Lo Must Take Lansdowne Seriously: POTTER

Published 10/02/2025 · Updated 10/02/2025

By Evan H. Potter

Wilson Lo put himself back in the Ottawa news cycle this week with a letter to a community group as published by The Bulldog that managed to say everything and nothing about Lansdowne 2.0.

To quote Lo about his decision two years ago: “As you know, I changed my position to support the planning process back in November 2023, as I felt an uninformed no was just as bad as an uninformed yes.”

Lo is not your typical municipal councillor. He earned a journalism degree at Carleton, then spent years behind the wheel of an OC Transpo bus. In 2022, he made history as Ottawa’s first Chinese-Canadian councillor, winning the brand-new, sprawling Barrhaven East ward. Since then, he’s shown flashes of a stubborn streak rare among rookies. Oh, he was also on his high school’s Reach for the Top team. Translation: smart cookie, quick on the buzzer, and not afraid to press it.

Heavy Lo: The Sprung Structures Fighter

Take the sprung structures controversy in 2024. City staff floated a plan to erect temporary sprung structures across the city to address the short-term shelter needs of asylum-seekers. Lo balked. So did Barrhaven West Councillor David Hill. They raised multiple reasons why this was a bad idea.

Lo demanded transparency. He filed an access-to-information request when staff refused to release documents. Councillors don’t usually file ATIPs against their own home team municipal public service. Lo did.

And then, as Ottawa so often reminds us, the story changed. The sprung shelters turned out not to be needed after all.

But Lo had already shown something: a scrappy fighter, willing to bloody a few noses at Ottawa City Hall, willing to stand apart from Mayor Mark Sutcliffe. Lo wasn’t about to toe the line.

That was Wilson Lo the Maverick.

Light Lo: the Lansdowne Pivot

But there’s another Lo. The one who looks a lot less maverick and more like a fence-sitter.

In the fall of 2023, Lansdowne 2.0 was the hottest file at City Hall: a $419-million redevelopment pitched as the “least worst” option, bundled with condos, retail, and a new arena. Councillors lined up pro and con.

In his councillor newsletter, Lo gave his Barrhaven East residents a detailed case for voting No. Then, on November 10, he crossed the floor — joined by other councillors — and voted Yes. No speech. No fanfare. Just a sudden seemingly inexplicable reversal.

Sometimes politicians change their minds when new facts emerge. That’s fair. The problem is when someone who has studied an issue as deeply as Lo had — someone who trained his journalistic eye on the Lansdowne 2.0 proposal and explained in detail why he was against it — suddenly flips. Voters tend to call that something else.

Will He or Won’t He?

Now, with the final go-no-go Lansdowne vote only weeks away, Lo is once again hedging. In his letter he insists that if the vote were tomorrow, he’d be against it. He gives the usual long list of still unaddressed concerns about the proposal: debt servicing, unstable residential markets, the city auditor general’s major issue surrounding cost estimates, the risk of the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group going “bankrupt.” How many other Ottawa councillors who voted Yes have you heard use the word “bankrupt” anywhere near references to OSEG and Lansdowne?

He asks all the right questions — what if the Ottawa Redblacks leave, what if costs soar, what if the market crashes? — and notes that the city staff’s answer is basically: “we’ll deal with it when we get there.”

So Lo is gutsy but it all still sounds very non-committal. The vote is not tomorrow, which gives him political space to switch sides again when it comes.

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No Simple Fixes To Traffic Woes: BENN

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But as Capital Councillor Shawn Menard would likely tell him, those very concerns he raises are reason enough to oppose the deal today. The City of Ottawa is in a $10.8-billion infrastructure hole. The proposed new Civic Centre arena can’t even accommodate the crowds for women’s hockey. And now, with a downtown Senators arena district possibly on the way by 2032, the Lansdowne revenue projections aren’t just shakier — they don’t make sense.

In other words, the facts aren’t going to improve. Which is why fence-sitting isn’t analysis. It’s avoidance.

A Tale of Two Wilsons

So which Wilson Lo are we getting? The councillor who filed ATIPs on sprung shelters and stood tall? Or the councillor who pledged No on Lansdowne and delivered Yes?

Politics is compromise, sure. But after three years, voters have a right to expect clarity. At this late juncture, Lo can’t be No, Yes, and Maybe all at once.

To be fair, Lo projects commitment in his role as a councillor. He reads staff reports, questions assumptions, and publishes some of the most policy-heavy newsletters of any council member. He’s smart, methodical, articulate. In another city, he’d be seen as a rising star. And, as a 30-something politico, time is on his side should he decide to serve at other levels of government.

Lo deserves some sympathy for even musing about Lansdowne. The project has turned into political poison. Oppose it and you’re accused of letting the stadium fall down. Support it and you’re accused of shoveling taxpayer money at developers. The mayor frames it as inevitable. Staff call it the “least worst” option. Not exactly Churchillian rhetoric. It didn’t have to be this way.

And for a suburban councillor such as Lo, Lansdowne is certainly not top of mind for his residents. They’re worried about traffic congestion and schools. Why invite trouble over a downtown project? Yes indeed, why raise Lansdowne at all. Except for the fact that Barrhaven East homeowners are gong to start asking Lo some hard questions when it dawns on them that their families are effectively about to pay a one-per-cent Lansdowne tax annually for the next 40 years. They didn’t sign up for that.

Indecision thus carries its own risks. It makes Lo look like the councillor who fought hard on Sprung shelters but ducked when Lansdowne landed. And it means that in 2026, if he runs for re-election, the question will linger: which Wilson Lo is on the ballot?

The Unbearable Lightness of it All

Which brings me back to the title. Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a novel about the burden of choice — how each decision can feel both weighty and fleeting.

Lo appears to embody that paradox. On sprung shelters, he was heavy with principle. On Lansdowne, he has been unbearably light.

That lightness might be strategy. It might be tactical. By all accounts, the mayor has 12 votes. Lansdowne is going to get approved whether Lo votes Yes or No. The mayor can’t blame him for torpedoing the deal. If he votes No, he will likely be the only councillor from Ottawa’s outer suburbs to do so. At some point though, Lo must stand and be counted.

As the Lansdowne vote looms, Lo’s challenge is not whether he can ask the right questions — he can. It’s whether he has the courage to give a clear answer.

Lo ends his letter with these words: “I’ll be sharing more thoughts once the report is released, about three to four weeks before the related committee meeting.”

For Lo, the time for lightness is over.

Evan H. Potter is a University of Ottawa professor.

To read his Substack website, click here.