[00:00:00] Speaker A: We are joined today by Canada's first Nightlife Commissioner, Matthieu Grandin, originally from Montreal where he was very involved in the nightlife scene.
We're going to talk about the role of this new office and his leadership in hosting the first Canada After Dark summit. Now this story aims to dispel any illusion that Ottawa is a boring city.
Ottawa is the first Canadian city to create an official nightlife commissioner position with a mandate that's focused on policy, economic development and of course, the quality of life after dark.
Now, Matthieu has an interesting background.
Dynamic career, creative industries and economic development. First 20 year acting career in television, film and theater, followed by 15 years as an event producer, a DJ, a director, editor of music videos and films. But in 2017, he founded Marial Montreal 2424 at organization dedicated to supporting nightlife development, destigmatizing evening activities, facilitating dialogue amongst all the stakeholders in nightlife, and promoting the economic and cultural value of Montreal's nightlife scene. And we know how great Montreal's nightlife scene is. Now, under his leadership, Montreal 2424 launched the Night Council and published two key studies including Montreal 24 Hour City.
And in 21, he convened Montreal Auxomme de la Nuit, a global forum for nighttime governance, drawing over 600 participants and speakers for more than 30 cities. So Mathieu is widely recognized as a global leader of nightlife advocacy and he's presented all around the world.
In 2024, he became Canada's first nightlife commissioner for the city of Ottawa, mandated to implement Nightlife Economy Action Plan and establish Ottawa's first nightlife management office, leading efforts to build a diverse, vibrant and well managed nightlife ecosystem in the capital, where, yes, we like to party.
So Mathieu, what have been the biggest surprises or challenges since you stepped into this role in Ottawa, given your background in Montreal?
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Thank you. Well, first of all, thank you for having me, Victoria.
You know, it's been 14 months now that I've taken the position and moved to Ottawa.
And I gotta say, what surprised me when I took the position was the level of engagement and support from the nightlife industry and the cultural scene here.
And the different departments within city administration too have been very supportive.
I think it speaks to, you know, sometimes there's a lot of appetite right now for mid sized cities in Canada that want to develop their nightlife. And we're in here in Ottawa, we want to develop nightlife, whereas in bigger cities like Toronto and Montreal, I think nightlife is sometimes a bit taken for granted and associated more with like its negative externalities. So sometimes noise incivilities.
So yeah, I think that's what surprised me the most when I got here was the level of engagement from everyone and how everyone wanted me to succeed.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: Yeah, that is great. And the role is often nicknamed or called the Nightmare, which was kind of funny in English.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: It's a good wordplay I hear. But I have a French Canadian accent so it's nightmare.
So doesn't work.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: No, it doesn't work right the same way, which is good.
So why do you think Ottawa created this role and what makes it sort of different compared to similar positions in other cities across Canada like Toronto, Montreal or even some of the quote unquote nightmares abroad?
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Well, first of all there are no other positions like this in Canada. It's the first one and it's Toronto just announced a couple of months ago that we're going to create a similar position. They didn't call it the commissioner over there, it's a project manager.
But, but, but we're the first city in Canada so you got to look elsewhere in the world to find other nightmares. And I think it's interesting first of all to highlight why it's called a nightmare. And it come goes back to the Netherlands in the mid-80s in the city of Rotterdam there was a huge fights between the youth and the police when the clubs would close down at I think it was 3, 4 or 5am and a poet and jazz man from the counterculture over there called Jules Dilder and he said one day he was a bit of a public figure too and he said the day mayor is not doing anything about this. So I'm going to be the nightmare.
So that's when it, that the nightmare got coined, you know. And fast Forward to early 2010, 2012. This, this, this term became institutionalized as an official position within. Well it wasn't within, but it was in Amsterdam. A guy named Mirik Milan was appointed by the mayor as the Nightmare of Amsterdam because he did a lot of work with the, the nightlife scene and created a foundation like a non profit if you want around this nightmare position.
