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Ottawa Citizen
07-08-2025
- General
- Ottawa Citizen
Pellerin: A safe, crack-free sidewalk is as hard to find as a Labubu toy
At the risk of sounding desperately uncool talking about things I'm too old to understand, I dream of living in a city where normal non-cracked and non-weed-infested sidewalks are easier to find than the latest Labubu. (Yes, I'll explain what those are. Gather around, gentle readers, it's time for Auntie Brigitte's Story Hour.) Article content You ever seen the meme that says, 'The Printer that Simply Worked and Other Fairy Tales'? I feel the same way about sidewalks that aren't ugly death traps. Article content Article content Article content Columnist Bruce Deachman recently wrote about Ottawa sidewalks that are too often 'obstacle courses, pot-holed nightmares for strollers, walkers, the elderly and the absent-minded, with, in at least one case that I recall, utility poles growing out of them.' Article content I like Bruce a lot but he's way too nice. In addition to what he mentions, there are cracks and craters everywhere that sometimes, after a few years of badly twisted ankles and toppled wheelchairs, get patched up with grossly applied asphalt, leaving us with the ugliest urban patchwork of bricks, concrete, dust and bitumen ever invented. With ungodly amounts of weeds growing every which way. Article content Sidewalks are a useful transportation design element, provided we make them wide and smooth enough (except for the tactile patches marking intersections for the disabled) so that they can provide safety for all humans, not just those who are young and nimble enough to jump over cars. Article content Article content On busy streets, sidewalks also serve to hold 'street furniture' such as bike racks, trees, newspaper boxes and benches so weary commuters can sit (ideally in the shade) while waiting, and waiting, for the transit bus — no, not that one, the other one that comes after the one that inexplicably failed to show up. Article content Article content Sidewalks are a great idea in principle but for some reason in Ottawa we have thoroughly muffed the execution. Sidewalks that are just right and well-maintained are rarer than those Labubu toys, which, for those of you who don't currently live with a Gen Zer, are sort of like this season's 'Tickle-me-Elmo' — that one doodad without which your favourite representative of the target demographic will not feel complete. Article content Labubus are small, round plush toys with monster faces and bunny ears. They are, I am assured by the internets, the hottest thing in the history of ever. They're from a series called The Monsters and what's interesting about them is that they are sold in sealed plastic bags inside a closed box and you don't know which one you're getting until you open it up.
Ottawa Citizen
15-07-2025
- Business
- Ottawa Citizen
Denley: Development fees are out of whack and hurting new home owners
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. François Latreille says the city fees to redevelop these two buildings in the ByWard Market area are prohibitive. Photo by TONY CALDWELL / POSTMEDIA It's time the City of Ottawa did a major reassessment of the charges it applies to new home development. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Exclusive articles from Elizabeth Payne, David Pugliese, Andrew Duffy, Bruce Deachman and others. Plus, food reviews and event listings in the weekly newsletter, Ottawa, Out of Office. Unlimited online access to Ottawa Citizen and 15 news sites with one account. Ottawa Citizen ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on. Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword. Support local journalism. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Exclusive articles from Elizabeth Payne, David Pugliese, Andrew Duffy, Bruce Deachman and others. Plus, food reviews and event listings in the weekly newsletter, Ottawa, Out of Office. Unlimited online access to Ottawa Citizen and 15 news sites with one account. Ottawa Citizen ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on. Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword. Support local journalism. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors The goal of the city's development processes, surely, is to approve new housing. When it makes attractive proposals unaffordable for developers, the fees become self-defeating. Citizen colleague Bruce Deachman dug deep into the actual costs of getting approvals and it's a discouraging picture. Housing developer François Latreille wants to construct a 16-unit building to replace two old duplexes on St. Andrew Street near Sussex Drive. His plan is exactly the kind of medium-sized development the city claims to want, but Latreille says the approximately $700,000 he would have to pay for various city fees and studies makes the project economically unviable and unlikely to go ahead. The biggest cost for Latreille's project is development charges (DCs) of $316,800. There are two typical points of view about DCs. Neither is quite correct. Opponents label the charges as taxes on new home buyers. Defenders of DCs say they are necessary to cover the cost of growth. The second argument is the better of the two, but only if the things on the development charge list are actually growth-related. This is the heart of the problem and where Ottawa is over-reaching. For example, the city would like to build a new aquatic centre on the Carleton University campus at a cost of $55 million. The plan is to have 55 per cent of it paid for by development charges from new home owners. Why? The city has never had a swimming facility at the level of what's proposed, and it will serve the whole community, not just new home owners. There is no good reason to make new people pay the majority of the cost. A similar argument could be made about the plan to build a new city recreation centre near Pinecrest Road and the Queensway. It's in the heart of a long-established neighbourhood, but new people will pay 90 per cent of the $112-million cost through development charges. The amount of money new home owners pay in development charges is not trivial, although many municipalities charge more. In all, the city expects to collect $170.5 million this year. Intensification is often cited as cost-effective because the roads and sewer and water pipes have already been built. However, a new single or semi inside the greenbelt faces $56,399 in development charges. More than $18,000 of that goes to roads. Sewer charges are nearly $8,000. Public transit is just over $18,000. Parks and recreation facilities cost about $9,000, although they come with no guarantee of either parks or recreation facilities. This advertisement has not loaded yet. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. If buyers of new homes were presented with this bill, the costs would be rather unpopular, but since the charges are buried in the cost of the house, they are not easily visible. Fairness would suggest loading less cost onto future homeowners already struggling to afford a house, but politics will make that difficult. Councillors like to build lots of stuff, but they also like low tax increases. A generous interpretation of how much of that new stuff is required because of growth helps them achieve both goals. To be fair to people buying new homes, the city could have to either charge higher taxes or build less stuff. Neither of those options is politically popular. Councillors like to build lots of stuff, but they also like low tax increases. Cutting the charges on new homes would add a cost pressure for the city because it pays for its planning and and development department almost entirely by user fees. This year, the department is expected to generate $16.9 million through fees and services, leaving only $460,000 in cost for the broader tax base. These are some of the challenges that should be addressed by Mayor Mark Sutcliffe's housing innovation task force, which is expected to report by the end of the summer. The task force, made up mostly of private sector housing industry people and non-government experts, should take a hard look at how much money the city really needs to extract from buyers of new homes. Randall Denley is an Ottawa journalist and author. Contact him at randalldenley1@
Ottawa Citizen
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Ottawa Citizen
Six Ottawans tackle the question: What makes us Canadian?
Many Canadians are taking stock these days of what makes us unique. Bruce Deachman spoke to several Ottawans in advance of Canada Day to learn what being Canadian means to them. In their own words, here are their responses: Article content HELEN SOUTER, McKellar Park Article content Article content I'm a daughter of two immigrants, Italian and Ukrainian. They left their country to find a better life, and they did. They found each other. They found each other here at the Y (YMCA). My dad was playing a guitar with a few of his paisani, and she said, 'I like you. Let's dance.' Article content Article content Being Canadian is all I know, because I have the influence of them and why they left. Mom was Ukrainian, in a detention camp in Germany. And my dad, there was nothing there for him. Article content Article content I married military. We went all over the place in Canada, and we went to Washington, D.C. for a four-year diplomatic posting, before 9/11. They made me an honorary American. I was proud to be a Canadian, representing Canada. Article content When my son married a Chinese girl, we went to China for their second wedding ceremony. Her father said to us, 'When Jill told us she was going to marry Andrew, we were worried that he was going to be a loud American.' But they were very happy to see that he was a kind, gentle person. Article content It's a scary time with the threat of being part of (the U.S.) and losing what we have — our identity, our health care. But this recent phenomenon, with everyone sort of elbows up, I think it's going to stay. Article content Article content Article content I've always talked to my family, saying 'Be proud of where you're from. If you're not, then obviously that's a problem.' Article content I've met different people in different cultures all over, and most of them are pretty happy where they're from. Obviously, at the end of the day, we have to make sure that we take care of ourselves, but taking care of our people, too, is important to me. I think sometimes that's where we stray from the big picture of making sure that everyone is doing well where you are, and not adding extra things in to make life more difficult for people. Article content I've learned a lot from my concussion patients that have nothing. They've lost their jobs, they've lost what they can do, and yet I have one girl who continues to donate to special causes. I think it's incredible that she goes out and still gives money that she doesn't really even have to support herself, to help someone else's life. Those people are really inspirational to me.
