Ecology Ottawa

News Clippings

Ingham: If Ottawa wants better transit, maybe the union could bargain for it

By Declan Ingham, Ottawa Citizen, August 12, 2019

Ottawa is on the cusp of urban maturity. With the eventual opening of the LRT, it will have a fully fledged public transit system, but the recent political gridlock on questions of fare affordability should be a reminder that we are not a transit city yet. The recent move by Ottawa Council to continue freezing fares is a win for transit riders but the defeat of a motion to reduce fares by a vote of 18 to 6 shows that this is not the end of the debate but just the beginning.

(...)Debates over public transit are common at any city council but with Ottawa’s post-amalgamation geography merging rural, suburban and urban communities, councillors will be hard pressed to find a consensus. So, if Ottawa Council cannot get us the transit system this city desperately deserves maybe it is time to start looking for someone who can.

Even with the city declaring a climate change emergency and aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, fewer people in total are taking transit in Ottawa than did eight years ago.

(...)One such group might be the bus drivers and transit operators themselves. The Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 279 represents transit workers across the city and their collective agreement (the employment contract between the city and the unionized workers) will be coming up for negotiations beginning in March 2020.

Would it be appropriate to bring up funding, investment and the affordability of the transit system in negotiations? Absolutely. In fact, the electrical workers who work at the Toronto Transit Commission, unionized as CUPE local 2, just released a press release calling for free public transit in Toronto.

City staff propose five themes for new 25-year official plan

By Jacob Hoytema, Ottawa Citizen, August 12, 2019

Ottawa is fresh off of celebrating its one millionth resident, but city staff are already thinking another 400,000 ahead. The municipal government is working on a new master plan to guide its decision-making and growth between 2021 and 2046, during which time the population is expected to reach 1.4 million. This new plan is supposed to prepare for that shift by broadly designating how that growth will be spread out, and how it will impact different parts of the city.

A finalized version of the plan isn’t expected to be set in stone by council until spring of 2021. Nonetheless, city staff outlined on Monday a slew of suggested policy directions under five themes that, if approved, will guide the discussion around the remaining stages of the plan’s development. Staff have released the so-called “five big moves” so that members of the public can familiarize themselves for future consultations.

Briefly summarized, the five themes are: intensification, transportation, “sophistication” in urban and community design, environmental and public health, and economic development.

'Why are people still getting hit?': Family demands action after cyclist is critically injured

By Luke Carroll, Ottawa Citizen, August 13, 2019

The family of a cyclist who’s in critical condition after a collision is calling on the city to do more to ensure safety for all road users.

Twenty-seven-year-old Idan Azrad was riding his bike to work down Renaud Road on August 8, a route he’d taken many times before, when he was involved in a collision with a vehicle.

(...)

Police said the situation is under investigation, but Lepp said more needs to be done to prevent this from happening in the future.

She said the city isn’t doing enough to ensure cyclists can safely travel the road, citing the numerous other incidents that have occurred in the past couple of months — two of which happened in Orléans including the July 23 crash that killed a 13-year-old cyclist.

Mystery fish deaths solved; Quebec Government blames hydro plant

By Christine Succi, CFRA News, August 15, 2019

Quebec’s Ministry of Environment says a hydroelectric dam on the Lièvre River is responsible for thousands of dead fish.

Ministry officials say an over-saturation in gas in the water at the Brookfield Hydroelectric Dam was killing the fish.

“It’s a phenomenon when there’s too much air too much gas in the water,” said Michel Rousseau, Quebec’s assistant deputy minister of environment.

“When a fish comes in contact with this, it can die rapidly”

Rousseau said the water became too saturated with tiny air bubbles in a phenomenon called supersaturated dissolved gas. The fish then die from gas bubbles disease, or a “gaseous embolism”.

‘Here’s to future growth’: Canopy Growth donates $100,000 to Forests Ontario in Kemptville

By Paulina Hrebacka, InsideOttawaValley, August 16, 2019 After suffering from provincial funding cuts to environmental programs this spring, Kemptville’s Ferguson Forest Centre was the site of a better news announcement on Aug. 16 when Canopy Growth Corporation donated $100,000 to Forests Ontario on the tree nursery grounds. Forests Ontario delivers the 50 Million Tree program, which aims to plant 50 million trees across the province by 2025. The program is one of the Ferguson Tree Nursery’s primary revenue sources, making up roughly 40 per cent of its annual profits, and was cancelled as a result of the funding cuts in April.

In June, the federal government stepped up and pledged $15 million over four years to Forests Ontario to restore the program.

Fight climate change by eating meat, Ottawa farmers say

By Laura Osman, CBC News Ottawa, August 15, 2019

Farmers say people can still take a bite out of climate change while eating red meat, pushing back against global headlines calling for major changes to the world's farming and eating habits.

A UN report released last week left people hungry to know more about what they should eat if they want to help curb the climate crisis. Although it stopped short of explicitly advocating switching to a vegan or vegetarian diet, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommended reducing meat consumption.

"It hurts my soul to hear that we're viewing red meat as detrimental to climate change," said Ottawa farmer Amber Payne. "I look at it as a solution to fix many global problems."

Payne is one of a number of small-scale "regenerative farmers" who believe that raising grass-fed cattle can actually help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"We use animals here as tools on the land to capture the carbon and store it in the ground," Payne said.

Carbon capture, as it's called, involves keeping plant life healthy so it can pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and into the soil, trapping it underground.

 

Pellerin: Healthy Ottawa – Suck it up and ditch those single-use plastic straws

By Brigitte Pellerin, Ottawa Citizen, August 8, 2019

The National Arts Centre made the news a few months ago when it announced its plan to eliminate single-use plastic in its restaurant.