And over time this just, just caught on. And since COVID I mean there's been a lot of cities creating night nightmare positions. Nightlife office directors, commissioners, nights are in, in, in London, in the UK. So right now we're about 100 cities around the world that have this position. So how did it came to be here in Ottawa and not in Montreal, in or Toronto? First I think is because back in 2017 the Economic Development Services here at the city of Ottawa was surveying the tech sector, because we have a big tech sector here.
And one of the problems they identified was the retention of the workforce because. Because they had a well paid, highly mobile workforce, could work anywhere in Toronto, Montreal or London. And they had trouble attracting them to Ottawa because of the perception that Ottawa, you know, was not the place to be. So they decided to want. They wanted to compete with that and they wanted to enhance the quality of life and enhance the attractiveness of the city to attract more, you know, a better workforce and retain their creative talents and their work talent. So.
So this led them to the Nightlife Economy Action Plan and with the recommendation number one being to hire a nightlife commissioner. And here I am.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: Yeah, so I think that goes right into the next thing I was going to ask. You may have just explained why or how this role fits in Ottawa's broader economic and cultural strategies.
I find that very, very interesting, but.
[00:07:12] Speaker B: Partly, and also since COVID I think we've seen the need to diversify our economy here in Ottawa. We've been relying on the federal government a lot. We have 26% of our workforce. It works for the government, mostly the federal government.
And when everyone was sent back home and could work from home, we saw the impact on our downtown because not a lot of people live downtown here in Ottawa historically.
So, you know, this is part of, you know, diversifying the economy and, and repositioning Ottawa also as a culture city, a cultural city that you can come and visit Ottawa because of its culture, because, yes, it's great museums that's there, but also it's live cultures. That's, you know, what's happening right now. It's great music scene, it's food scene.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I think those of us who live here, we know there's a lot going on, but across the country, that may not be the perception. Now, speaking about Ottawa, Deliberate specifically, you know, you're right about the shift that happened because during COVID and this of course, did happen in other cities as well, but we had a real sort of hollowing out of our downtown core.
And so now we've got people trying to come back, coming back into the office, but the idea was, well, can we revitalize, rejuvenate our downtown core and of course, and have more people living there and so on. Well, one of the ways to do that is to have a nightlife arts culture. I think you and I both know that. So we're pretty excited when after a bunch of research, the Downtown revitalization plan definitely included those things which align really perfectly with the, the whole nightlife action plan, the economic action plan.
Some of this stuff is pretty ambitious and you've started working on some of these. Can you give us some examples of what you've been doing?
[00:09:18] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's quite ambitious and if you. I think it's going to be an ongoing thing, mind you. I think we're pretty close to delivering the 10 recommendations as of today. But some of them will need to be, you know, we'll need to keep working on for a few more years I think. But we created the Nightlife Council here which is a department led working group that's part of the nightlife office.
So there's 18 members. Six of those seats are reserved for cultural and economic development organizations such as the Ottawa Music Industry Coalition or Ottawa Tourism, the coalition of the B etc. And the 1200 members are at large members. So there are individuals who participated in a recruitment process that was very open. Anyone could apply. We had 500 people applying and I had to pick 12. Wow. And most of these people work in nightlife either as artists, bookers, program program managers, some, some of them are program managers, venue owners. Some of them work in public health, in festive.
So there's a great diversity and also different musical, musical genres. Some of them are from the hip hop, some of them are from live indie bands or electronic music for instance the DJ scene.
And yeah, and I and we meet four to five times a year and it's, they're used to, as a soundboard to implement the next recommendations of the action plan. So that's one thing we did. The first thing I did when I took the position last year and now we just launched this week a, a a website ottawaight ca because you know, part of the plan was to amplify awareness and marketing of nightlife activities here in Ottawa. People said there's a lot of stuff to do in Ottawa but we never know where, when or when, where or when it's going on. So we made a directory of nightlife businesses that program cultural content. So you know if, if it's a pub but it's got a karaoke night or a few of our live bands, it's probably there. If it's not, you can write to us, your, your business to the listing. So that's like one part of that, of that, of that website. Another part is more business facing. So we're giving information to business owners or prospective entrepreneurs about permitting licensing, all the red tape, how to navigate that red tape.
