Ottawa 2026 — candidate register

On 2 September 2026 every certified candidate in the Ottawa municipal election whose address the City publishes received the same 6 questions, on the same day, on identical terms. Answers appear here in full and in the candidate's own words. Candidates who do not answer appear as not having answered.

I am a private individual. No lobby, newsroom, organization, publication, campaign or candidate stands behind this register. I wrote the questions and I publish what comes back, unedited.

Why these questions

The City of Ottawa publishes its Flag Protocol procedures. Under the heading Legislative and Administrative Authorities, the entry reads: None.

The Chief Corporate Services Officer approved those procedures on 22 June 2006. The City Clerk revised them on 9 October 2017 and on 21 January 2020. No by-law and no recorded vote of Council appears in the record. When Council wanted two flags flown permanently in 2018, it voted. The rule deciding which groups are refused has never been to Council at all.

That rule governs property paid for by residents. The questions below ask who is entitled to make such rules, and what the symbolic displays cost.

The questions

1. Will you support a protocol under which the municipal flagpoles fly the flags of Canada, Ontario and the City of Ottawa, applied on identical terms to every group without exception?
2. Will you require that every municipal policy governing the use of public property be enacted by by-law or by recorded vote of Council, and that no such policy stand on the authority of a single official?
3. Will you require the Ottawa Police Service to maintain service vehicles in a single approved livery, with any marking beyond that livery requiring an approved policy, a costing, and a recorded decision of the Ottawa Police Service Board?
4. Will you publish, before the day of the vote, the full cost to the City of flags, banners, decals, painted surfaces, crosswalk markings and associated events for the years 2023 through 2026, broken down by budget line?
5. Will you require that no municipal programme receive funding without published performance indicators, published targets, and published measured results?
6. For candidates for School Board Trustee: will you require the Board to publish the full list of curriculum and library materials addressing sex, gender identity and family structure, and to grant a parent's written request to withdraw a child from that instruction?

The register

Updated 4 September 2026. Answers received by 25 September 2026 are published before advance voting opens on 1 October 2026. Candidates for whom the City publishes no email address were not sent the questionnaire and are marked accordingly.

Candidate names and races are taken from the City of Ottawa list of certified and acclaimed candidates. Email addresses are not republished here.