An Ottawa mayoral hopeful ditches the usual campaign playbook
Ottawa residents are used to seeing municipal candidates at doorsteps, community centre meet-and-greets, and the occasional booth outside a grocery store. So when Ottawa mayoral candidate Jeff Leiper invited people to an open Zoom meeting to talk campaign priorities, it caught at least one attendee off guard — enough to write about it.
According to an opinion piece in the Ottawa Citizen, the writer admits they were surprised to even receive the invite in the first place. Rather than a scripted stump speech, the call reportedly gave residents a chance to ask questions directly and hear Leiper talk through his platform in a more conversational, less filtered setting than a press release or a lawn sign ever could.
Why this matters for Ottawa voters
Municipal elections in Ottawa often struggle with low engagement compared to provincial or federal races, even though city council decisions — on transit, housing, snow clearing, and property taxes — arguably touch residents' daily lives more directly. A format like a Zoom town hall lowers the barrier to entry: no need to trek to a community hall on a weeknight, no need to corner a candidate in a hallway. Anyone with a laptop and an internet connection in Kanata, Barrhaven, Orleans, or downtown Ottawa can log in and listen — or ask a question themselves.
The piece argues that this kind of direct, digital access could and should become standard practice for Ottawa mayoral and council candidates going forward, not just a one-off gimmick from a single campaign.
A city known for wonky, transit-obsessed politics
Ottawa's civic culture has a reputation — deserved or not — for detailed, sometimes wonky engagement with local issues, from LRT delays to bike lane debates to zoning fights in mature neighbourhoods. A format that lets more people weigh in on those issues directly with a candidate, rather than through a press conference or a canned video, fits naturally into that culture. It also reflects how much of civic life has shifted online since the pandemic, when virtual council meetings and public consultations became the norm rather than the exception at Ottawa City Hall.
What comes next
With the mayoral race heating up, expect other candidates to face pressure to match this kind of accessibility. Voters in Ottawa increasingly expect the same convenience from their local politicians that they get from everything else in their digital lives — and a Tuesday-night Zoom call might just be a low-cost way for candidates to deliver it.
Whether it becomes a genuine trend across Ottawa's 2026 municipal race or fades as a one-off experiment remains to be seen, but for now it's a small sign that campaign tactics at City Hall are evolving.
Source: Ottawa Citizen
