Ottawa South

Ottawa South is a diverse riding in the southern part of the national capital, spanning the established neighbourhoods of Alta Vista, Hunt Club, Greenboro, and South Keys. It is notable for one of Ontario’s highest proportions of Arabic-speaking residents, with significant South Asian, African, and East Asian communities alongside long-established francophone and anglophone populations. The Liberals have held the seat continuously since 1987. John Fraser, a fixture in Ottawa South politics, won a 2013 by-election to succeed Dalton McGuinty and entered 2025 seeking his fifth consecutive mandate. He had served multiple stints as interim Ontario Liberal leader and was among the party’s most experienced voices at Queen’s Park.

The riding’s deep Liberal roots and Fraser’s extensive local profile made it one of the safest seats for the party in the province, though both the Progressive Conservatives and NDP fielded candidates with community ties of their own.

Candidates

John Fraser (Liberal) — Born and raised in the Elmvale Acres and Alta Vista neighbourhoods of Ottawa, Fraser spent 18 years managing local businesses before serving for 14 years as constituency assistant to former Premier Dalton McGuinty. He led the campaign to save the cardiac care unit at CHEO and volunteered as a palliative care worker at the Ottawa Hospital. He was first elected in a 2013 by-election and had served as interim Liberal leader on multiple occasions.

Jan Gao (Progressive Conservative) — A Queen’s University Master of Public Administration graduate and a resident of Ottawa South since 2001, Gao spent three decades providing financial, human resources, and management services to local businesses and non-profit organizations after arriving in Canada in the 1980s. She is fluent in English and Mandarin.

Morgan Gay (NDP) — A resident of Ottawa South for 18 years, Gay served as secretary of the Alta Vista Community Association and sat on the boards of the Billings Estate Historical Site and the Heron Emergency Food Centre. Professionally, he worked as a negotiator with the Public Service Alliance of Canada. He ran in the riding for the second consecutive election.

Nira Dookeran (Green Party) — A teacher at Ridgemont High School where she taught civics, history, and English as a Second Language, Dookeran has been active with the Ontario Greens for over a decade, serving on the provincial executive and volunteering with the Ottawa Renewable Energy Cooperative and the Ontario Health Coalition. She returned as the Green candidate for the second consecutive election.

Alex Perrier ran for the New Blue Party.

Local Issues

Health care access was the central concern for Ottawa South voters throughout the 2022–2025 term. The family physician shortage in Ottawa was among the most severe in the province, with wait times to be matched with a doctor often double those in the Greater Toronto Area. The number of unfilled family medicine residency spots in Ontario continued to climb, rising to 108 in 2024, signalling a worsening pipeline problem. Fraser made health care his signature campaign issue, pledging to find every resident a family doctor within four years.

Affordable housing and the rising cost of living hit the riding’s diverse communities hard. Many residents in Hunt Club Park, Greenboro, and South Keys relied on below-market or rent-geared-to-income housing, and the waitlist for social housing in Ottawa numbered in the thousands. Federal investments in affordable housing through the 2023 and 2024 budgets provided some new construction funding, but advocates argued the pace of building remained far short of need.

Transit connectivity continued to frustrate residents in the riding’s southern communities, who depended on bus service to reach the Confederation Line and downtown employment centres. The LRT’s repeated reliability problems—including the July 2023 fleet-wide shutdown—and the delayed completion of Stage 2 extensions left commuters with long travel times and uncertain service. The large federal public service workforce in the riding also faced anxiety over the potential economic impacts of U.S. tariff threats.