The New Battling Mark Sutcliffe: POTTER

 

Last week was quite a week in Lansdownia — Ottawa’s own fantastical kingdom of wishful thinking.

That’s where “zero operating expenses” and “huge savings on construction costs” are treated less as financial projections than as articles of faith. It was the kind of week that reminds you municipal politics can be equal parts spreadsheet and stagecraft. And at centre stage was Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s very curious Lansdowne 2.0 update news conference.

So much to unpack. The best way is to begin with the mayor holding court recently, move through the strategic-communications logic behind it, and end with what looks like a 10-day sprint by Sutcliffe in ultra-high-spin mode to the finish line of a race he’s already won.

Re-branding Mark Sutcliffe — Maybe

Let’s start with my headline. “What’s Up with the Mayor?” I know what you are thinking. We are not doing psychobabble here. It’s simply a nod to Robyn Urback’s Globe and Mail piece, “Is Pierre Poilievre okay?”, after the Opposition leader’s now-infamous podcast riff about locking up former prime minister Justin Trudeau. That was on-brand for Poilievre – combustible and calculating.

Mark Sutcliffe’s Monday performance? Something else entirely.

With barely 24 hours’ notice, the mayor called reporters to Ottawa City Hall to talk about a Lansdowne report that no one had yet read. No threats of jail time, but plenty of lashing out at the opponents of Lansdowne 2.0. “Misinformation.” “Rats.” (Not metaphorical ones, apparently.) I inferred that if we neglect Lansdowne, it’ll go the way of 24 Sussex Drive with rodents. A strange analogy to make while pitching a half-billion-dollar public-private partnership.

Bruce Deachman in the Ottawa Citizen caught the tone perfectly:

“What was jarring on Monday was the hurried, my-way-or-the-highway posture — echoes of another mayor [Jim Watson] with another P3 project sold [LRT] as ‘on time and on budget.’”

Jarring is right. Sutcliffe took a page from Beacon Hill-Cyrville Councillor Tim Tierney’s manual on how to handle critics: try to delegitimize them — on Ottawa City Council and off.

So was the mayor simply off-brand, or was this the launch of a new, re-engineered Sutcliffe brand — one year out from the next election? If it’s the latter, the rollout was rough. The calm, he-of-no-personal-attacks-Sutcliffe most residents of Ottawa thought they knew was nowhere to be found.

Yes, the mayor is fine. He was reading from prepared notes on the livestream. This was no off-the-cuff outburst. It was a message event — a carefully scripted rebuke aimed at everyone from Kitchissippi Councillor Jeff Leiper, his mayoral challenger, to the various community associations, experts, and advocacy groups standing in opposition to him.

Why now? With insiders counting 15 votes in favour of Lansdowne 2.0 — enough for a decisive win — why punch down?

Sutcliffe already has Tierney to play the heavy, Kanata North Councillor Cathy Curry for the procedural screens, and now Barrhaven West Councillor David Hill to sell the project’s virtues without the negativity. Yet there he was, swinging away.

Maybe the mayor’s pollster sees something. Maybe internal tracking shows that “cost to taxpayers” is breaking through in the suburbs. Otherwise, it’s hard to explain his recent performance except as a public re-brand — the debut of No-More-Mr.-Nice-Guy-Mark-Sutcliffe.

Insiders say there’s always been a second Sutcliffe, the one who wants emphatic wins. For all his broadcasting polish, they say, his political instincts can be oddly tone-deaf. They think Lansdowne 2.0 must be a signature victory, complete with a subliminal message to Leiper: “I’m going to bury you.”

But rhetorically, he’s kicking opponents who are already down. Capital Councillor Shawn Menard, for instance, doesn’t need more bruises. It’s like trash-talking before a marathon everyone knows you’ll win.

The mayor might have gone quiet — skip doing a hasty presser, let his council allies carry the Lansdowne can to the finish line, politely listen to all the delegations (including anyone singing a song during their five minutes), re-emerge on Nov. 7, call the vote, accept his victory, smile for the cameras, shake Minto chief Roger Greenberg’s hand, and jog away.

Instead, Sutcliffe is choosing confrontation. He even seemed to impugn the Ottawa Charge, telling Rebecca Zandbergen on CBC Ottawa Morning that questions about the new Civic Centre’s seat capacity were mere lease-negotiation tactics — though, by his own admission, he hasn’t spoken with them. Next up on his target list? Likely Horizon Ottawa, which has just celebrated its five-year anniversary. The campaign muscle memory is showing.

