An Open Letter to Candidates

Dear Mayoral Candidate,

As Ottawa residents prepare to cast their ballots this October, the national capital stands at a critical juncture. Municipal decisions determine far more than infrastructure maintenance and tax rates; they directly shape the social fabric, democratic health, and fundamental dignity of every resident in our community.

The humanist tradition is rooted in the principles of human rights, compassion, critical inquiry, reason, and evidence-based decision-making. We believe that public policy must prioritize human well-being, protect at-risk populations, uphold freedom from discrimination, and defend democratic discourse against the corrosive effects of misinformation and bad-faith polarization.

To assist Ottawa voters in evaluating how each mayoral campaign aligns with these core values, we are asking all candidates to provide clear, substantive responses to the following areas:

1. Misinformation, and Democratic Transparency

The health of local democracy relies on an informed electorate, evidence-based public discourse, and institutional accountability. In recent elections, municipal debates have increasingly been influenced by digital hyper-partisanship, unsubstantiated claims, and coordinated campaigns designed to inflame rather than inform. Furthermore, trust in local government depends on open governance and the rejection of backroom influences.

• Combating Disinformation: What specific commitments will your campaign make to ensure that public communications, campaign advertising, and third-party endorsements rely strictly on verifiable facts rather than misleading rhetoric or personal demonization?

• Evidence-Based Public Administration: How will you ensure that municipal decision-making, particularly regarding public health, climate resilience, and infrastructure, remains guided by scientific consensus and independent research rather than lobbying pressures?

•  Transparency and Accountability: Will you commit to publishing mayoral meetings, proactively disclosing lobbyist interactions, refusing campaign donations from private corporate developers, and declining to use provincial “strong mayor” veto powers to override democratic votes of City Council?

2. Human Rights, Anti-Discrimination, and Civic Pluralism

A truly inclusive city protects all residents from discrimination and promotes cultural pluralism and peaceful civic engagement. Human rights concerns have emerged locally around civic flag-raising protocols, mayoral representation at community cultural and 2SLGBTQ+ events, and the implementation of anti-racism accountability measures.

• Charter of Human Rights & Civil Liberties: Would your administration support the adoption of a municipal Human Rights Charter for the City of Ottawa, as recommended by civil liberties advocates, to ensure that city bylaws, policing standards, and protest response frameworks adhere strictly to fundamental rights and international conventions?

• Discrimination Protections: How will you demonstrate consistent, unconditional mayoral support for Ottawa’s 2SLGBTQ+, Jewish, Muslim, Arab, Black, and Indigenous communities, ensuring that the Mayor’s Office remains a unifying, and welcoming presence for all discriminated residents?

• Anti-Racism Accountability: What concrete performance metrics will you establish to fully fund and enforce the City’s Anti-Racism Strategy across hiring practices, transit safety, housing allocations, and institutional culture?

3. Housing as a Human Right

Human dignity requires secure, and accessible shelter. Ottawa faces an unprecedented housing affordability and homelessness crisis that disproportionately harms low-income households, seniors, at-risk youth, and people with disabilities.

• Supportive Housing: What is your specific strategy to fund and build more affordable, rent-to-income, and supportive housing, and what proportion of municipal land banks and capital reserves will you dedicate directly to non-profit housing providers?

• A Human Right to Shelter: How will your platform protect people from renovictions, predatory rent increases, and the loss of existing affordable private rental units?

• Addressing Homelessness with Compassion: Will you commit to a housing-first, human-rights-based approach to unsheltered homelessness that rejects punitive encampment evictions in favour of permanent, supportive housing solutions?

4. Community Safety and Evidence-Based Crisis Care

Public safety is best achieved through preventative, community-centered investments that address the root causes of addiction, and poverty. While traditional policing budgets continue to climb, evidence shows that specialized civilian crisis teams resolve acute mental health crises effectively and with lower rates of escalation.

• Expanding Crisis Care: The ANCHOR mental health response pilot demonstrated a 92% successful diversion rate away from police intervention in its first year. What is your budgetary plan to scale up civilian-led, non-police crisis response services on a 24/7 basis?

• Harm Reduction and Public Health: How will you integrate evidence-based harm reduction services, supervised consumption sites, and mental health -informed social services into Ottawa’s downtown revitalization efforts over relying on private security or increased policing presence?

• Police Governance and Oversight: What structural reforms will you advocate for through the Ottawa Police Services Board to ensure greater transparency, public accountability, and trust with vulnerable communities?

5. Mobility Fairness

Access to reliable, affordable public transit is an essential socioeconomic equalizer. When transit systems experience persistent reliability failures, service reductions, or high fare burdens, lower-income residents and transit-dependent workers are unfairly restricted from employment, education, and community life.

• Transit Affordability: What is your plan to ensure that public transit remains affordable for all residents, particularly students, social assistance recipients, and low-wage workers?

• Restoring Service Frequency: How will you address route cancellations and transit frequency deficits to ensure that transit-dependent urban and suburban neighborhoods receive fair, reliable service?

Submission and Publication Details

Humanist Ottawa is a non-profit organisation that represents a welcoming community of humanists, atheists, agnostics, skeptics, and non-believers across the greater Ottawa area (or 357,000 Ottawa citizens per Census 2021) who share a commitment to reason, science, and critical thinking with compassion and empathy.

We envision a world where reason and compassion guide public policy and social values to enable the fulfillment of human potential. To that end, we stand for human rights and a secular society by working to build a more caring society, one conversation, one connection, one marriage, and one action at a time. Accordingly, we believe that democratic engagement flourishes when voters can review unfiltered, transparent responses to questions of vital public interest.

We therefore invite your electoral campaign to submit written responses to these questions by Friday, September 18, 2026. All submitted answers will be published in full and unedited on our public website and shared widely across community networks prior to the start of advance voting.

Thank you for your commitment to our city and for your dedication to public service.

Sincerely,

Robert Hamilton,
President, Humanist Ottawa

humanistottawa.ca

On behalf of Ottawa residents dedicated to human rights, reason, evidence-based policy, and compassionate municipal governance.