And there's also tools around safety at night because what we're doing right now is a safety plan too. And it's back to school season. So we're going to enhance safety and, and, and nightlife can play in enhancing safety in public spaces.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: Yeah. I want to come back to the safety thing in a moment because I actually think it's pretty big.
But I did take a look at that Hot off the Press website and I just want to say it looks great.
You've got for our listeners, maybe not everybody knows, but geographically, Ottawa is the largest city in Canada.
So we've got a huge amount of territory to cover. And you've got literally from the south, the east, the west, like it's, it's really. You've done a good job to try to make sure it isn't all about downtown. I know that's one of the things you've heard from some people is, hey, wait a minute, what about us in the southern end of the city or the eastern end of the city?
But some of the priorities have been on that downtown because of the challenges that we faced we discussed before.
But I really like some of the stuff that you've got there to help businesses.
Like, you've got some really good stuff there. And I think that's something that other cities could potentially look at and learn from. And that's one of the reasons why we wanted to talk to you was to see, hey, you're doing some great stuff. How can we sort of help share that with other cities?
So it looks pretty good and obviously you just started it.
And Felice Dacion, congratulations.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: We're going to keep adding features. It's just the first, you know, now we felt we were ready enough to go live with it, but of course we're going to be adding more, more features on it as, as time passes by. So.
But yeah, you're right. It was part of our, you know, decision making to be able to highlight nightlife businesses throughout the whole city. And Ottawa, you know, you can fit Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, I think in the territory of Ottawa. So just to give people an idea of how big it is. And you have compete a lot of competing interests depending on where do you live. You know, you have people who live in the suburbs, you have people who live in rural areas, and then you have people who live more downtown. And they all have competing interests. And they are. You're supposed to be everywhere and do everything at the same time. But as you said, you know, I think the byword downtown like for any city, it's the, the lungs and the heart of a city. And if, if that doesn't work, I mean it's, it's going to be highly problem problematic for everyone. So we need a vibrant downtown and you know, in terms of its businesses and its culture. So this was a priority for this.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know, one of the things I love about the city, the people who live and work here, not necessarily government, is that people who live here really get it. Like our local board of trade is a really big supporter of everything that has to do with entertainment, arts, culture, et cetera, as are the business improvement areas.
And I know some of the other initiatives that you want to do are what we would call place making initiatives. And you have come up with a few pilot projects and things that are part to enliven and maybe you can tell us about out one of the ones you launched this summer.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: Yeah, we've launched, we've launched Metcalfe Plaza.
You know, this was, this was an idea, this was a gap I had identified last year when I, when I got here I was, you know, one night I was just across the bridge and gets no, they have Place Laval. And I was like, you know, we could, we could do something like this in Ottawa. How come we don't have that? And you see that, you know, in many places in Montreal or in Toronto or elsewhere.
Why don't we have that in Ottawa then? Fast forward. A few months later, two young black francophone entrepreneurs came to me with their project and it was exactly this. They wanted an open air concept place making project but they didn't really have the capacity to the expertise, the experience to deliver the project. And we needed to find funding for this and funding partners. So this, you know, I got to work and it took us eight months to find the right partners, find the money. And then the downtown BIA got in and we found a place making business experts that were doing this and could deliver the projects in a speedy fashion in Montreal that they had work also in Calgary. So we and more guard who's the landowner was nice enough to just, you know, we identified the site and they were just nice in us to. Nice enough to lease it to us for like a buck. So, so it was, you know, it takes a lot of time and partners to make it happen. But when it does happen, what happened is these two young entrepreneurs, what they could do is that they could fill up the space and this is what you need. You know, it's sometimes placemaking is people think you need to Paint a few chairs and put it, put them there and it's not going to be enough in two years it's going to be collecting dust in a warehouse. So.
