Brigitte Pellerin: Unless the "night mayor" can show us something existing staff couldn’t have done with existing budgets, don’t renew the office.
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You could say I have something of an obsession with value for money, but what exactly are we getting out of the night mayor we almost never hear from?
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I spent more time than usual enjoying Ottawa’s nightlife this summer, and every single time I was struck by how pre-pandemic it all felt. Everything is the same as ever, only pricier; same construction cones on the way to the Uber, same bikes or scooters to dodge on sidewalks where they shouldn’t be.
Mathieu Grondin has been Ottawa’s nightlife commissioner since June 2024, and for the life of me I can’t find one single improvement he’s caused (well, OK, except for that cool little plaza on Metcalfe). So I went looking for data, endeavouring to be fair-minded.
There is a report on 2025, adopted by Council this April. It shows eight of 10 recommendations done, two in progress. The first one? Establish the framework for the night mayor’s own job. Amazingly enough, it’s done! Also on the list: promote participation, review bylaws, set up a nightlife council, write an annual report, promote tourism, plan for worker safety, facilitate placemaking, support mid-size venues.
None of this is bad. But do we really need a special office and a six-figure salary for work existing staff could do, if only (if only!) Council gave them proper direction?
The bigger gap is who this whole exercise is for. Whenever the night mayor surfaces, the emphasis is on the people who make nightlife happen; artists, staff, venue owners. People already out there. The office’s brand-new podcast is all about cool nightlife people telling other cool nightlife people how cool they are. Which is … fine, I guess. Except taxpayers are paying Grondin to bring more people into the nightlife, which necessarily means us: the vast sea of desperately uncool people currently spending most of our nights at home.
Never, not once, have I heard a reason why an old goat in her 50s, or a young couple with kids, would enjoy downtown more in the evening. Even — or especially if — our evenings end closer to 10 p.m. than 2 a.m. Rattling off names of artists I’ve never heard of doesn’t really do it. Tell me why I’d want to know more about them. What am I missing that’s more fun than Netflix? I need a little FOMO energy from the night mayor, and I’m not getting it. Cool people already go out. We Dull Normals are the growth market, and nobody’s talking to us.
Maybe he feels he doesn’t need to. And in fairness Grondin says there has been an increase of 14 per cent in nighttime visitors downtown. Asked by CBC how he arrived at that number, Grondin explained: “It’s actually a data pull from the services we have, that’s how we calculate the visitations of the ByWard Market and downtown.”
Great! It’s the number we have, from the numbers we have. How much of it is his work, rather than the exact same post-pandemic recovery every other city in the country enjoyed? Apparently it’s uncool to ask.
The tab: Grondin’s salary and benefits, part-time support from Economic Development staff, $200,000 in operational budget and a one-time $150,000 from the Ontario-Ottawa Agreement for downtown revitalization. Against a $1.5-billion nightlife economy, sure, that’s a rounding error.
