Mayoral race turns negative as Sutcliffe campaign launches attacks that rivals call smears
Fundraising emails go after 'radical' Alex Lawson and Jeff Leiper, who calls attack 'American-style politics'
Arthur White-Crummey · CBC News · Posted: Jul 30, 2026
Mark Sutcliffe's campaign surrogates have gone on the attack against two of his leading challengers by framing them as "radical activists," but the opponents are hitting back against charges they view as smears.
On Wednesday, a campaign fundraising email attributed to former Liberal MPP and provincial cabinet minister Madeleine Meilleur said Jeff Leiper and Alex Lawson represent the "ideological extremes of the political spectrum."
It came after a similar email on Sunday signed by former Conservative MP, MPP and cabinet minister John Baird. It singled out Leiper in particular, calling him a "hard left, ideological and out of touch candidate."
The emails were sent by the Sutcliffe campaign on Baird and Meilleur's behalf as endorsements.
Leiper and Lawson both quickly put up videos on social media countering those narratives.
"This week Sutcliffe sent another email attacking and smearing my campaign," said Leiper in a video posted to Instagram and X. "Instead of making the case for another four years, he chose to misrepresent my platform."
Lawson said he isn't what Sutcliffe's campaign is calling him.
"I didn't think we were going to be resorting to this kind of petty name calling. Mark, I thought we were going to take the high road here," Lawson said in an Instagram video, before turning to an apparent joke.
"But if you want to play that game, all right, I'm in. I think the people of Ottawa have a right to know that Mark Sutcliffe has never had a shawarma."
The Sutcliffe campaign stood by the emails and rejected any notion that they amount to dirty tactics or smears, saying they merely highlight the past positions and statements of his rivals.
What the emails said
Meilleur's email called Lawson "a developer lobbyist who supported the convoy," pointing to his admission that he brought portable toilets to the convoy protest site, and a January 2022 Facebook post he made regarding the trucker vaccine requirements that triggered the convoy protest itself.
Lawson liked a comment on that post advocating for revolution, calling it "a start."
The Meilleur email said the portable toilets made "the occupation of the capital even more comfortable" for protesters, though Lawson has insisted he was simply trying to help ordinary residents dealing with defecation in the streets.
When CBC asked him about his Facebook post, he said emotions were running high at the time but he now believes the convoy protest went too far.
Baird's email reserved all his attacks for Leiper, framing the election as a two-horse race between him and Sutcliffe.
He said Leiper wants to "control every aspect of your life" and "doesn't believe in any restraint on taxes." Meilleur's attack on Leiper repeated the same tax line, and alleged that the three-term city councillor and chair of planning committee has "virtually no record to speak of."
She said Ottawa needs a proven leader, not "radical activists like Alex Lawson or Jeff Leiper."
Rivals spar over records
But Leiper countered that the ideas in his platform — investing in transit, opening up city hall and fixing infrastructure — are hardly radical.
As for his record, he said he's spent 12 years helping get new parks, recreation centres, winter trails and affordable housing built in the ward, while helping his community through emergencies like the derecho, an ice storm and a tornado.
In an interview with CBC, he said the emails leave him "profoundly disappointed."
"Voters deserve a good debate about policies and the ideas that the candidates are bringing to the table," he said. "But this kind of malicious American-style politics has no place in our municipal politics."
On taxes, Leiper has previously questioned the city's practice of setting tax ceilings early in the budget process, something Sutcliffe has championed as a way of reining in proposed hikes. Leiper has also frequently voted against budgets that Sutcliffe supported, including last year when he said "very low tax increases haven't kept up with inflation" and left city services starved.
On Thursday, he told CBC he's as concerned as anyone about taxes, and that he's under "no illusions that as mayor I will be able to raise taxes beyond what the residents of Ottawa are prepared to accept."
Lawson's campaign said he was not available for an interview on Thursday, but it shared a statement attributed to the candidate calling the attacks in the emails "ridiculous accusations." It also repeated the shawarma line but provided no evidence.
The Lawson campaign argued that there is also no evidence that he is a "developer lobbyist," stating that the company he represented, Cavanagh Concrete, cannot properly be called a "developer," but rather a "builder."
The Sutcliffe campaign responded to CBC in an unattributed statement, saying that his rivals "can either run on their record or run from it."
"Mark Sutcliffe is proud to run on his record: keeping taxes low, investing in the services and infrastructure residents rely on and securing good value for Ottawa taxpayers," the campaign said.
The statement said the fundraising emails match the campaign's view that both Leiper and Lawson have, in fact, taken radical positions. It provided several examples, including Leiper's budget votes and Lawson's Facebook post.
It said all candidates highlight the record of their opponents, and the Sutcliffe campaign will continue to do so.
"Voters deserve to know where candidates have stood and what priorities they would bring to city hall," it said.
Neither of the emails from Sutcliffe's campaign attacked or even mentioned Neil Saravanamuttoo, Peter Westaway or Zed Chebib, the three other candidates registered to run for mayor.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ma...iffe-campaign-launches-attacks-9.7291102
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