Pellerin, Karl Salgo and Olivia Belovich thought of their performance. Election Day is Oct. 26.

Bruce Deachman: Going into the debate, victory meant different things to different candidates. Incumbent and front-runner Mark Sutcliffe had the relatively straightforward task of not committing any unforced errors and giving voters no reason to reconsider their support for him.

The bar was much higher for his challengers. While Lawson, Leiper and Saravanamuttoo landed a few jabs against Sutcliffe’s record, there was no knockout blow, or anything even close. Sutcliffe was also largely successful in attacking Leiper — his closest challenger — for not having as developed a platform or even a clearly identified property-tax increase. Leiper did get in a good jab when, referring to Sutcliffe’s refusal to use strong-mayor powers, he said you hardly need strong-mayor powers if you have no ambition. But was that enough to close the gap between them? I doubt it.

Brigitte Pellerin: They all did well, especially the candidates who challenged the incumbent. That’s all four of them. I continue to be amazed by how Mark Sutcliffe is running against his own record, including calling the 2022 OC Transpo a dumpster fire (spoiler alert: it’s worse now). But beyond that, they all did a good job presenting their views, and they were mostly disciplined in not bickering unduly. I’ll say the voters won that debate.

Karl Salgo:  Nobody won this debate. Viewers might have their preferences among the responses and arguably the newcomers struggled a bit, but overall everyone gave a respectable command of themselves and nobody delivered a knock-out punch. Sutcliffe was in the awkward position of defending his record while promising better within tight fiscal constraints; he didn’t seem unduly flummoxed about this but repeated a couple of small affordability promises a bit too often.

Olivia Belovich: This was a debate between Sutcliffe and Leiper, with anecdotes from the others. Sutcliffe had his “dumpster-fire” script memorized so well that his eyes glazed over, and his head was eternally tilted slightly to the left. He didn’t convince me that he wanted to be mayor, but rather that he felt he just should be. By contrast, Leiper answered questions with an eagerness that Sutcliffe lacked, so I’d say Leiper won because his cadence was more persuasive.

Bruce Deachman: Sadly, not enough. It was disappointing to see how little time was spent on some subjects, especially public transit. It felt like the candidates spoke about OC Transpo for about four minutes.

If anything else was surprising, it was that Leiper, if we’re to believe the most recent Quorus poll putting his just seven points behind Sutcliffe, wasn’t more effective and direct in his attacks on Sutcliffe. If anything, the opposite was true, as when Sutcliffe pointed out that Leiper supported three of the city’s last four public transit budgets.

What DIDN’T surprise me was how terrible the “open debate” portions of the debate went. Watching kids at daycare would be at least as enlightening.

Brigitte Pellerin: I was surprised by how much Neil Saravanamuttoo relied on reading from his notes in the beginning. Shouldn’t he have been a little readier to talk about his plan without needing to read it? Perhaps a small quibble. I was very pleasantly surprised to hear the usually combative Alex Lawson say he didn’t want to talk over the others because that’s annoying to viewers. I could have cried for joy.

Karl Salgo: Given the brevity of time allotted to each speaker and issue, the discussion was reasonably substantive and positions were (mostly) clear. It was also pretty civil, though predictably the two front runners went after each other a bit. Ottawans were presented with a pretty clear choice in priorities: fiscal probity from Sutcliffe versus a quality of life focus with tax hikes from Leiper. And in the final moments there were some clear yes/no answers. One significant surprise was that when asked how things would be different four years from now if they were voted in, no one highlighted a functioning transit system.

Olivia Belovich:  Though he’s not the strongest speaker out of the four, I was surprised by how much Alex Lawson’s answers improved since last week’s CTV debate. He must have practiced speaking to an audience in the mirror this morning, because his sentences were significantly more cohesive and natural. I didn’t cringe or hold my breath the way I did last week when he stumbled along.

Bruce Deachman:  This election hasn’t exactly been a battle of towering political charisma, with — let’s face it — none of the top four candidates all that well-armed in that department.

One thing that has stood out to me in the polls is the large numbers of voters who are undecided — roughly between one-quarter and one-fifth of eligible electors. My fear had been that the charisma deficit and the undecided numbers would combine to make tonight’s debate less about changing people’s minds than about simply persuading them to tune in in the first place, make up their minds, and then — most importantly — go out and vote.

And I don’t feel an undecided voter who watched this debate will be encouraged to stop streaming Love is Blind and go vote.

Brigitte Pellerin: Yes and yes. We are days away from the election and there are still an unusually large number of undecideds, nearly one in four voters. This debate should have helped them make their decision, given how cleanly each candidate presented their views, styles and positions.

Karl Salgo: With few memorable moments, there wasn’t much to move decided voters. But for the one-third of the electorate reportedly up for grabs, the choice between the frontrunners probably became clearer. And the third and fourth place candidates might get a second look.

Olivia Belovich: Though Leiper seems to have gripped the younger voter with his frequent, strategically peppered-in phrases about youth and his son, Saravanamuttoo’s charismatic, quick solutions to the problems students care about — like “a buck a ride” for transit — might sway some undecided youngsters, especially those only expecting to be here for the next four years. For them, Saravanamuttoo’s excitement surrounding a data centre moratorium and non-police responses might be attractive to the average leftist-20-year-old student fed up with AI slop.

Bruce Deachman is the Citizen’s city columnist. Brigitte Pellerin is an Ottawa writer and columnist. Karl Salgo is the former executive director at the Ottawa-based Institute on Governance. Olivia Belovich is an Ottawa writer and Carleton University student.

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