But it's really about creating collective spaces and community, communal spaces where people can socialize. And you need a community for that. You need people to be able to drive traffic, drive an audience there, drive foot traffic. So this is what happened. And you know, the first night it opened there was a lineup at 8pm of 100 people trying to get in. There was 500 people inside and it's been at full capacity since then. So it's a huge success. Just shows the thirst, the appetite of people here, of Ottawans for this type of stuff here especially that it's free.
You know, I think this is, this is a big thing too. You don't have to buy a ticket to go in. So. And it's for everyone if you can, if you want to come a little bit earlier in the evening with your kids, you can.
So it's and I think it place making especially in Canadian cities here where or mid sized cities, you know, you, you need to develop sometimes the first, what I call the first slot of, of night of the nightlife cycle which is the 6 to 6, 6pm to 6am well the first one is 6, 6pm till 11 and then you have the 11 to 3 and then you have like the deep end, the 3 to 6 which is like the late, late night crowd, the ravers and stuff. This is what I champ, I had champion in Montreal. Here in Ottawa I'm more concentrated on for now on developing the first part because it, it, it has a, an effort in mind. You know, it takes people with you. You're going to go out, you're going to have a couple drinks, then you're going to realize, oh, it's 9:30, I haven't had dinner. Oh, let's go grab a bite over there. So then the restaurants profit from it and then you might be, you know, with a couple of friends, you're like, okay, well let's, let's have a second drink and before we head home. And then you end up dancing and then whoops, it's 1:00am you know, and that's, that's what you're trying to do, you know, or you might want to catch a piece of theater or go to the movies. So yeah, I think that's the power of placemaking.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's just great. And I was so excited to see that initiative.
It's interesting going back to why did the city feel it might be a good idea to do this?
There were some barriers that businesses were facing, nightlife businesses were facing.
And maybe you can talk a little bit about what some of those barriers, some of the challenges the nightlife businesses were facing and the areas where you've focused your energy to help address.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: Well, downtown. Well, you know, we have like the byward market here in, in Ottawa, which is another story in itself, but it's kind of like the touristic hub also. It's the first place you land as a visitor. It's going to be the byword. So. And it's got its own challenges. But bank street, this is centertown downtown. And it's more like. We call it downtown. It's more like a business district or it's not even business. It's mostly federal offices. But so, you know, this at night can turn into like a dead zone easily. And especially since COVID Before COVID we had two great venues on Bank Street, Barrymores and Babylon. And these two together would attract around a thousand people at least three nights a week. So this would bring a lot of eyes on the street and a lot of people and a lot of vibrancy, and it would help feel safe also. But after Covid, they shut down and we have a big homelessness problem and open drug use problems on Bank Street. So there's a perception of unsafety there. So all of a sudden, this corner of Metcalfe and Gloucester, which was empty and you could feel unsafe walking there at 11 on a Friday night, all of a sudden it's packed with 500 people. So it's bringing idols on the street.
It's enhancing the feeling of safety for whoever passes there. So I think that's also, that's the power of nightlife and nightlife, vibrancy and culture when it comes to enhancing safety in urban spaces.
Because as I've said, a safe street, to me, a safe street at night is a busy street.
[00:21:26] Speaker A: Yeah. So one of the things I noticed is on this whole theme of safety is that you have built a really good relationship with the police. And you built a great relationship. You built a sort of your, your little ambassador group.
Maybe you could talk a little bit.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: About the nightlife ambassadors. Yes, this is a.
We call them in the Europeans call them awareness team. We could call them a harm reduction team. But when I say that people usually think about homelessness, homeless people, but it's. It's a team of young people who usually work in social work or are studying in social work, and they're out there in the byword market, which is a nightlife hub. There's like, you know, dozens of bars there. And they're there to interact with the crowd, bring a positive vibe, act as first line responders if there's a small problem. They have also direct line with the police or the paramedics if needed to. They have a direct line. Well, the security staff from the bars in the clubs have a direct line with them. So sometimes it's people, if someone is too intoxicated and they don't feel at ease just kicking them out in the public space, they can reach out to the nightlife ambassadors and they will take care of that person. Put them safely in, in a. In a taxi. They've got water bottles, snacks. They can charge your phone if you're out of battery, if you're. And you're looking for your friends and you don't have any battery in your. In. In your cell phone. So. So that's the kind of stuff they do. And it's something that's, you know, Amsterdam pioneered and at least almost 10 years ago, and then Vancouver pioneered it here in Canada.
