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As the City moves toward adopting a new Zoning By-law in early 2026, alongside two ongoing secondary plans in College Ward for 2026-27, and several infill and larger developments always ongoing, I often hear from residents with concerns about density, parks, parking, school capacity, shadows, transportation, property standards, and property values. Many residents also share they are excited by the new opportunities and growth these changes could bring. 

Given how much has changed in recent years, I wanted to take a moment to walk through the evolving planning landscape — both locally and provincially — and explain how these changes shape development in Ottawa. 

At a recent community event, it was suggested that my background in affordable housing presented a “conflict of interest” with my role as your City Councillor. Since a conflict of interest is defined by the Municipal Act as a financial interest in a particular matter – that is, that I will personally benefit from decision-making on housing issues – this doesn’t quite add up.

I think the suggestion was that as someone who cares about the skyrocketing number of people who are forced to choose between housing costs and savings, or food, or other financial priorities, I’m compromised in my ability to advocate for current residents. I can only respond that I think people who need affordable housing are personal support workers, hairstylists, students, seniors and others who live in our communities today. I think it’s our kids and our grandparents.

I don’t agree that representing their interests, as well as the interests of those fortunate enough to be doing better, is in any way a conflict of interest. It’s hard, but that’s the job.

As disappointed as I was in the comment, it gives me an opportunity to reflect on my background and the values I bring to my work as your Councillor. I ran openly on my background in affordable housing as an asset to the role, and I think it might be useful to share how I believe my background makes me – and will continue to help me – be a better City Councillor.

City councillors this week debated a plan to give developers a break from having to pay for community improvements alongside the housing they build.

I introduced motions for a more measured approach: one that better shares the costs of keeping up with intensification between developers and taxpayers; and to hold a carefully planned review of whether giving a break to developers actually meets our housing goals, and to make sure the impacts are fair across the city.

I am pleased to say that my colleagues unanimously supported my approach.

No doubt about it: new homebuilding in the city has slowed. Ottawa developers argue that by giving them a pass on the 4 per cent of land value they put towards local community projects, we will see more shovels in the ground faster.

That might be true, or it might not. But we need to consider the implications of foregone benefits charges and what will happen if those aren’t forthcoming. I’d argue that giving developers a break from investing in community benefits will impact some communities more than others.

In neighbourhoods like College Ward, there are a lot of modest homes built in the 1960s on large, well-treed lots. The streets are wide without sidewalks or streetlighting. Density – the number of homes per hectare – is low.

These are homes that were built for young, growing families who have largely now grown up and left, with streets designed from another time. As empty-nesters move on, their neighbourhoods are in transition. Our older suburbs inside the Greenbelt are prime for development and new residents expect modern infrastructure and services.

I like to call our neighbourhood and the ones like it – inside the Greenbelt but not downtown – the “Delta” communities because they are going to see the most change in the coming years. Although communities across the city will change, wards like College, and parts of Gloucester, Riverside, Nepean, and others, will change the most dramatically. In time, albeit over several decades, these neighbourhoods will look very different from how they were planned. It is an anxious time for many families in established communities.

We need infill, and these neighbourhoods can handle the increased density. But more people create more pressure on community services and spaces. We need to build new recreation facilities and upgrade the ones we have. We need pedestrian crosswalks, sidewalks, and street lighting to make our roads safer for the influx of kids. Newer suburban neighbourhoods have been built with a higher standard, while the pipes and other infrastructure in downtown are so old, the city has no choice but to replace them and upgrade the roads and sidewalks at the same time.

Neighbourhoods like City View and Lynwood, for example, have no sidewalks, no streetlights, are designed with wide roads for fast speeds, and have few parks or no parks! But when we welcome such a dramatic change in our neighbourhoods, from 4 storeys to 32 storeys, would you not agree that services must improve to match the new population?

The question before us this week was: who should pay to ensure services keep up with growth in established neighbourhoods? Should it be the residents of new homes to whom developers pass municipal charges? Or should it be you and me, the existing taxpayers?

We need more housing, but we also need to balance the increased density with quality of life for both the existing residents and the incoming ones. Benefits charges are a fair and reasonable approach to doing that. Providing developers with a holiday will put the burden on everyone’s tax bill.

