Reconciliation adds twist to city's growth strategy
There was a moment during a joint committee meeting last week when Coun. Scott Moffatt questioned if public transit trumps agriculture in approving land development on the edge of an expanded urban boundary.
But minutes later there was another tricky dichotomy in play, one that many councillors didn't see coming.
Does reconciliation with Indigenous peoples trump urban sprawl?
The overwhelming answer, if you go by the committee vote, was yes.
Mayor Jim Watson's enthusiastic support for the Algonquins of Ontario, in partnership with Taggart Investments, to plan a new community, to be called Tewin, west of Boundary Road in the southeast part of rural Ottawa.
Some councillors who had votes on the joint planning and agriculture and rural affairs committee clearly struggled with the decision.
Coun. Jeff Leiper wrote an extensive explanation on his website about why he voted against including the Tewin land in the urban boundary. He said he voted “for good planning and the greatest possible mitigation against climate change.” Moffatt and Riley Brockington were the only other two councillors in opposition.
The churn of Ottawa's municipal government is usually predictable. Bureaucrats line up recommendations and council, almost always, spits out the approvals.
The joint committee meeting, held to decide which properties should become development lands inside a larger urban boundary, veered off the usual course.
The Algonquins' Tewin project required more land than the 270 hectares the city still needed to add to the urban boundary. So, the committee removed a chunk of staff-recommended development land in South March and assigned it to Tewin, bringing the total up to 445 hectares, just shy of the 500 hectares the Algonquins said they needed, though they're satisfied with the 445.
The controversy mostly lies in the staff analysis of the Tewin land, which didn't receive a passing grade for inclusion in the urban boundary, mostly because of its isolated location far away from existing and planned city services. The Tewin project team says it can mitigate the heavy costs of developing the satellite community.
It should be noted, city planners didn't outright dismiss the Tewin project in their work to identify development lands inside a new urban boundary. In fact, they gave councillors the option to study the lands, along with two other clusters in Riverside South and South March, over five years to see if any of the sites should be folded inside the urban boundary.
The joint committee voted to go all-in with Tewin, and do it now.
The walk-on motions at the joint committee that ultimately recommended allowing urban land for Tewin were lined up as if a strategy had been in the works for days, though council members knew about the unique project for months. The Algonquins of Ontario and Taggart revealed the Tewin proposal in October, booked meetings with the municipal politicians and explained to them the city would need to bring the land inside the urban boundary.
The Tewin twist has potential to place in competition key interests of the progressive wing of council: preventing climate change and urban sprawl versus attempting to reconcile with an Indigenous community.
Leiper, whose politics lean to that progressive side, was in a pickle at the meeting, having to suddenly vote on either refusing far-flung development or backing an effort at Indigenous reconciliation.
Angela Keller-Herzog has appeared as a public delegate numerous times at committee meetings on behalf of Community Associations for Environmental Sustainability to push councillors on climate protection. Keller-Herzog is also a social justice advocate.
When it comes to Tewin, Keller-Herzog said the test will be the energy requirements and, specifically, if gas pipelines will be installed for a community promoted as a One Planet Living project, which calls for “zero carbon energy.” (Tewin's promotional materials, including website information, have described “low carbon living.”)
Keller-Herzog said a zero-carbon community would be “pretty brilliant” and support the city's climate change goals, but “we shall see if the developers are willing to walk the talk soon enough.”
Ecology Ottawa, perhaps the most prominent environmental advocacy group focused on local issues, was still discussing the Tewin matter internally.
Back at city hall, council members who didn't have a vote on the joint committee have more than a week to dig deeper into the reports, ask questions to staff and get more information from the Algonquins of Ontario.
Reconciliation with Indigenous peoples has emerged as a key narrative at city hall so far in 2021.
Council has stripped the name of Langevin Avenue in the Lindenlea neighbourhood, changing it to Commanda Way, both condemning Hector-Louis Langevin's support for the residential school system and honouring the late Algonquin elder, William Commanda.
Watson wants to change the name of the Prince of Wales Bridge to Chief William Commanda Bridge.
And the city's first director of gender and race equity, inclusion, Indigenous relations and social development services is about to join the municipal government.
Land development in the outer suburbs could come with multi-generational impacts to the transportation network and future costs to provide city operations.
On the other hand, council has the opportunity to make a big legacy move: supporting Indigenous-led economic development. Any planning consequences can be another council's problem