Draft Wildlife Strategy

DRAFT REPORT

The City has been reviewing its Wildlife Strategy, a document that outlines how we interact with our wildlife neighbours. The report will go to committee on June 17, 2024 for consideration, and to Council at a later date.

While reviewing the strategy, I made some first-impression notes. Here's what I saw:

Draft Wildlife Strategy - live notes

I’m reading through the Wildlife Strategy that went online last night. It will be tabled at a committee meeting on June 17. Here are my immediate thoughts as I read it:

This strategy is an update from the 2013 doc. It admits a lot has changed, including impacts of climate change. And public opinion has shifted: residents want animals that enter the city rescued, not killed.

Last year’s shooting of a young bear by police caused outrage and much of the public does not want it to happen again. This report is supposed to address that issue, among other things.

From the top, the report talks about “wildlife-transmitted disease” but focuses on Lyme Disease. I don’t think ticks are what anyone meant by “wildlife” but that’s an issue we can discuss.

Report notes that By-law Enforcement is responsible for transfer of sick, injured, and orphaned wildlife to Humane Society, vets, and rehabs.

On to public feedback: residents’ priorities are better education to prevent conflicts; reduction or elimination of lethal wildlife practices, including for beavers and coyotes; and asks that the strategy include protections for birds. More work is needed on birds…

Animal rehab orgs complain that the City completely depends on them to take in injured and orphaned animals but doesn’t fund them at all. This does seem unfair.

Big section on the Official Plan, which calls for protection of habitat. Says City will prioritize habitat protection and purchases. This is good.

Establishes advisory board to meet twice yearly. Includes experts!

Calls to review the city’s wildlife web pages twice/year, to better identify who to call about wildlife (this has been a big problem) and to do more social media about animals.

Great recommendations to consider locations for wildlife crossings over/under roads and highways, something Ottawa has lacked

Big section on mitigation costs – the City has to mitigate for protected species at risk under provincial law. This means that when a developer wants to expand and it might affect critical habitat, the City has to pay for habitat maintenance and replacement. The city wants to find a way to charge someone for this.

The 2013 report recommended the hiring of a wildlife specialist. They never hired anyone. This report recommends that too, but has found temporary funding.

That’s good news. But the report also depends on that one staffer to solve the problem of big mammals (bears, moose, etc) entering neighbourhoods. I think this needs clarity…

Beavers: City currently hires trappers to kill beavers that dam “drains” (e.g. streams, rivers, ditches). Many residents have called for this to stop.

Report recommends continuing current practices while looking into alternatives. This is definitely an area I’d like to see further considered…

Coyotes: report recognizes that coyotes are less dangerous than lightening and that killing coyotes doesn’t actually make a difference. Recommends working with Coyote Watch Canada to educate the public. $48K/year.

Finally, says clearing vegetation in spring and summer is problematic for breeding birds and animals, but admits that limiting them to fall and winter is impractical. No solutions offered, so we’ll need to work on this one, too.

Overall, many residents will be disappointed in this report. It makes some positive changes, but also sticks with the status quo on several pieces.

I’ll continue working on this file in the coming weeks.

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Motion to improve road safety

Today, the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee unanimously approved my motion to improve road safety across Ottawa. Here's my motion:

WHEREAS speeding continues to be one of the most significant road‑safety concerns raised by residents across the City of Ottawa, particularly in residential neighbourhoods and school zones where vulnerable road users, including children, are at heightened risk; and

WHEREAS recent City data has shown a substantial increase in speeding in school zones, with compliance dropping from 87 percent to 41 percent within a 12‑week period following the removal of Automated Speed Enforcement (ASE) cameras, and high‑end speeding increasing from 0.3 percent to over 4 percent during the same period; and

Whereas speed data is an important input in understanding risk related to more serious collisions; and

WHEREAS the city’s current approach to collecting speed data is limited and does not provide a full picture of speeds across the roadway network, and

WHEREAS other jurisdictions across Canada and internationally are increasingly incorporating innovative, technology‑enabled, and data‑driven approaches—including, predictive analytics, and AI‑supported monitoring systems—to inform their road safety programs; and

WHEREAS the City of Ottawa is currently undertaking work to update the Road Safety Action Plan, which will guide the road safety priorities for the next term of Council; and

WHEREAS this work presents an opportunity to modernize and strengthen the inputs used to make informed data-driven decisions about road safety;

THERFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT staff, through the update to the City’s Road Safety Action Plan, leverage advanced data analytics, predictive modelling, and AI‑supported technologies, where appropriate, to enhance the City’s ability to identify, monitor, and respond to speeding trends and inform road safety priorities

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT staff consider speed management as a focus area when developing the Road Safety Action Plan that will be presented to Council in 2027.

Progress Report: Year Three

Read the Year Three Progress Report

Dear Neighbours,

I am pleased to provide you with the College Ward Annual
Progress Report, showing the work that we did in 2025. I work hard every day to represent you on the
issues that are important to our neighbourhoods.

I hope this Progress Report is informative of the projects we
took on last year, and that it demonstrates my continuing
transparency and accountability to you. There is still more
always to do, and I list some future areas of interest.

Warm regards,
Laine

Out of Service: Ottawa’s Transit Problem

The news this week wasn’t good. Thousands of bus trips cancelled again in February. LRT down to one train for the foreseeable future. When it comes to Ottawa’s public transit, it seems there’s never good news.

Even the announcement of progress on the LRT East project was met with cynicism, given that the trains that Line 1 uses continue to have “spalling” issues with the wheel assembly.

When will it end? And what am I – one of the members of OC Transpo’s governance body – going to do about it?

Since 2022, I’ve been wrestling with myself over a feeling of powerlessness about OC Transpo, in conflict with my ability as a decision maker to affect change.

I have residents who are suffering immeasurably from a lack of service. Algonquin College students have the biggest uptake of the U-pass of all of Ottawa’s post-secondary institutions, but they can’t get to and from classes reliably. Bells Corners’ routes were cut during the pandemic, and the subsequent elimination of the 200 series through the New Ways to Bus changes have completely isolated that community from transit.