Mayoral candidates divided on whether city needs a nightlife commissioner

Three of Ottawa's mayoral candidates are taking opposing stances on the city's nightlife commissioner role, a position that has drawn social media criticism over its cost and perceived lack of results.

Mathieu Grondin, a Montreal native hired two years ago as the city's first nightlife commissioner — a role locals often call the "night mayor" — commutes from Gatineau across the Ottawa River to city hall. He has faced online criticism that he makes too much money and has failed to bring anything cool to the city.

Construction-business owner Alex Lawson, 38 and running for mayor, is skeptical. "Calling it a night mayor and hiring someone who lives in Montreal is silly," he said. "It's performative and silly. We just hire a night mayor and a safety czar, and they could be the new dynamic duo and solve all our problems? What are we doing?" If elected, Lawson plans to abolish the position and focus instead on making the downtown area safer.

Neil Saravanamuttoo, another mayoral candidate, takes a narrower view. He says that until the city has better solutions for homelessness and public safety, building a vibrant nightlife economy will remain difficult.

Kitchissippi councillor Jeff Leiper, also running for mayor, defends the role but acknowledges a communication failure. "The city has done a very poor job, I think, of communicating what the nightlife commissioner's role is," he said. "In the minds of the public, and it has been allowed to be perpetuated, Mathieu is the DJ laureate of Ottawa." Leiper argues the position's real purpose is to help nightlife businesses navigate city hall bureaucracy — work that happens behind the scenes. "The job of organizing kick-ass parties belongs to people who have that experience," he said. "But sometimes in the course of creating those parties you run up against city hall or you need city hall's partnership, and I am glad that there is someone at city hall whose job it is now to facilitate those discussions."

According to the source material, Ottawa's nightlife spending totals $1.5 billion annually, though the exact role and budget of the commissioner position remain a point of debate among voters.