By Mike Vlasveld, 1310 News, December 6, 2018
By Staff, StittsvilleCentral, December 7, 2018
Now is your opportunity to provide feedback to the City of Ottawa on projects, policies, programs and services that affect your daily life. From open houses to workshops and online consultations, your feedback helps to shape City decisions. Respond to their call for your input and ideas today!
The following online opportunity is now available:
- Significant Woodlands Guidelines: The City invites residents to comment on draft guidelines for its new Significant Woodlands policies, which will help protect and identify these areas. Residents can submit written feedback at [email protected] before Monday, December 17. The City’s Planning Committee and City Council will consider the new guidelines early in 2019. (Shea Woods is Stittsville’s stand of trees that were saved and we’re sure there are others – let the City know.)
By Andrew Duffy, Ottawa Sun, December 6, 2018
The scenic Voyageurs Pathway has reopened — one-and-a-half years after it was closed due to flood damage.
The National Capital Commission announced that the popular Gatineau bike path is back in business on Twitter by posting before and after shots of the riverside path.
The Voyageurs Pathway runs along the Ottawa River in Gatineau, and offers spectacular views of Parliament Hill.
By Michael Hewes and Catherine Connelly, Ottawa Citizen Letters to the Editor, December 7, 2018
(...)Imagine a pine forest park at LeBreton
Re: Letter, Arena might not boost attendance. Dec. 6.
This letter-writer is right. Instead of a questionable stadium, imagine what we would have today if LeBreton Flats had been planted with pine trees in 1960: a wonderful pine forest park reflecting Ottawa’s history. This could still be done in spite of the bare rock in this area. It would be a breath of fresh air right next to downtown. Condos and stadiums can be built elsewhere.
A park would soften Lebreton’s sharp edges
I always hoped for an improvement to LeBreton, such as a park. It would soften the hard-edged depressing structures in the area. We don’t need more concrete and this option offers environmental, social, cultural, tourist and recreational benefits for all.
By Catherine McKenna, Kitchissippi Times, December 4, 2018
Just as we come upon the winter season, we tend to revisit the goals we set for ourselves at the beginning of the year. As your MP for Ottawa Centre, we have accomplished a lot over the past couple of years. A cleaner environment with better public transit, improved cycling paths, and more social housing. Better support for seniors and families. Respect for public servants and a more inclusive community.
We’ve made some great strides in the riding such as the ongoing construction of the Flora Footbridge set to open in 2019, which will connect two important mid-town Ottawa communities (Old Ottawa East with the Glebe and Old Ottawa South). We’re creating a healthier Ottawa River by introducing new access points to the canal for canoeing and kayaking and designated the Ottawa River as a Canadian Heritage River. A federal investment in Ottawa to create over 400 below-market rent spaces through the launch of the National Affordable Housing program. Not to mention double the number of jobs created for students per year and over 800 jobs in Ottawa Centre through the Canada Summer Jobs program.
By Staff, StittsvilleCentral, December 4, 2018
While working with the city of Ottawa last year on their proposed Site Alteration By-law, staff insisted that it was important to protect agricultural land from development. The Carleton Landowners Association (CLA) voiced their skepticism that any bylaw would stop the development of farmland because the municipality allows that development. They may not be in favour of it, but they may be unintentionally putting farmland in harms way by allowing it to be designated and therefore not useable.
One of the ways in which this happens is that viable farmland (and other properties) are zoned as provincially significant wetlands (PSWs), which reduces the value of the land and restricts usage. This often results in the sale of the land to, you guessed it, a developer who somehow manages to get the PSW designation lifted and proceeds to build houses, condos, shopping centres or whatever will return a profit.
Goulbourn, a former township in the City of Ottawa, seems to be a prime target for PSW designations. Starting in 2000 (right after amalgamation), the former councillor representing Goulbourn, Janet Stavinga, and the city began working with the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority (RVCA) to assess private property as wetlands.
By Devyn Barrie, StittvilleCentral, December 5, 2018
Sally McIntyre remembers what Stittsville used to be like when she was working in the Township of Goulbourn’s planning department as a summer student in 1987.
Over the years since, she’s noticed a big drop in the amount of green space around the community — she estimates we’ve lost between one third to one half of forest space here.
“We’re losing the last of it up in the north and in the south. That’s rich, diverse landscape that we’ve lost that will never recover the way they were,” McIntyre — now an environmental planner — said, providing a map illustrating the losses since 1976.
By Catherine Latham, CTV News Ottawa, December 4, 2018
Four train operators were taken to hospital after a ventilation test in Ottawa's LRT tunnel went wrong.
It happened below Queen Street in Lyon Station, just after 10:00 p.m. on November 21.
“When they (train operators) arrived at Lyon station, they noticed people with gas masks on and smoke started entering the train,” says Transit Union President Clint Crabtree.
By Joanne Chianello, CBC News Ottawa, December 5, 2018
A new poll suggests most people in the National Capital Region would be disappointed if the current dispute over LeBreton Flats ices plans to develop the prime downtown land, but don't necessarily see a new arena as the project's key element.
More than 1,000 residents of Ottawa and Gatineau who answered the randomized online survey by EKOS were evenly split on whether an NHL arena is key to the LeBreton redevelopment, but were dead set against using public money to build an arena.
The public opinion survey was conducted in the days after the National Capital Commission (NCC) revealed that the partners in RendezVous LeBreton Group — Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk and Trinity Development chairman John Ruddy — could not resolve internal partnership issues.
By Randall Denley, Ottawa Citizen, December 4, 2018
Don’t give up on redeveloping LeBreton Flats just yet.
The NHL hockey rink/condos/retail plan of local developer John Ruddy and his disgruntled partner Eugene Melnyk seems to be on life support, but the reappearance of the other finalist in the National Capital Commission’s LeBreton competition offers a possible solution.
The alternative bid is worth a serious second look by both the NCC and the public. It is strong on public uses, less reliant on the condo market, and still offers the possibility of an NHL rink, should the Senators ever have an owner who is willing and able to finance a new arena.
The alternative plan is called LeBreton Re-Imagined, a name that seems more appropriate this time around. Its central feature is a winding linear park, a botanical garden that would connect the LeBreton area to downtown. It would be surrounded by attractions including a substantial aquarium, a large band shell, a skateboard pavilion and a wind tunnel for skydiving. The surrounding community would also have a YMCA, a major retirement home and a francophone school.
By Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen, December 5, 2018
The city is telling council members that it stands to save nearly $1 million on delaying the Confederation Line LRT about 10 months.
It’s an optimistic estimate, though, since the grand tally of extra costs and savings related to the delay depends on the city’s reading of its $2.1-billion construction contract with the Rideau Transit Group.
City council on Wednesday received a summary of the financial implications of the delay in a memo from corporate services general manager Marian Simulik.
By Paola Loriggio, the Canadian Press, Global News, December 3, 2018
TORONTO – Ontario is weakening environmental oversight at a time when the province is changing gears on fighting climate change, advocacy groups said Monday as they urged the government to cancel proposed changes to the environmental watchdog.
Critics denounced the Progressive Conservatives’ decision to merge Ontario’s environmental commissioner with the auditor general, saying it will reduce government accountability on environmental issues – including the province’s new climate change plan, which replaces the cap-and-trade system.