As Nelson Borges, the NAC’s manager of food and beverage, explained in the Citizen, the arts centre will use plant-based containers to serve the food, then toss them into the compost, which will be added to the rooftop garden growing flowers (for the bees) and herbs, the latter to be used in the NAC kitchen. It’s like a Circle of Life song that’s even better than Disney.

At what price, you ask? Pennies. Single-use plastic cups are five cents. The new-fangled compostable plant-based ones? Twelve cents. Would you pay a seven-cent premium on your $10 drink for the environmental benefit of not using plastic? Me too.

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Portman: Ottawa's LRT reflects a total lack of transit vision

By Jamie Portman, Ottawa Citizen, August 9, 2019

Back when I was living in Calgary, I was able to step out of my downtown apartment, board a train just minutes from the front door, and ride to work — for free.

From the beginning, and it’s still true today, Calgary’s light rail system has maintained a ride-free zone in its downtown corridor — an idea that would no doubt horrify Ottawa’s unimaginative city guardians, apart perhaps from freshman Coun. Shawn Menard, who has mused publicly about free bus travel along Bank Street.

But let’s face it: Innovation, common sense and credibility are little in evidence when it comes to our lumbering entry into the world of light rail. It’s become an embarrassment even before those malfunctioning trains get the chance to transport real passengers through an unnecessary downtown tunnel with problems of water leakage.

Today's letters: Time for a leaders' debate on climate change

By Lia Walsh, Ottawa Citizen Letter to the Editor, August 9, 2019

We need a federal leaders’ debate on climate change

Over the past five years, Ottawa-Gatineau has seen increasingly alarming weather patterns. For the first time in my 15 years of growing my own food, I had a completely failed spring crop from changes happening to season onset dates, the extremity of heat and cold and the flooding that ravaged the region this spring. Within the past year, three tornadoes have raged through Ottawa-Gatineau. The climate is changing rapidly and not for the better. We are in a climate emergency.

With the federal election approaching, it is imperative that our political candidates show leadership on climate change. However, during the last election, climate change was only given 15 minutes of airtime during leaders’ debates. Canadians must be able to make informed decisions about which candidates are willing to make these kinds of commitments.

Bierstone, Penslar and Lavoie: Why taking action on climate change is good for your health

By Dr. Daniel Bierstone, Dr. Josh Penslar, and Dr. Curtis Lavoie, Ottawa Citizen, August 9, 2019

Some aspects of public policy are considered so axiomatic in Canada that they generally transcend party lines.

These include public health care and education, and numerous community health promotion programs (hence the massive backlash this year against Premier Doug Ford’s proposed cuts to public health). Sadly and ironically, one of the issues that has not yet joined this list is climate action. Sad, because the impacts of a changing climate on ecosystems and communities is becoming all too apparent; ironic, because climate change poses an urgent risk to our health and the health of our children that can and should be addressed by public policy.

Several mainstream national health organizations, including the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Public Health Association and the Canadian Nurses Association have already called on all federal political parties to consider climate change “as the greatest health threat of the 21st century.” Meanwhile, the Ontario Public Health Association has launched makeitbetterontario.ca, an online toolkit for parents on mitigating climate change’s daily impacts on children’s health.

Pellerin: Healthy Ottawa – Protecting nature, use it or lose it

By Brigitte Pellerin, Ottawa Citizen, August 12, 2019

If you lived in Montreal or Toronto and wanted to escape the city to somewhere wild and quiet, you would first have to sit for a frustratingly long spell in heavy traffic. Reaching the Muskokas on a Saturday morning is not an experience I wish to repeat.

We in Ottawa-Gatineau are very fortunate. We have so much nature to enjoy. Gatineau Park is probably the jewel in our collective green crown, but there are countless parks, trails, multi-use pathways, off-leash dog parks and forests to explore. And that’s not counting rivers and lakes where we can kayak, swim or just goof off on the beach with the kids. We don’t have to drive far to enjoy nature.

“Access to green spaces and public parks,” says Ecology Ottawa’s Vi Bui, “is a key indicator of a healthy and vibrant community.” On that scale, we’re doing pretty well.

Access to recreational water is just as important. Pools and splash pads are neat, but nothing beats natural water for maximum health benefits.

So here’s something for Ottawa to work on: more access for the public to the Ottawa River. Meredith Brown, Riverkeeper Emerita, certainly endorses that.

Pellerin: Healthy Ottawa – why the city needs more tree-huggers

By Brigitte Pellerin, Ottawa Citizen, August 15, 2019

The City of Ottawa is reviewing its tree bylaws (it has two) and needs our input. Allow me to jump on the roof and point at its dark, flat, surface. Put trees there!

You laugh. Who’s ever heard of trees on a roof, right? Well, us, for one thing. We’ve had a few on top of the Ottawa Courthouse on Elgin Street since 2012, along with 60 plant varieties scattered over 70,000 square feet. There are a few other local green roofs: the Rideau Centre, the National Arts Centre, Algonquin’s Centre for Construction Excellence, Ashbury College, which uses part of it as an outdoor classroom, and the Canadian War Museum.

(...)“Green roofs and other green infrastructure implementations play a key role in slowing down, soaking up and filtering rainwater, increasing our city’s resilience in a changing climate,” says Vi Bui of Ecology Ottawa, adding that many jurisdictions have introduced bylaws mandating such roofs in certain circumstances, including Toronto. That city’s bylaw goes back to 2010 and makes new buildings of a certain size include a given portion of greenery on their roof.