When City Hall becomes a tower of spin

Which brings us to my favourite subject: the strategic communications choreography.

The event was a textbook pseudo-event — a performance staged to generate news without containing any. The actual Lansdowne report dropped hours later, as several irritated journalists pointed out. In the PR trade, that’s called framing the narrative before your opponents can. It’s effective when you think your project is under siege (even though Lansdowne 2.0 is a done deal) and reporters — must file immediately.

Lansdowne 2.0 Doesn’t Work For PWHL: PATTON

For 24 hours, the tactic worked. The mayor got his pithy new slogan, “More for Less” amplified. The headlines echoed his talking points. The idea that the project somehow costs less for taxpayers was duly reported — a neat counterpunch to the notion of a new “Lansdowne Tax” as publicized by Neil Saranavamuttoo through his Better Ottawa civic initiative.

Then came the digestion phase. The CBC’s municipal-affairs reporter Kate Porter, doing what she does best, carefully dissected the report. Her subsequent deep-dive report and Ottawa Morning interview raised the questions Sutcliffe would prefer to dodge: when exactly do those waterfall profits flow? Turns out, 72 per cent come after 2052.

As an eminent economist once said, “In the long run we are all dead.”

The mayor’s next pivot was astonishing: Lansdowne 2.0 doesn’t need to make a profit because it’s like the new Ottawa Library. What did he just say? Another communications U-turn. Suddenly the financial return on our public investment matters a whole lot less to him, which must reflect his declining confidence in those accounting numbers that he has been validating for the past two years. Strange then how the return on investment on Lansdowne has always been top-of-mind for the city’s commercial partner, the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group. It was their $160 million in accumulated losses at Lansdowne that sparked this entire adventure in the first place. Strategic-messaging whiplash is now a recurring symptom at City Hall.

Bruce Deachman called the mayor’s update for what it was: spin, pure and simple.

The $419-Million value meal

When the Mayor began his Lansdowne sales (re)pitch, I pictured a McDonald’s value meal — burger, fries, and a drink for $4.99. Lansdowne 2.0 is being sold the same way: “More for Less.” But this isn’t a meal deal. It’s now a 50-year financial obligation.

Toward the end of most hard-fought campaigns, there’s a natural quiet — that lull when public opinion settles, the lines harden, and everyone’s mind is made up. No need for another attack ad or one more heartfelt plea. Yet here comes Sutcliffe, still upping the online ante, posting as if the debate were wide open. He doesn’t need to sell anyone on this anymore. The Lansdowne hamburger’s already sold; the shovels are lined up and ready to go in the ground. Who is he pitching to, exactly? What is he trying to prove? Why the obvious overkill?

What Ottawa residents should have received over last three years is not relentless city hall spin but real transparency, meaningful public engagement, and a P3 explained plainly, without the fairy dust of projected profits that everyone including the mayor knows is close to meaningless. (Can anyone accurately forecast the retail rents or business climate or impact of the Ottawa Senators downtown arena district in 2040, 2050, and 2060?).

In fact, if the mayor had just chosen to have an honest conversation with those who have had legitimate concerns, we would not be where we are now. There would be no need for a value meal-like sales campaign in the home stretch. On that score, the City’s communications have failed. Lansdowne 2.0 is a case study in how not to do public information. Unfortunately, when it comes to the city’s communications we are now past the point of no return. The damage to public trust is done.

Ottawa voters still value composure

Ottawa voters don’t always reward charisma in their mayors, but they value composure. Jim Durrell had it. Jacquelin Holzman had it. Even Larry O’Brien, bombastic as he was, knew that city-building is half-show, half-consensus.

Who Do You Believe At Lansdowne? MULVIHILL

In Sutcliffe’s tone last Monday — he was spoiling for a fight as well as on the defensive, brittle, and impatient — we likely saw the start of a mayoral re-brand for the coming election and the fatigue of a mayor who sees his critics not as engaged citizens but as obstacles to Ottawa’s economic prosperity. Shades of former mayor Jim Watson at the end of his last term.

So, as I said, Sutcliffe is just fine. And like Poilievre, who is barely backtracking on his own comments, the mayor looks ready to double- and triple-down on his. But politically, he’s flirting with something risky: the impression that he’s stopped listening. That’s when Ottawa voters, including his critical base of support in the suburbs, start tuning out their mayor —not because they oppose everything he’s doing (who doesn’t want a sustainable Lansdowne Park?), but because they’re tired of being told they have no civic pride if they disagree with him.

Evan H. Potter is a University of Ottawa professor. You can read his blog here.

 

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