New active transportation facilities on the Hwy 417 bridges

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:   

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.  

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!