Ottawa votes on Monday, October 26, 2026, and we wanted to hear from the people on the ballot in their own words. So we sent the same six questions to every certified candidate in the city, with one promise: we publish what you send back, unedited.
Sheetal Narwal is running for councillor in Stittsville Ward. Here are the answers, exactly as they arrived.
Why are you running?
My husband and I, and our dog Leo, chose Stittsville as home. Since May, I've knocked on more than 10,000 doors here, and I knocked on the first 4,000 before I wrote a single word of my platform. What I heard again and again wasn't that people don't know the problems. Everyone knows. It's that things are promised, funded, and then show up years late with nobody explaining why. I'm running to bring transparency and accountability to City Hall, and to hold it to the same standard you're held to at work: if you promise something, you deliver it or you explain why.
What is the single biggest issue facing the people you want to represent, and what would you do about it?
Transportation.
It comes up at almost every door, and it's always the same two things: buses you can't count on, and commutes that eat up hours of your week. Stittsville pays the full urban transit levy, the same as households pay near the train station, and people are right to expect a service that matches what they pay.
I'll push for connections to where people actually work, not routes that loop the long way around. I'll fight for evening, weekend and winter service for the people who have no other option: seniors, students and one-car families. And better transit isn't just for bus riders. Every person who can count on the bus is one less car on Hazeldean at rush hour.
I'll also be transparent with you. When the City says no, I'll tell you why.
Name one specific thing you would work on in your first year in office.
Getting Ward 6 moving, starting with the numbers.
Right now nobody can tell you how often a Ward 6 bus is late or cancelled, or how long your trip really takes. In year one I'll push OC Transpo to report reliability on our routes and publish it every quarter. You can't fix what nobody measures, and once it's public, it's much harder to ignore.
On the roads, I'll request signal timing and turning-movement reviews at our worst peak-hour intersections, and publish what they find and what changes as a result.
By the end of year one, you'll know exactly where things stand and what's being done about it.
What is something the City gets wrong today that you would change?
The City is good at asking residents what they think. It's not good at following through afterward.
Carp Road is the example I hear about most. Nobody broke a rule, and people were consulted back in 2015. Ten years later, property owners still have open questions about what it means for their land.
I'd change that by publishing, in plain language( in english and french), three things after every major decision: what we heard, what we changed because of it, and what we didn't change and why. You shouldn't need a friend at City Hall to understand what's happening on your own street.
I'll also push for a simple rule: if a project goes five years without being delivered, the City checks back in with residents before moving ahead.
What should residents know about you that would not appear on a campaign flyer?
I'm the neighbour who looks after packages when the people next door are on vacation, dog-sits when a mom on our street runs errands, and drops off soup when a neighbour is sick. I've hosted Diwali, Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings with neighbours here, and that's where I first heard about the buses, the traffic and the wait for a family doctor. Then I went door to door to see if the rest of the ward felt the same. They did.
And I studied computer science, so I always want to review the data before deciding.
Anything else you would like voters to know?
Two things I'll stand by. I haven't taken, and won't take, a single dollar from anyone who builds or develops homes. And I'm not running with or against any mayor; good ideas get my vote no matter who brings them.
Last time, fewer than half of Ward 6 voters turned out. That means a small group decided for over 50,000 people. Please don't sit this one out. On October 26th, I'm asking for your vote.
Who else is running in Stittsville
Stittsville is Ward 6: A suburban ward centred on Stittsville, plus a small slice of former Kanata around the Canadian Tire Centre, and the Blackstone subdivision. Open seat, the incumbent is not running again. 9 people are on the ballot here. Alongside Sheetal Narwal: Marie-Ange Yindaki Ahinful, Tanya Hein, Kevin Hua, Paul Meek, Devin Michael Fitzgerald O’Brien, Theresa Qadri, Mani Sharma and Chelsea Walton.
They have all had the same six questions. We publish each set of answers as it comes in.
When you can vote
Ottawa votes on Monday, October 26, 2026, with advance voting before then. The City's certified candidate list is the authority on who is on your ballot.
About this piece
These are Sheetal Narwal's own words, published as sent. We have not fact-checked the claims in them, and running them is not an endorsement. Spotted something wrong? Tell us and we will fix it.
Sheetal Narwal's ottown page: https://www.ottown.ca/elections/stittsville/sheetal-narwal