And I'd seen it also in Montreal and thought it was, you know, the market was a perfect place to implement such a program.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, Seems like a really good idea. And, you know, when I had the pleasure of attending your Canada After Dark summit, and I was sitting beside the folks from the police and they were really, really enthusiastic, and I'd like to talk about this Canada After Dark summit. This is the first Canada After Dark summit.
You initiated it in collaboration with the Ottawa Music Industry Coalition. And I'd love to know sort of what, what motivated you to do this Pan Canadian summit. You brought together voices from across Canada and abroad. You know, you're talking about some of the great practices abroad.
What, what motivated you, what inspired you to do. To bring everybody together from across the country to talk about nightlife.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: Well, I think there's a need for this to get us together and share those practices and network and discuss those issues together and find the most innovative projects here and across Canada. There was a need for this.
Vancouver has been asking for a nightmare since 2017.
Now you have Toronto that had just announced that was gonna. They were gonna create a similar position. There was interest for. From Kingston, Hamilton, London, Mississauga. That's just in Ontario.
So I think, you know, back in Montreal, I had done the. The Montreal Nightlife Summit, which was more like about bridging North American and European night culture. So, you know, the club scene in Europe, the club scene, United States, and bringing them together. Whereas this project, Canada After Dark, was really about, you know, a national forum dedicated to nightlife governance. Because this is. This is what it is. You can call it a nightmare, but at the end of the day, it's all about governance and the governance structures and cities getting interested in developing nightlife economy and nightlife culture.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: What would you say are some of the key sort of insights or best practices that.
That came up at that summit? You might have seen, you know, there's some patterns of similar things in different cities you're sharing with each other, and certainly the Europeans always have so much to share. Was there some consistent sort of patterns, insights that you would like to share with people who are listening?
[00:25:47] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. I mean, I think there's an interest now, but in Canada, it's very much. It still isn't in its infancy in its first steps compared to Europe. I mean, they're. They're at least 10 years, if not 20 years in advance.
You know, we. You. We had a consultant from Berlin coming in and talking about how you can activate waterways as cultural spaces through boats or floating stages. And, you know, he was giving, like, a very classic example. But, you know, the. The Olympic Games and the Olympic Games ceremony in Paris, you know, this is just like a big scale, but you can also do it on a smaller scale. And we have the Rideau river here, the Rideau Canal. There's a lot of stuff we could do in terms of activating our waterways and. And turning them into cultural events. So that was like one of the interesting, innovative practice we learned about. And I think, you know, one theme that emerged and was that, you know, I think Canada, as a, you know, sometimes we. We love to talk about. People love to touch, you know, talk about Ottawa, you know, the running problem of Ottawa when it comes to nightlife. But when I looked at the other cities and I listened to the other cities, it was kind of like a Canadian problem, a branding problem Canada has when it comes to nightlife.
You know, people from Vancouver were saying, well, our city is nicknamed no Fun City. And then Toronto was like, well, we're called Toronto the good as opposed to Toronto the fun.
And then, you know, you have Ottawa, you know, the rolling the car, rolling the sidewalks and stuff. So. And so, you know, Montreal was kind of different, but then again, Montreal has other issues, you know, like the. The governance problem. So, you know, I think we could benefit from a national strategy on how to help our cities, making our cities more attractive, more Interesting and, and more active and vibrant at night, I think. And I think there's a lot of potential right now, especially in an appetite for this, especially in mid sized cities because people think nightlife, they think the nightclubs, the alcohol, the dance, whatever, or the big, the big festivals. But nightlife doesn't have to be just that. Nightlife can be, you know, your local restaurants can be your local pubs, could be, you know, just a night, you know, or a lighting pathway. Lighting pathways in a, in a creative ways. You know, like just across the, in Montebello they have a great night walk in the forest with like, you know, projections of images of animals and stuff. So it just shows, you know, that smaller, more rural cities also can have their, can have something to offer. You know, stargazing can be part of nightlife.
