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City of Ottawa to hold first ‘rural summit’ since 2008

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Clarke Kelly


Some rural Ottawa residents feel like they’re on the outside looking in at decisions made at city hall.

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When the City of Ottawa rehabilitated the aging Anderson Bridge on John Shaw Road near Kinburn in 2016, the needs of farmers weren’t top of mind.

The new single-lane bridge, with its steel girder rails, is too narrow to accommodate a combine harvester. For farmers south of the bridge, that means a 10-kilometre detour to reach their crops growing just a stone’s throw away.

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It’s blunders like this that make some rural Ottawa residents feel like they’re on the outside looking in at decisions made at city hall — and it’s one of the reasons Ottawa is holding a rural summit in 2024, the first of its kind in 16 years.

The motion for a rural summit came from Coun. Clarke Kelly, whose sprawling West Carleton-March Ward is the city’s largest. Mayor Mark Sutcliffe has touted the summit as one of council’s showpiece goals for the new year.

“When we as a city set policies that affect that whole area, without really looking at the effect those policies have on rural areas, I think that’s been noticed by people over the last couple of decades,” said Kelly, a first-term councillor and vice-chair of the city’s agricultural and rural affairs committee (ARAC).

“It’s a chance to have a conversation about the important role that the rural wards play in our city, what the unique challenges are in providing services across such a vast area, with fewer people in it. I think’s it’s long overdue that we have more conversations.”

Ottawa is one of Canada’s largest municipalities by area, and 80 per cent of it is made up of the swath of farmland, forests and villages beyond the suburbs. Kelly’s ward alone sprawls across more than 760 square kilometres. About 175,000 of Ottawa’s million residents live in the five rural wards, scattered in farmsteads or concentrated in villages such as Navan, Greely, Richmond and Carp.

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While urban wards deal with intractable societal issues such as the opioid crisis, homelessness, urban crime and transit, rural residents want their fair share of city services: reasonable ambulance response times, police speeding enforcement and city offices that are open more than one day per week.

John Shaw Road
The Anderson Bridge on John Shaw Road was rehabilitated by the city in 2016, but is now too narrow to accommodate wide farm machinery. Photo by JULIE OLIVER /Postmedia

“Service delivery across such a vast area must be difficult. I understand that,” Kelly says.

“Just for inspiration sometimes, I look at the directory — I have a very old directory — that gives a rundown of the services and the people who worked out of the West Carleton Community Complex after amalgamation,” he said. “We had planning staff there. We had bylaw. We had police. We had building code people. And now it’s only open one day a week. That means you have to drive all the way into the city to get things done.

“Over time, the money and services get concentrated in areas that serve the greatest number of people. We understand that, but we want to make sure that a certain level is maintained in the rural wards.”

Call for an ambulance in West Carleton and it’s more likely to come from Renfrew or Lanark counties than it is from the City of Ottawa, he said. Speeding enforcement? That’s handled by officers based in Leitrim, nearly an hour’s drive from the far reaches of West Carleton.

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But, beyond the desire for simple services, rural councillors see a fundamental misunderstanding by the city of how rural residents view the land. In November, city staff brought forward proposed changes to Ottawa’s site alteration bylaw requiring landowners to notify the city if they intended to make major alterations to any property within a two-kilometre band around the urban boundary. The move was meant to prevent another situation like what occurred last winter, when thousands of trees were cleared without approval from property near the Tewin development in southeast Ottawa.

The city issued a stop work order, and, though the landowner was later found to have done nothing wrong, there were protests and outrage about the brazen land clearing.

But councillors on the agricultural and rural affairs committee balked at that proposal. Their committee voted to reduce the protective buffer to just one kilometre and to eliminate the need for landowners to notify the city about changes made “incidental to normal farming practices.”

When the committee’s recommendation came to full city council, rural councillors bristled when Capital Ward Coun. Shawn Menard proposed over-riding ARAC’s decision and adopting the original staff recommendations.

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“I’m very concerned that an urban colleague is saying to a colleague on this council’s (ARAC) committee that we don’t know what we’re doing,” chided Rideau-Jock Ward Coun. David Brown, a dairy farmer who does farm chores each morning before his council duties.

“I try to keep quiet when policy matters come up around this table that don’t impact rural Ottawa,” Brown said. “But this impacts us.”

Menard later withdrew his motion.

Too often, policies are set by council committees that have an adverse affect on rural residents, said ARAC chair and Osgoode Ward Coun. George Darouze.

“I’m going to be frank with you … I don’t take it lightly when people bypass the ARAC for policy and it goes to either planning or environment committee. I have a problem with that,” Darouze said.

The site alteration bylaw, as originally written, would have been too onerous for farmers and that’s something staff might not have realized when setting the policy, he said.

“They don’t know if we don’t tell them. They think the farmer can just give the city a call. They can’t. A farmer has to worry about equipment, they have to worry about Mother Nature, they have to worry about tile drains and scheduling. They don’t want to worry about whether they have to call the city before they cut a tree.

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“Those are the sort of issues the rural summit will be looking at,” Darouze said.

“We want to restore that strong voice that we always had. We want to make sure the rural voice is being heard. The rural residents, they don’t complain — I call them the silent majority. But we know their issues and they elected us to represent them.”

West Carleton
The City of Ottawa client service centre at the West Carleton Community Complex is open just one day a week. Photo by Blair Crawford /Postmedia

Green energy and wind farms, and the push for bike lanes on rural roads are other issues where urban sensibilities collide with rural realities, he said.

Each rural councillor can nominate two constituents to take part in the summit. Planning will begin early in the new year.

“This is a councillor-driven initiative, not the staff,” Darouze said. “That’s very important for the public to know. We’re not going to allow the staff to take over. They’re there to do the schedule and get us the information we need, but the whole project is driven by council.”

Kelly hopes the rural summit will help his urban colleagues on council better understand the needs of rural residents.

“We feel we as rural councillors get exposed to the life and challenges of other wards, but it’s not always reciprocal,” he said.

“Just to be able explain the challenges to our colleagues and showcase what life in the rural wards is all about will be good for our city.”

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