5 Questions with Orléans East-Cumberland Council Candidate Bob Bell

The following are 5 questions that we sent out to every council candidate in hopes of getting to know them better. We publish the responses exactly as we receive them, in the order that they were sent to us. Here are the responses from Orléans East-Cumberland (Ward 1) council candidate Bob Bell.

1. Who are you? Where are you from? What relevant experience do you have for the job?

I’m a father of two, husband, and proud resident of Queenswood Heights. I grew up in Alta Vista, lived in lowertown during law school, rented in Centretown and Kitchissipi as a young professional, and after falling in love with a girl from the east end, we bought our first house out here and put down permanent roots.

Before running for city council, I was a real estate and small business lawyer. I have lots of experience dealing with the customer side of Ottawa city services and navigating the maze of our local legal system for small businesses and folks buying their first homes. I’m excited to put my advocacy and legal skills to work for our community, to bring real change to Ward 1.

2. The city spends nearly $1B/y on OCTranspo, though many constituents remain dissatisfied with the state of Ottawa’s public transportation. What would you do as a councillor to improve the city’s transportation system?

The biggest gap for the city’s transit system is we do not have enough buses to service the city, and we have no plan in place to grow and sustain a larger fleet. That needs to be a focus in the next term of council to rebuild our bus capacity so that we can have a system that is fast and reliable.

3. In a December 2025 poll from Abacus Data, 37% of respondents said that cost of living was the most important issue facing the city; another 19% responded ‘housing affordability.’ What would you do as a councillor to make the city of Ottawa more affordable?

I think we need to approach the affordability issue from several different angles. First, we should be finding ways to lower transit fares, so that taking the bus or the train is an affordable option. Right now we have some of the highest fares and worst service in North America, we need to change both ends of that equation. Second, we need to open the city books and take a hard look at where we’re spending and what we’re wasting. Finally, on housing we need to start tying things like development charge reductions to tangible results in growing our affordable housing stock. And if the private market cannot or will not deliver housing that is affordable, we shouldn’t be afraid to build it ourselves.

4. Certain city services like OC Transpo and the OPS have run significant deficits in recent years. Is there anything that you would do as a councillor to try to balance the city’s budget?

I think opening the city’s books and taking a hard look at where we spend and where we are wasting is going to be a key to dealing with cost overruns across the board. For the police budget, we need to work together to get the spending under control and make sure that dollars are going to actually improving service. If the police budget continues to grow at the pace it’s been going for the past few years, it will quickly become something the city can’t afford to fund. For transit, we need to make sure our dollars are actually improving service and not just lining the pockets of contractors who have failed to deliver a working system at every turn. For both, we are going to need more of our provincial tax dollars to come home to help. The province is happy to download service responsibility to the city and we need to make sure funding follows. I will advocate strongly for this with our provincial partners, so that we can deliver the services voters deserve.

5. Why are you running for Council? What do you think is the biggest issue facing your ward today?

I’m running for city council because the status quo is failing us. We don’t need small changes around the edges, we need to rethink how we do things in the city. The biggest issue facing our ward is that we don’t have options on how to move around. You need a car to be able to easily get around the ward or to other parts of the city, and the result is clogged roads where every individual is in their own car. Investing in fixing our transit system and other modes of transit is the only way to fix our congestion crisis. If we keep pushing everyone into a car, traffic will only get worse and your life will get less affordable.