You know, telling stories around the fire can be part of nightlife too. View so and in terms of, you know, how we develop our tourism, I think there's a, a huge opportunity there to reposition the country as a whole and our cities by leveraging our cities into like nightlife spaces and nightlife cities where there is something to happen. Because of course, when you think about, when you're European and you think about Canada, you know, I got this joke, this German guy one day who told me, oh, you're from Canada, you have nightlife in Canada. I thought you only had bears and forests because that's what we sell. We sell nature. But there's much more than that, you know, there's much more than that in Canada.
[00:29:31] Speaker A: So yeah, I think that's a really good point. And we're in, you know, at this particular moment in Canada, we're having a look back at what is our, you know, our identity, what do we stand for, what do we represent? And you're right, there are all some of some stereotypes that maybe others would have of us but that we might even have of ourselves.
So which is not necessarily true.
You know, just getting back again to sort of your role at the city, I love to know a little bit about.
Obviously you're working, you're part of the economic development department.
So obviously you're working with those objectives in mind. You're working with community safety issues which are critical, but there's other aspects which are really important. If you're thinking of nightlife, right. One of them is transportation.
Right.
And particularly in a city as big as ours. But you know, many other cities have the same issue. So where do you have, when you're working with your, say, your nightlife council or you're working with other departments of the city, how are you able to sort of influence and advance decision making with regards to improving transportation?
[00:30:45] Speaker B: You know, as you mentioned, I'm part of economic development and similar positions elsewhere in the world. Sometimes they're, we're all a bit different. Sometimes it's ag dev, sometimes it's culture. One of my colleagues is from public health. So we all come from a different sector.
We're all embedded in different departments of a city. So when it comes to public transit, I mean, it is a huge issue again in North America. There are, there's so much space.
And this is, this is also an example. You know, if you want to talk about Ottawa being a big city and it's really tough to move people around with public transit because it's so huge you don't have enough density and to, to, to pay for the investment it needs to be able to have such a public transit. It's the same in Canada, it's the same in North America. It's the same everywhere, except in a few big cities that have this density and have, have a, you know, fairly okay public transit. Whereas in Europe you have that problem. You know, very few people talk to me about public transit in, in Europe at night a little bit more because some of them are not, you know, they're not as well organized. But still, there is, there's stuff I can, there's my level of action. You know, there's a, there's stuff I can act upon quite easily because, you know, I have a bit of funding. I can. And then I, I can. And that kickstart projects. Yes, there's, and then there's my zone of influence. And my zone of influence is. My first zone of influence are city departments and services.
So, you know, I talked a lot about my, the role of my position is to be a liaison between all the external stakeholders and the internal departments, but also to develop a nightlife reflex inside city hall. So, you know, when you have people in housing, you know, can they apply a nightlife lancer project and be like. And people are like, yeah. What's the, how does, what's the link to nightlife? Well, you know, if, if housing is not affordable for artists, artists are going to leave. This is, you know, climate change. What's, how does it link with nightlife? Well, if we have heat waves after heat waves and during summers now, people are going to go out later. This is what happens in, in war, in, in hot countries, you know, so if the parks close at 11pm we're going to have a problem.
So this is developing the nightlife reflex and it's, you know, I'm getting more and more traction inside city administration on this idea. People come to me and be like, hey, we have this project. What do you think about that? Can you apply a nightlife plans to it? And then there's my second level of influence, which is the bigger issues and that are not, not exactly part of city all. So public transit is one, you know, diversifying the economy and, and, and you know, the housing crisis, you know, the homelessness and public, open, open public drug use. That's, that's I can advocate a bit, but it's not, I cannot act upon this. You already have three levels of governments, multiple agencies working on this. So what I can say though is that having a reliable, affordable public transit is crucial to developing your nightlife economy. Because if you can't go, if you can only get to the venue, but you can't come back from the venue, you're not going to go to the venue or you're going to take your car. And then there's other issues that comes with that, you know, in terms of safety, especially if you're gonna, you're gonna use substances. So yeah, yeah.
