Urban boundary to include Tewin

Council votes in favour of bringing in new Algonquins of Ontario community

A new satellite community in rural southeast Ottawa created by the Algonquins of Ontario and Taggart Investments will be included in an expanded urban boundary, city council decided Wednesday.

Council's job was to approve 1,281 hectares of land that would be brought into the urban boundary as part of the city's growth-management strategy in the next Official Plan.

But 445 hectares pitched as an isolated community based on Algonquin values have drawn the strongest public reaction.

The Algonquins of Ontario (AOO) and Taggart want to a build a suburb called Tewin west of Carlsbad Springs. They envision an eco-focused community of up to 45,000 residents developed with the guidance of Algonquin values and have vowed to pay for infrastructure costs, such as water and wastewater services to the site.

The Tewin land was not a staff-recommended site for urban expansion, but staff opened the door to the possibility of the site being established as a new community through a five-year study.

Instead, the joint planning and rural affairs committee voted last month to remove proposed expansion land in the South March area, combine it with expansion area that still had to be determined, and immediately assign the total 445 hectares of land to Tewin.

On Wednesday, council accepted the recommendation with a 16-8 vote.

Voting in favour were councillors Tim Tierney, Jan Harder, Laura Dudas, George Darouze, Jean Cloutier, Jenna Sudds, Allan Hubley, Eli El-Chantiry, Glen Gower, Catherine Kitts, Scott Moffatt, Carol Anne Meehan, Rick Chiarelli, Matthew Luloff, Keith Egli and Mayor Jim Watson.

Councillors Jeff Leiper, Theresa Kavanagh, Mathieu Fleury, Catherine McKenney, Rawlson King, Shawn Menard, Riley Brockington and Diane Deans voted in opposition.

The updated Official Plan is scheduled to be considered by council later this year. Council's decision on the Official Plan will be final, unless the minister of municipal affairs or a court steps in.

There were attempts by some councillors during the daylong meeting to delay the Tewin question.

Menard asked for a year-long delay, while McKenney asked council to reverse the committee's decision on the South March lands and send staff to review Tewin.

However, most of council clearly arrived at the meeting already knowing where their votes would go.

Gower accused council of avoiding making tough, bold decisions and saw no point in delaying a decision about Tewin. He won council's support to make sure staff confirm the viability and municipal cost of the Tewin project.

“Let's get on with the most important project we're doing … for the rest of this century,” Harder, the planning chair, told council while backing Tewin's inclusion inside the urban boundary.

Watson scoffed at the notion of delaying the matter for years.

“That's really not leadership in my way of thinking,” he said.

On the other side of the vote, Coun. Diane Deans blasted colleagues for not listening to many Algonquin people who have warned the city about adopting the Tewin project as a signal of Indigenous reconciliation.

“This is poor planning based on a false promise of reconciliation,” Deans said, calling it “an embarrassment to our city.”

Algonquin communities that aren't part of AOO, including several in Quebec, have criticized the city for approving Tewin in the name of reconciliation. Those communities, which accuse AOO of not representing true Algonquins, don't see it that way.

AOO represents 10 communities in land-claim negotiations with the federal and Ontario governments. Only one of the AOO communities, Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation, is federally recognized.

Pikwakanagan Chief Wendy Jocko defended the AOO communities, both status and non-status, as being “real Algonquins” in a 10-minute videotaped message to council posted before the meeting.

The Tewin matter was just one of the big controversial issues in front of council involving the urban boundary.

Council removed the staff-proposed “gold belt” of protected agricultural land at the request of Kitts, who said the idea caused “undue confusion” in rural Ottawa.

Existing land designations already protect rural villages and agricultural properties, and the gold belt proposal was just a manner of applying new terminology, city staff acknowledged.

There was an incorrect perception that government was going to expropriate land in the gold belt to create something like a second greenbelt, council heard. Planning general manager Stephen Willis said it was a “communications problem.”