There isn’t enough analysis of the recommendation being put to Council to convince me and others that axing benefits charges will actually result in more homes being built. Or how much the average taxpayer will need to pay to upgrade the needed facilities in those existing neighbourhoods. My concern is that by stripping developers of the obligation to invest in community improvements, we pit the Official Plan’s vision of the ‘most livable midsized city in North America’ against the Task Force’s vision of making ‘Ottawa the most housing-friendly city in Canada’. We need both.

See the CBC article

With this post, I want discuss to a zoning issue that Council addressed in February 2025 ahead of the bulk of the new Zoning By-Law—shelters. Our Official Plan, passed in 2021, calls for the removal of all restrictions for zoning in shelter use. There was extensive public consultation, and through this, we committed to removing the zoning barrier to building shelters.

Before this, if a provider wanted to open a shelter on most properties in Ottawa, they’ll be forced to seek a re-zoning to permit the use. That means if an agency serving newcomers wanted to purchase or build a home to house them temporarily, as agencies like Matthew House do, it wouldn’t be allowed. Building form still needs to conform with what is allowed in the Zoning By-Law, such as height, setbacks, and other restrictions.

What is a shelter? The New Zoning By-Law defines shelter as: A building or part of a building providing temporary accommodations to individuals who are in immediate need of emergency accommodation and food, and may include ancillary health care, counselling and social support services. (refuge)

Increasing shelter accessibility across the city is crucial in addressing Ottawa’s homelessness crisis, especially as demand for emergency housing continues to rise. Having shelters allowed everywhere in Ottawa allows greater opportunities for children to continue to attend school, adults are able to work, and that these residents can access amenities like sports and recreation, shopping, transit, and support services. Everyone should be able to access comfort and normalcy.

Shelters are only one piece of the housing solution. The goal of a shelter is to provide a temporary place to stay while more permanent housing solutions are found. Some people may be on wait lists through housing programs, waiting to access a care facility, and some have had to flee a dangerous situation.

We zone for uses and building types, but we don’t zone people. If you know of a shelter location in your community or someone who is living in a shelter, it's critical that we respect their privacy and not disclose this information to others. Some shelters specifically assist those who need privacy for their safety and the locations of these shelters are never public knowledge. Let's all treat our neighbours with kindness and compassion.

It is important to remember that no one wants to be without a home. I believe strongly that everyone deserves a place to live, so if you follow me, you will know that building and acquiring more housing of all types so people can have a home is critically important to me.

If you or someone you know is in need of shelter, there are options.

• Call 2-1-1: for 24/7 assistance in 150+ languages.
• Contact Interval House of Ottawa: at 613-234-5181 for urgent support or a space free from violence.
• Dial 3-1-1: to reach the City of Ottawa's Outreach and Housing team for assistance or referrals to services.

As is often the case in planning policy, there has been a lot of discussion about parking rules in the draft Zoning By-law. 

In this draft, City staff are recommending no minimum parking requirements for new developments citywide. That’s a shift from the current Zoning By-law – especially in the outer urban and suburban areas – where a minimum 1.0 spaces per unit is usually required. 

Our current Zoning By-laws are a bit of a mess when it comes to parking. Minimum parking required is usually determined by building use and building form, but the rules often contradict and work against more important goals, especially affordability. The cost of building a parking spot can be tens of thousands of dollars, which gets passed on to new buyers or tenants – whether they need the parking spot(s) or not. 

A very small example of where these rules don’t make sense: stacked townhomes in suburban Ottawa require 1.2 parking spaces per unit, whereas back-to-back townhomes require 1.0 parking spaces per unit. This is regardless of their size or number of bedrooms or any other factor that might suggest a higher level of car ownership, or neighbourhood walkability scores. Nobody knows why these rates were set differently. 

Most cities (including Ottawa) have carried over parking requirements from one by-law update to another, without examining whether the underlying assumptions make sense. A lot of the planning standards for parking minimums stem from engineering guidelines in the 1970s. So we’re making decisions on parking today that are based on travel patterns (and planning objectives) from 50 years ago. 

