Ottawa City Council will meet Wednesday to decide next steps for Osgoode Ward after Coun. George Darouze was elected to Queen’s Park.
Darouze won the Carleton riding seat for the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario in Thursday’s provincial election with nearly 50 per cent of the vote, according to unofficial results.
In a memo Friday, City Clerk Caitlin Salter MacDonald said Darouze, upon officially being declared a Member of Provincial Parliament, will be ineligible to hold office as the councillor for Osgoode Ward. Darouze had not yet submitted his resignation as of Friday. He remains the Osgoode councillor until such a time as he officially resigns or is “deemed to have resigned” when his election to Queen’s Park is officially published in The Ontario Gazette.
Salter MacDonald wrote that it was anticipated council would hold a special meeting March 5 to address the next steps required to fill the soon-to-be vacant council seat. The special meeting was confirmed on Monday.
Council has two options, hold a byelection or appoint a councillor. In the 2018-2022 term of council, there were two council vacancies. Stephen Blais left Cumberland Ward when he was elected as the Liberal MPP for Orléans in February 2020. The city held a byelection about eight months after Blais vacated his council seat, which was won by Catherine Kitts (the ward is now called Orléans South-Navan). In September 2021, Kanata North Coun. Jenna Sudds was elected as the Liberal MP for Kanata-Carleton. Cathy Curry was appointed as the new councillor for Kanata North at a special meeting in November 2021.
The estimated cost of a ward byelection in 2021, according to city staff at the time, was $566,000.
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe told reporters Friday he expects a decision to be made quickly, and thinks a byelection is the “most likely scenario” but said it is ultimately up to council to decide.
“We’ll get to work on that right away. We want to make sure the residents of Osgoode Ward are represented at city council,” he said. “It’s a decision of council how we move forward. Council will get to debate and decide what the next steps will be, and we’ll move forward from there.”
Sutcliffe said Kitts and Rideau-Jock Coun. David Brown would be sharing the workload related to affairs in Osgoode in the interim. That is also something that is expected to be officially approved at the special council meeting.
Darouze was first elected to Ottawa City Council in 2014 and was re-elected in 2018 and 2022.
The next municipal election is scheduled to be held Oct. 26, 2026
