Housing, homelessness in focus in Ottawa’s Rideau-Vanier race

Six candidates are vying to represent Ottawa’s Rideau-Vanier ward ahead of next week’s municipal election, with housing, homelessness and support for the Inuit community among campaign issues.

Ottawans are set to elect ward councillors Monday to a four-year term. Rideau-Vanier includes Vanier, sometimes called “Little Nunavut,” home to an urban Inuit community.

Statistics Canada counted 1,270 Inuit in Ottawa in the 2021 census.

Lyra Evans, Julie Fiala Chartrand, Brian Paquette and Michael Karl Sewanaku spoke with Nunatsiaq News about issues that could impact Inuit residents in the ward.

Evans, a former Ottawa-Carleton District School Board trustee and chair, said residents have raised concerns about homelessness, addiction, poverty and food insecurity.

“Pushing people out of a park and destroying all their belongings doesn’t stop them from being homeless,” Evans said, criticizing the city’s approach to encampments.

For more than 30 years, the Rideau-Sussex pedestrian underpass has served as a gathering place for unhoused Inuit. Police patrols, tickets and removals over the summer have scattered people throughout the city. Evans, who experienced homelessness as a teenager, said Ottawa needs more supportive housing.

“I was fortunate enough to get the resources and support from the system to move from homelessness into a transitional housing program,” Evans said. “But those resources and that support should exist for everyone.”

Chartrand, an artist and community organizer, said she has friends in the Ottawa Inuit Circle, a mutual aid group, and has advocated for it when she was co-chair of a safety committee with the Vanier Community Association.

Her great-uncle, Cst. Albert “Frenchie” Chartrand, was an RCMP officer who spent years in the Arctic, spoke Inuktitut and had family ties to Gjoa Haven.

She has proposed a permanent intercultural gathering space in Rideau-Vanier guided by Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, or Inuit cultural values. She said she also hopes to address safety concerns about aggressive dogs and the sexual exploitation of Inuit women, if elected.  

Paquette, an entrepreneur, martial arts instructor and youth worker, said he has not directly approached Inuit organizations during the campaign. He said he wants to support residents facing homelessness, addiction or mental-health crises.

Paquette said he would donate at least 20 per cent of his councillor’s salary annually to food banks and homeless shelters. He also proposed more proactive overnight police patrols.

Sewanaku, who holds law and medical degrees and is training as a family medicine resident, argued the city should not displace people without offering alternatives or addressing why they are homeless.

His platform proposes a housing first approach and a public report on the costs of homelessness.

While he has not spoken with Inuit organizations and residents as much as he should have during the campaign, he said he was open to hearing their concerns.

Incumbent Coun. Stéphanie Plante did not respond to an interview request.

During her term, she supported renaming Sandy Hill Park to Annie Pootoogook Park after the Inuk artist and Emond Park in Vanier to Mary Papatsie Park to honour an Inuk woman whose remains were found in Ottawa in 2022.

Eric Smith’s nomination information did not include contact details.