Many cities in North America have eliminated minimum parking requirements, including Edmonton. The idea is to have the market decide the right number of parking spaces. In other words, let developers decide how much parking will be needed by the new residents, in the context of their neighbourhood. 

For apartments, there would still be requirements for visitor parking and delivery parking. The City would also need to update its on-street parking rules. There might even be a need for a parking permit system for some neighbourhoods, to better manage street parking. 

I brought forward a motion to the March 31st joint Planning and Housing and Agricultural and Rural Affairs Meeting asking staff to review the communal parking provisions in Draft 2 and develop a transect approach to permitting privately owned “communal parking lots” and consider car sharing provisions. I am curious to see what they come back with in the fall and am interested to hear your thoughts too.  

Overall, I’m supportive of this change. It would remove a layer of regulation and allow the market to decide what’s the appropriate number of parking spaces. In some neighbourhoods, builders will still voluntarily provide one or more spaces for cars because buyers will demand this, although car ownership continues to decline. But if there’s a development aimed at seniors, or lower income residents, or another demographic that doesn’t necessarily need all those parking spots, they’ll be able to save on that cost and make the housing more affordable. 

Your feedback 

I’m interested to hear from College Ward residents on this proposed parking policy. Contact me at [email protected]. You can also email [email protected] to reach City planners who are working on this project.

Today at City Council, we finalized the new Transportation Master Plan, the blueprint of Ottawa’s road, transit, sidewalk, and bike lane projects for the next 20 years. It’s an important document that establishes our priorities and how we hope to move people and goods around the city.

I moved a motion today to correct what I considered to be a misstep made during the final minutes of the last public meeting about the plan, which was an eleventh-hour motion to offer specific support to a ring road for Ottawa.

The Transportation Master Plan, and the Transportation Committee, for me, has always been the most important one for this term. For a city as large as ours, we have many competing priorities and pre-amalgamation imbalances. Staff and Councillors have been working for 6 years to come to this point. We have had surveys, public meetings, consultations with stakeholder groups. Meeting after meeting with our City staff, who are diligent professionals. Millions of tax dollars spent on consultant studies, origin-destination studies, and public engagement.

Yet through all of that, at no time did we hear about the concept of a ring road. Although it’s not a new idea, it is an old idea being made new again, but councils then and since have rejected it. A ring road is excruciatingly expensive: you need to expropriate agricultural land, impacting farmers, disrupting existing rural communities. Even if another level of government pays to build it, the City would pay to maintain it, and of course, it further unlocks development, meaning sprawl and more costs for services borne by taxpayers. And for what? What is the improved transportation service we would get? Well, one could argue that it’s negligible, since at no time did staff give the decision-makers around this table their advice on the matter. It didn’t appear in the modelling as a solution. It didn’t rise as a project because it was a project that was unworthy of this Council’s attention. Despite that, it came as a surprise, last minute motion that was raised and voted on without any opportunity for public consultation, for study, for serious discussion. 

And let’s please keep in mind, the question of a ring road, and any other solutions for intercity travel congestion, are the responsibility of the provincial government. I feel that we have enough problems to solve with other levels of government: food insecurity, public health, mental health, child care deficits, housing, supportive housing, and without a doubt, most relevant to this Transportation Master plan conversation, effective and affordable public transit.

I can’t get a pothole fixed on a highway on or off ramp, so let’s not confuse the issue by suggesting that City time and resources need to reconsider a project that needs to be borne by the appropriate level of government. My motion refocuses the TMP on the principles, values, evidence-base criteria and careful prioritization set out and approved by committee and council year after year.

My motion does not prevent the province from taking whatever direction they like to address holistic transportation issues. In fact, my replacement motion urges exactly that action. 

Ultimately, in adopting my motion City Council has returned the burden of long-term highway planning to other levels of government.

I am pleased to say that my motion, which was seconded by Councillor Cathy Curry and supported by Mayor Sutcliffe, was adopted by Council on a vote of 16-8. Support for this motion restores the integrity of the Transportation Master Plan as we all worked on it with our residents, and I am grateful to my colleagues for putting it back on track to serve Ottawa for the future.

