Kevin Hua. Photo courtesy of kevinhua.ca
The following are 5 questions that we sent out to every Ottawa City 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 Stittsville (Ward 6) Council candidate Kevin Hua.
1. Who are you? Where are you from? What relevant experience do you have for the job?
My name is Kevin Hua, I’ve lived in Stittsville for 23 years growing up in the community for almost my whole life. My background is largely in public policy having worked in the federal public service at Environment and Climate Change Canada, Service Canada, and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and holding a Bachelor of Public Affairs and Policy Management and Master of Public Policy and Administration both from Carleton University. I have been involved in my community co-founding and serving on the Board of West Side Pride, a pride organisation that provides queer advocacy, representation, and celebration in Western Ottawa, volunteering and then working as an Office Secretary in the Ottawa Catholic School Board’s International and Indigenous Languages Program to foster the cultural and linguistic identities of youth of racialised and immigrant communities, and volunteering with Around the Campfire that provides fun and supportive socialization experiences for youth with special needs.
2. The city spends nearly $1B/y on OC Transpo, 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 transit system in Stittsville has not changed much over the past several years despite our rapid growth. I believe the fundamental thing that is missing and that is needed to fundamentally, comprehensively, and structurally improve transit is a bus station that act as a central transit hub within the community. This would enable us to improve local transit coverage and access by having an anchor point for more local routes that, through the transit, hub, feed into a more direct and frequent route from the bus station to downtown Ottawa and expanded transit connections to other communities and key locations in Ottawa like Barrhaven, Bells Corners, Algonquin College, and the Queensway Carleton Hospital and maybe even to Carp and Richmond.
In addition, I believe we need to be investing more into bus rapid transit measures and infrastructures like bus lanes, Bus Rapid Transitways, and traffic priority signaling to improve the overall efficiency, reliability, and quality of transit in Ottawa including key east-west corridors that link Stittsville to the rest of the city and in making progress to bring in bus rapid transit along Hazeldean Road and Robert Grant Avenue as laid out in the Transportation Master Plan.
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’d like the City to do more to support non-profit housing providers by leasing city land, waiving fees, and speeding up approvals so that non-profit housing providers can be enabled to build more of the truly and deeply affordable housing including as planned at 2 Pretty Street here in Stittsville as well as preserving more of our existing affordable housing stock through a Housing Aqcuisition Fund to purchase and protect affordable housing that go on the market and transfer them to non-profit housing providers and the adoption of an anti-demoviction bylaw. Additionally, I’d like to work towards investing more to expand the number of city-run and non-profit childcare spaces to increase access and availability of affordable childcare spaces for families and to help reduce the long waitlist for spaces.
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?
Our infrastructure and services have been underfunded leading to an austerity approach of picking only the highest priority items to be funded leading to a massive infrastructure backlog and deficit. I believe we need to properly fund our infrastructure and services and we cannot continue to sacrifice them in order to pursue an arbitrary tax figure. I would like to push for better budget prioritisation in investing tax revenue back into our communities and ensuring we can see benefits like improved infrastructure and services instead of spending $400 million on projects like Lansdowne 2.0. I’d also like explore alternative revenue options like a city-run broadband service to expand the City’s financial capacity and increasing contributions from developers in our infrastructure and services particularly in supporting the new developments they build and profit from.
5. Why are you running for Council? What do you think is the biggest issue facing your ward today?
I’m running because Stittsville is at a critical stage in its growth where the decisions we make in the next four years will have profound consequences for our community’s future. I believe the Vision for Stittsville I offer and my passion and dedication to the community will help our community navigate the challenges we face to continue the work in building an even greater community. I also believe that we need someone who can offer a new perspective, new ideas, and a new way of thinking shifting away from the same old approaches at City Hall to truly and properly address the challenges we face as a city and community. The biggest challenge Stittsville faces today and the unifying theme to the many issues we have, is the fact that our infrastructure and services have been struggling to keep pace with the speed of growth and development in our community. I believe my Vision for Stittsville lays out a clear plan with the concrete steps we need to take to comprehensively deliver the infrastructure and services we need and overcome this challenge.
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