Catherine McKenney

They were an Ottawa city councillor from 2014 to 2022 and have been an Ontario NDP MPP for Ottawa Centre since February 2025. They finished second in the 2022 Ottawa mayoral election and are named among the possible contenders for the 2026 one, but are not among its registered candidates.

Career

McKenney was born on 3 June 1961, took a Bachelor of Social Science at the University of Ottawa in 1993 and worked as a political staffer before office. They won Somerset Ward on Ottawa city council in 2014 with 40.1% and were re-elected in 2018 with 76.7%. In the 2022 mayoral election they placed second with 119,241 votes against Mark Sutcliffe's 161,679. They co-founded the non-profit CitySHAPES in 2023 and won Ottawa Centre for the Ontario NDP in February 2025 with 55.7%.

Positions

McKenney sits for the Ontario NDP, which Wikipedia places at centre-left to left-wing and describes as social democratic. Their 2023 non-profit works on climate, housing and homelessness. On council they criticised municipal inaction during the 2022 convoy protests. Wikipedia's page on the 2026 Ottawa municipal election lists them only as an endorser of candidate Neil Saravanamuttoo.

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia · Wikipedia · Wikipedia

Photo: Alexander Kernick, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons (cropped)