TALKING THE TALK

More candidates than ever are running on promises to improve transparency and accountability and to be more open with residents. Even sitting councillors say the city needs to do a better job communicating with people. For instance, the way the city came to approve a new shelter for the Salvation Army in Vanier damaged Rideau-Vanier Coun. Mathieu Fleury, who has angry constituents who believe he stood by while the plans slithered through city hall’s backrooms until it was too late to stop them. (Fleury also jumped out to praise the first plan for an addition to the Château Laurier before the public saw it, discovering a bit too late that almost everyone else hated it.)

Three of the four of the councillors who are leaving by choice — Innes’s Jody Mitic, Orléans’s Bob Monette and Bay’s Mark Taylor — have been pretty reliable members of the Watson bloc on council. Kanata North’s Marianne Wilkinson has been more inclined to buck the mayor’s wishes here and there, but not routinely (though she’s backing Jenna Sudds, the former head of the Kanata North business association, to succeed her over David Gourlay, the business consultant and former president of the Ottawa Champions who’s married to senior Watson aide Danielle McGee).

Several other broadly Watsonfriendly councillors, like Shad Qadri in Stittsville, Riley Brockington in River and David Chernushenko in Capital, are in tough fights to keep their seats.

Chernushenko’s slogan is “Building bridges,” meant both figuratively and literally as a reminder of the footbridge across