The Greenspace Alliance was invited to sit as a member of the Sounding Board for the City planning exercise Beyond 2036. The goal of this planning project was to set the scene and context for the next review of the Official Plan. Through its participation at meetings and workshops organized by city planners over several…
POLICY
The Greenspace Alliance has submitted its input to the City of Ottawa regarding the 2018 Budget. It called on the City to adequately fund the recently approved Urban Forest Management Plan (UFMP), to replenish the capital reserve used to acquire greenspace for preservation purposes and to invest in developing the geographic data required to evaluate…
“Site alteration” generally refers to the placing or dumping of fill, the removal of topsoil, changing the grade of land, or the removal of vegetation. Section 142 of the Municipal Act allows municipalities to adopt a site alteration by-law. Many municipalities have done so. As early as 2011, Paul Renaud put together a table of…
In anticipation of its discussion of priorities over the new term on July 8, the Greenspace Alliance wrote to the Members of Council, requesting that re-instating an allocation for environmental land acquisition be a priority: PDF version 4 June 2015 Dear Members of Council, Re: Term of Council Priorities The Greenspace Alliance requests that…
Adapted from our 2015-16 Annual Report: …by the end of 2013, the City proceeded with the revision of the Development Charges By-law, to be completed by June 2014 as prescribed by the Development Charges Act. The public was excluded from this process, despite a joint effort by the Alliance, the Federation of Citizens’ Associations (FCA)…
The federal government has created an Expert Panel to review its environmental assessment processes. Go here for more information. David McNicoll attended a workshop on November 8, 2016. On December 22, the Greenspace Alliance made a submission to the Panel. It argued that, if an environmental assessment amounts to assembling short-term data assembled to support…
On November 12, 2016, staff made its report available regarding what it then called “OPA 2016” but which soon officially became OPA 180. The report has 12 supporting documents, including the draft amendment in a somewhat easier-to-read format, the growth projections and an addendum, an employment lands review update, Volumes 1 and 2 of the…
From our 2015-16 Annual Report: The 2014 version of the Provincial Policy Statement obliges municipalities to adopt the criteria set out in the Ministry’s Natural Heritage Reference Manual to determine whether a woodland is “significant” and thus part of the Natural Heritage System. Erwin [Dreessen] and Owen Clarkin attended a stakeholder consultation meeting called by…
On September 29, 2016, the City revealed its updated projections for Ottawa’s population, housing and jobs. The projections are extended to 2036. Several methodological improvements were made compared to the exercise in 2007. Here are the Highlights. And here are the slides used by staff at the meeting (corrected for an error). Finally, here is…
A draft report (8.3 MB) became available on May 3, 2016. The final report (9.2 MB) became available on September 7 and was the subject of a staff presentation (43 slides, 3.1 MB) at Planning Committee on September 13. It does not appear to vary much from the draft report. (The staff report is here.)…