How to Sign up to Speak:
To sign up to speak out in favour of removing Tewin from the urban boundary and opposing more urban sprawl, you can email [email protected] by Thursday at 8:30 AM. You have a total of five minutes to speak but do not have to fill the full five minutes.
or
You can find out how to email your councillor here
Here is an example text of an email you can send to your councillor
Background
· The 654-hectare urban expansion lands added to Ottawa’s urban boundary by the province has now been removed.
· These lands had been previously reviewed and evaluated by Ottawa city staff, who found that most of these lands scored poorly in respect to the criteria that included proximity to transit, sewage and water infrastructure, and the protection of farmland.
·The decision by the province to reverse their urban boundary expansion in Ottawa followed their reversal of their decision to earmark Greenbelt lands in the GTHA for development. A decision that followed the previous provincial AG’s Special Report on Changes to the Greenbelt, which “found that how the land sites were selected was not transparent, fair, objective, or fully informed.” The report also found that the process “was dismissive of effective land-use planning” and of professional urban planners.
·The Special Report on Changes to the Greenbelt also concluded that “fair, transparent and respectful consultation with the people of Ontario did not take place.”
·Provincial Integrity Commissioner Wake’s investigation into the conduct of the Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs in relation to the Greenbelt lands decision concluded that the Ministry, under the Minister’s watch, alerted some developers “to a potential change in the government’s position on the Greenbelt with the result that their private interests were furthered improperly.”
·This investigation was pursued after complaints were filed by opposition members at Queen’s Park following media reports suggesting that some prominent developers who are Progressive Conservative donors were benefiting from the province’s land site selections.
·In Ottawa, members of Council also went against the advice of professional land-use planners at the City of Ottawa without fair, transparent and respectful consultation with the public when a motion brought by Councillor Tierney was passed to add the Tewin lands to Ottawa’s urban boundary.
·Council’s decision massively increased the value of these Taggart owned lands by tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. Council’s decision is also going to cost the city around half a billion dollars in infrastructure (as estimated in recent Infrastructure Master Plan documents presented at city committee).
·Tierney was lobbied by Taggart to add the Tewin lands to Ottawa’s urban boundary (see data from lobbyist registry here).
·Tierney moved a motion to accomplish just that, despite professional urban planners at the city strongly advising against it, and inclusion of these lands not being part of the public consultation process.
· The preceding election campaign saw Councillor Tierney take 13% of his campaign budget from executives of Taggart and their spouses. Four major donors connected to Taggart contributed $1000 or more to the campaign.
·Tierney made misleading arguments about indigenous reconciliation to get this passed at committee and council.
Current IMP Report Issues
- The Infrastructure Master Plan or IMP coming to the committee on Thursday is the first step in finding out just how much Tewin will cost Ottawa residents.
- The plan mostly spells out how much the City will be spending on wastewater and water management until 2046, Tewin is set to be one third of that entire $2 billion plan, i.e. $600 million in unecessary sprawl costs.
- This cost doesn't include expenses related to transit, new roads and other transportation and energy expenses that will probably total costs up to the billions for Tewin.
- Staff insinuate that because of projects like Tewin, the city is preparing to further sprawl out more than we need after 2046 which goes against the city's Climate Change Master Plan and Energy Evolution Strategy which stresses intensification as a plan to combat the climate crisis.
- Taggart continuosly stresses that "Tewin will pay for Tewin" meaning that new residents will make up for the costs but this is seeming less and less likely and existing residents may be on the hook for this unecessary development.