[00:34:22] Speaker A: So thinking about, you know, what we, what we can learn from the Canada After Dark summit, what we're learning from the experience you're having, I'm hearing, just for starters, your idea of taking a nightlife lens.
I really like that.
And you know, even we, we, years ago, we began to start to say, okay, take a climate lens on every decision that we make.
So now we can look at, you know, public administrations, but those of us who are managing our own organizations too can say, well, wait a minute, how do we take a nightlife lens? Where do, how do we connect in with this? And I think that's really interesting.
And you know, I learned a lot from sort of best practices of what has worked in Europe and so on that we can share with each other at that Canada After Dark summit.
And people who are listening to this may be saying, hey, wow, I didn't even know about it. I would love to know about it. Do you think we're going to have another Canada After Dark summit?
[00:35:27] Speaker B: I hope so.
You know, Canada After Dark was part of Capital Music Week and it was organized by the Ottawa Music Industry Coalition. Of course I collaborated with them on the program and, you know, leveraging my, my network. But I, I, I think this is an essential event.
I don't know if we need it every Year, but for sure every two years. I would love to see other Canadian cities use that brand and use that concept and maybe that's something that could be changing city. Going from city to city every year across Canada could be interesting too.
Yeah. But I hope, I hope it's going to be back. Yeah.
[00:36:08] Speaker A: Okay, so in closing, just to say, what are your next priorities as you're trying to roll out this nightlife action plan?
[00:36:17] Speaker B: I think we need more place making projects and we need to keep, start, keep developing new nightlife products and especially those that might have a touristic appeal because that's, that's the game that and, but this is not going to happen overnight. It's not going to be.
We might be able to develop one or two of these new products that will be sustainable in the mid or long term every year or two years. So it's going to take a while to get enough and bring the level of activity I'm looking to have here in Ottawa.
And then next year we're going to start working on the next nightlife economy action plan because this plan ends with the elections in here in Ottawa in fall 2026.
So we'll need a new plan and I hope this plan can, can be adopted by council. It can maybe like be a bit, this one was a bit two or two and a half years. Maybe the next one could be four or five years. It'd be interesting. And, and I'm gonna help, I'm gonna work with the nightlife council and we're gonna start engaging again with the stakeholders and the nightlife businesses and participants and hear what do they want to do and what can we change, you know, and some stuff I'm sure year we'll still be working on because it's a never ending thing. The way I see this, it's, it's like a garden, you know, it's not something you can. Okay, we're going to fix it and then two years later it's done. It's like a garden you need every year you need to water your plants, take out the bad weeds, add a little bit of fertilizer and you know, what we started in the last two years and a year and a half now is basically like taking out the rocks and making the soil more fertile. Then we're planting the seeds and now we just saw it's coming up now. You know, Metcalfe Plaza was one, you know, the nightlife ambassadors and there's more coming. I hope to be able to make another good announcement before, before the end of this year. So yeah, I'm very excited about the future here in Ottawa.
[00:38:15] Speaker A: Well, fabulous to get to know you, Mathieu. And I hope the people who are listening and watching will find what you're doing inspiring and more cities, more communities across the country will get put their nightlife plans into action. Yirsi, thank you so much.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: Thank you so much.
[00:38:32] Speaker C: And that wraps up this edition of @ the Bike O Mi CRO, a podcast of Arts Consultants Canada. For information on Arts Consultants Canada and our members, please check us out
[email protected].
to send us feedback or questions or anything you hear in this podcast series, please email
[email protected] and you can check out our show notes in the podcast for links mentioned during the program.
Thank you so much for joining us at the mic. Remember to subscribe to this podcast on Arts Consultants Canada's YouTube channel, as well as Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Et nottes bien que queques episode sant unfrancais. Until next time, thanks for listening. A la prochain.
[00:39:25] Speaker A: Sam.
