Tressy El-Hawi

The City of Ottawa’s list of certified candidates for Ward 18 shows Tressy El-Hawi’s nomination dated May 4, 2026, with the same date for her registration in the Contribution Rebate Program, and gives her no website or social media account. Her CBC News questionnaire is headed Tressy El Hawi, without the hyphen, and NCR Now and CTV News Ottawa use El-Hawi. The sitting Councillor, Marty Carr, and three other challengers (Muhyadin Omar Barkhat, Derek McSweeney and Elsa Niyongabo) are also certified in the ward.

In the CTV News Ottawa questionnaire she answers “No” to political experience and lists her professional experience as manager at Dermacontour Clinic and screening officer at Ottawa International Airport. The About page of Derma Contour Ottawa, a clinic website, lists a Tressy El Hawi as Clinic Manager, which fits her description. In the CBC News questionnaire she says she has lived in the ward for 20 years, and that working at the airport and managing a clinic taught her to manage tight budgets and to deal with people under pressure. voche.me did not check her jobs beyond the clinic page.

In the CBC News questionnaire she names affordability and basic services as the City’s biggest challenge, and says the City should focus on everyday needs instead of costly large projects. She wants the 2027 tax increase to be below the 3.75 percent of 2026 and closer to the rate of inflation, lower recreation and transit fees, and less paperwork for small businesses. She says trust in OC Transpo is broken and wants openness about reliability and routes that serve local neighbourhoods. She says police funding should be maintained, and she rates 5 on a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 is strongly agree, the statement that adding more homes in existing neighbourhoods will matter for housing. She says developers should pay their share of infrastructure costs up front. In the CTV News Ottawa questionnaire she says she would keep fares affordable while improving reliability, supports an appropriate police presence with targeted resources, and supports a reasonable and transparent infrastructure levy (a special tax charge for roads and sewers) if the money goes to roads and sewers. In the NCR Now questions she names neglected infrastructure, traffic congestion and a gap between City Hall and neighbourhoods as the ward’s biggest challenges. These are her own statements, and voche.me did not check the facts in them.