About the Project  

I am happy to share that I am working with City staff and the Bells Corners community and business community to take a hard look at Robertson Road. It’s a busy street that carries a lot of commuter traffic, but is also well-used by locals, including pedestrians and cyclists. How could it be made better? What can we do through our land and transportation planning to improve access to businesses, homes, and transit? These are the questions we’ll be exploring over the next few months. 

Why ‘Reimagining Robertson Road’? The act of reimagining and rethinking our current state and envisioning what could be is the first step in moving towards tangible change. I'm excited to do this together as a community! The goal of this project is to develop a community-informed vision for transforming Bells Corners into the “Village in the Greenbelt” that it strives to be – one with a vibrant main street, welcoming public spaces, and good connections within and beyond the community. 

With its existing diversity of services, community pride, and an all-round desire for change and improvement, the time is ripe to reimagine Robertson Road as a main street for the Bells Corners community, with vibrant public spaces where people come for a visit and decide to stay for a while.  

We are excited to have support for this project from our consultants at Mobycon, a consultancy group specializing in developing and implementing innovative and sustainable mobility solutions.   

Project Activities:  

The Reimagining Robertson Road project will have events and deliverables from Spring 2025 – Spring 2026.  

Below is some more information about the great activities we’ll be working on as part of this year-long project:

Events and Updates:   

Reimagining Robertson Road: Public Survey Results

Thank you to everyone who took the time to share your thoughts through the Reimagining Robertson Road survey! More than 300 residents and visitors participated in the survey, offering valuable ideas about ways that Robertson Road could be improved to better serve the community. 

The main takeaways from the survey results indicate that there is a strong community desire for safer spaces on Robertson Road to walk and bike, more greenery and places to gather, and a main street that feels vibrant and welcoming. 

The survey results, along with engagement with community members from the Robertson Road Walkshop as well as our upcoming community stakeholder engagement sessions, will help shape the creation of a visual rendering that brings the community's vision for the future of Robertson Road to life. 

We invite you to read the full report on the survey results, linked below.

Public Survey- We want to hear from you!

Do you have feedback and ideas for how Robertson Road could better serve the community? We want to hear them!  

As part of the Reimagining Robertson Road Project, we’ve put together a survey to gather community feedback and ideas to better understand how residents would reimagine Robertson Road. Feedback from this survey will help in the creation of a digital rendering of Robertson Road, including ideas from the community on what changes they would want to see made on Robertson Road. 

Your feedback will support our team in better understanding community visions and ideas for how this corridor could be safer, greener, and more welcoming for everyone. The survey is open to all people who live, work, and travel to Bells Corners.

Robertson Road Walkshop  

We hosted the Robertson Road Walkshop on Saturday, June 28th. We are incredibly appreciative to all community members who came out to this event and contributed to the great discussions.  

Our consultants from Mobycon led different groups for a 1 – 1.5 km walk along Robertson Road, stretching from Old Richmond Road to Moodie Drive. The walk had many stops for the group to observe and discuss the current state of Robertson Road through multiple lenses and perspectives.  

Residents who participated in the Walkshop filled out a "Rate the Place" scorecard where they ranked various factors impacting the street environment. If you want to read more about the final results of the scorecards filled out at this event and insights from the Robertson Road Walkshop, please read the Robertson Road Walkshop Report below. 

Here are some images below from the event. 

Stay up to date on project!  

We are looking forward to listening and hearing from you on how Robertson Road could better serve the community! 

If you want to receive email updates as the Reimagining Robertson Road project moves forward, please sign up for our mailing list for the project here.  

If you have any questions about this project, please feel free to reach out to [email protected].  

You may or may not know this about me, but before I ran for office I worked in community engagement. I had the honour of working for two non-profit organizations that believed that people care deeply about where they live but may be missing the information and connections they need to get things done for their neighbourhood. I have been consistently inspired by neighbourhood leadership and ingenuity and felt that if I worked as an elected official, I could create more opportunities for community leadership and passion to shine through.

That’s why I was so motivated to get involved in policy work like Emergency Preparedness, the Community Partnership Insurance Program, the Public Notification System for development applications, and the Right-of-Way gardening permissions. I think the City could do so much more (and for less!) by creating the conditions for neighbours to help neighbours and advance residents’ priorities.

When I learned two years ago that the City’s public engagement strategy, developed in 2013, was up for a refresh, I started nosing around and asked for regular updates on the City’s progress. I’ve become increasingly concerned with the tone and tenor of public engagement initiatives at the City. Whether in the rural, urban or suburban wards, I’ve noted confusion: the public isn’t always familiar with the differences between an “open house”, an “information session”, or a full consultation. The City (and councillors) don’t always do a great job of making sure people know what to expect.

If residents don’t know on what parts of the decision-making the City is consulting or the scope of feedback to which the City will listen, that can often lead to feelings of disappointment and frustration. City staff may feel overwhelmed by resident reaction and be underprepared.

If we don’t work to make this better, I worry that there will be a mutual disillusionment and pulling away from the City’s engagement with the public. Policies and programs will be less relevant, maybe even less frequently used by residents. It’s a vicious cycle that could erode the trust in our City as an institution. We’ve seen in other cities that when the relationship between city government and its residents is damaged, ill-intentioned actors can come in and use social media or other public platforms to divide communities. That’s not the democratic system I’m fighting for.

So on Wednesday, I’m moving a motion that would require the City to make public its documentation on the Public Engagement Strategy refresh. They have developed a guidebook for staff already, and I think residents should see the direction that the City is taking with public engagement and what tools residents can expect in different kinds of engagements. After all, the public is the primary stakeholder! If we can offer the public a better understanding of what kind of conversation they are entering into with the City, my hope is that temperatures can come down, and better outcomes can be achieved – maybe even trust restored.

If my motion passes, staff would be directed in eight months’ time to share with Council what lessons have been learned both from staff and the public using the engagement framework. It would further require staff to highlight what changes have been made in response to the feedback they’ve heard.

Pushing the City to some public accountability for the work they have already undertaken to refresh this strategy could go a long way to create transparency. The City would benefit from translating their internal documents for public use. Residents would know what kind of consultation the City is holding, what decisions have already been made going in, and which are up for grabs, and why the consultation has taken the form that it has.

Sometimes we need to say out loud that certain decisions are not up for public consultation, and that some engagements are purely for information. Emergency housing solutions are not for public debate. Health service locations are not up for public debate. There are certain citywide benefits, both based on the City’s strategic priorities as well as directions from other levels of governments, that aren’t helpful to debate at a hyperlocal level. This is an uncomfortable thing to say. But in my experience, greater transparency both on what will be up for consultation and what won’t goes a long way to increase trust and mutual understanding.

There’s a difference between information-sharing and consultation. Residents deserve to know what’s being asked of them when they attend an open house, complete an online form, or email a planner. Residents further deserve to know how they can most usefully and meaningfully contribute to City decision-making, and to know transparently why the scope of consultation on any given issue is as expansive or limited as it is. Residents are generous and hard-working when they provide the City their feedback. Wasting those efforts because the City has been opaque in its consultation choices does not serve the public interest well. My motion is an important step to avoid that.

In January 2021, City Council approved the new Zoning By-Law project to bring zoning by-laws into alignment with Ottawa’s new Official Plan, approved by the Province of Ontario in 2022. The Official Plan lays out a broad framework about where growth should happen in the city until 2046 and beyond. The new Zoning By-law will implement the policies and directions of the Official Plan.

Ottawa is expected to grow from about 1-million people in 2021 to nearly 1.5-mllion people in 2046. The Official Plan seeks to allow growth, but limit sprawl, with the balance being achieved through more infill development. This policy decision is consistent with subsequent Provincial Housing Bills that made every serviced lot in Ottawa be zoned for three units as-of-right.  Every part of Ottawa will see development and change. The height and density will tend to be higher the closer you are to urban areas and major transit stations and lower the closer you are to the rural areas, and in the centre of established neighbourhoods.

A Zoning By-law governs:

• how land and buildings may be used (e.g. residential, retail store, light industrial use)
• the height and massing of buildings and other structures, and their location on the lot
• the density of development and land use
• lot sizes and dimensions
• permissions, requirements and standards for on-site parking
• some aspects of the character of buildings and development

Why are we doing an update?

The current version of Ottawa’s Zoning By-law, officially known as “Zoning By-law 2008-250”, is a conglomeration of rules consolidated from older zoning by-laws, dating back more than 50 years. It’s out of sync with current priorities like housing affordability, transportation needs, and climate change. And it’s not aligned to Ottawa’s new Official Plan (2022), which means it is constantly receiving amendment requests from developers and creating uncertainty for residents. The lack of harmonization in our zoning regulations is creating additional costs, barriers to housing, and overall frustration.

Thankfully this process is well under way. City Staff released Draft 2 (https://engage.ottawa.ca/zoning) earlier this Spring and are now accepting feedback.

I’m encouraging residents to review the draft zoning provisions and share any comments or questions at [email protected]. Comments received before June 30 will be reviewed and considered by staff and may inform changes in the final Zoning By-law presented to Council.

This version of the draft includes hundreds of pages of text spanning multiple documents, along with maps and interactive features. It’s a huge amount of information! Ultimately, I hope these posts will allow College Ward residents to share feedback more effectively with staff.

In this series of I’m aiming to:

• Provide a simplified guide to help residents understand the process
• Explain how the proposed updates may affect your property and neighbourhood
• Get residents engaged to “crowdsource” a review of the new zoning map, to identify any errors or issues.

For now, I would like to share some key terms:

“Main Street Corridors” are major roads like Baseline, Robertson, Greenbank, and Clyde that will also see a mix of employment, retail, amenities, and housing, including apartments. Streets and properties adjacent to them will also see a higher level of development.

“Minor Corridors” are roads like Meadowlands, Iris, and parts of Centrepointe Drive. More height and density are allowed along these roads, but less than along Main Street Corridors.

And then there are “Evolving Neighbourhoods” which include these Hubs and Corridors, and areas immediately adjacent to them, that are anticipated to see more change and growth as a result of their proximity to transportation corridors.

“Transects and urban expansion areas” There are two other concepts in the Official Plan that are relevant to understanding  how staff are creating the New Zoning By-Law: transects. The Official Plan divides the city into six areas known as “transects”, from the most urban (“The Downtown”) to the least urban (“Rural”).  College Ward is in the “Outer Urban” transect.

So that’s a very quick overview. In the next few posts, we’ll dive into how these policies and concepts are being translated into a new Zoning By-law. Stay tuned!

Video of Laine asking questions about Red Light Camera and ASE revenues

Recent media reports have highlighted the Ottawa Auditor General’s findings that describe the redirection of red-light camera revenue since 2019 to the City’s general revenues and to the Ottawa Police Service.

I have to say I’m feeling disappointed that we repeated this same decision-making, despite my best efforts, even as recently as four months ago.

I spoke out during the 2025 budget deliberations in December because we voted again to redirect revenue from road safety measures, this time from automated speed enforcement (ASE) revenues, collected now and moving forward.

That’s right. This isn’t just a 2019 decision under the last term of Council: this Council voted to make the same decision in 2024!

On March 31, 2025 the City of Ottawa launched the consultation on the Transportation Master Plan (TMP) Capital Infrastructure Plan, and we want to hear from you! Have your say on the future of transportation in Ottawa and share your input by completing the online surveys available on the Transportation Master Plan project page.

The draft Capital Infrastructure Plan identifies the transit and road projects that are needed to accommodate planned growth to the year 2046 and achieve the City’s mobility objectives. It also identifies a subset of projects that should be prioritized for implementation. This phase of TMP consultation also includes prioritization of the active transportation projects that were approved by Council in April 2023.

Ottawa has grown into a city of one million residents. Over the next two decades, Ottawa will gain approximately 400,000 new residents and 160,000 new jobs. With that kind of growth, we need to plan for a flexible, dependable, safe and efficient transportation network. 

Get involved!

• Complete the surveys on the recommended road and transit projects, the prioritized list of active transportation projects, and other components of the Capital Infrastructure Plan
• Attend a public engagement session – virtual and in-person events will run from April 8 to May 6
• Sign up for updates and stay informed on the TMP process

Surveys will be open until May 12. To participate and learn more, visit the Transportation Master Plan project page.

Your input matters! Transportation decisions impact everyone, no matter how you move through the city.

Proposed pedestrian projects in College Ward

Proposed cycling projects in College Ward