Ottawa Citizen
21-06-2025
- General
- Ottawa Citizen
Pellerin: Too much garbage? One man's trash is another man's treasure
Not to boast, but I once sold personal accident insurance door-to-door in rural Quebec. I feel this makes me uniquely qualified to find a spot for our trash now that the Trail Road waste facility is near capacity and we seem thoroughly unable to change our behaviour or think outside the garbage pail. Article content If only we'd had some warning though, eh? We might have been able to prepare ourselves: for instance encouraging people to throw out less stuff by giving them a discount on their property taxes or, say, cash prizes. Instead, we imposed a three-item limit on garbage at the curb, when 85 per cent of us were already throwing out less than that. Which is another way of saying: we did nothing. Article content Article content Article content I have written about this topic a few times, going as far back as 2021. Many others have weighed in memorably about the issue, including fellow Citizen scribes Bruce Deachman and Randall Denley. I am confident Citizen readers know we have a problem in a city where we keep adding people, and where the people we add produce garbage that gets added to the trash already produced by the people who already live here. I'm terrible at math but even I can see it doesn't add up. Why can't the municipal experts we pay to manage just this kind of problem do their job? Article content Most who live in this town are good citizens, from a refuse standpoint. We dutifully sort our blue bin items from our black bin items. Many painstakingly compost. We shun single-use plastics and unnecessary packaging. We carry cloth shopping bags everywhere. We have emergency back-up ones in the car, and in handbags, too. The problem is, there are just too many of us for our dump's future capacity and this is something that's been known for some time. Why has this problem not been fixed yet? Article content Article content Yep, in the late 1990s. First, I took a sales class that lasted two weeks. Then I started working with a mentor. That, too, lasted about two weeks. Let's just say that I knew even at age 19 that going door-to-door to sell people something was not for me. Article content Yet, in a remarkable and entirely non-ironic turn of events, that is precisely what's needed at this point in time: selling our trash to … well, anyone or any group who will take it. Article content In sales training, you learn to defeat people's objections. Like, 'I don't need this stuff,' which can be countered with, 'Oh, but you do; let me show you how.' Article content Ottawans' trash is no ordinary garbage, you know. It's what the residents of the capital city throw out. It's genuinely official trash. How often have you met this much discarded junk from a government town?
Ottawa Citizen
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Ottawa Citizen
Today's letters: OC Transpo's 'New Ways to Bus' isolates seniors
Article content OC Transpo has an obligation to support seniors Article content I read Bruce Deachman's article with a sense of familiarity. My family is also experiencing the negative impacts of 'New Ways to Bus.' Article content My parents live near Merivale Mall in Nepean. My mom (in her 70s) recently had to stop driving for medical reasons. My dad, who is 80 and has stage 4 cancer, still drives, but doesn't always feel up to leaving the house. My mom needs her own ways to get around without relying on my dad. Article content Article content My mom stopped driving a couple of months before 'New Ways to Bus.' She began taking the bus again on her own, after not taking it much during the pandemic. She was able to take one bus route from her house to Tunney's Pasture in about 20 minutes, then switch to the LRT to get downtown to meet friends for lunch or go shopping. She could also use that same route to visit shops on Wellington Street West. She enjoyed the ease and freedom of being able to get around without her car. Article content Now, the routes near my parents' house have all drastically changed and do not in the least resemble the variations that remained more or less constant over the previous 40 years. There is only one route serving their nearest local bus stop, and it goes to Billings Bridge, not Tunney's Pasture. Google Maps says her route to get downtown would now involve either two buses and the LRT or two very local buses. Otherwise, she can walk 10 minutes to reach the nearest bus that goes to Tunney's Pasture. In either case, her total time to get downtown would likely be 50 minutes to an hour, instead of the previous 30-to-40 minutes. (The drive downtown is about 20 minutes.) Article content Article content While the issue raised in the column is clearly more drastic and more disastrous to our local economy, the effects these changes have on seniors such as my mom also warrant attention. There have been countless alarms raised about the epidemic of loneliness among seniors and the importance of empowering them to remain independent as long as possible. Ensuring they can easily use transit to get around when they cannot drive is an essential service that our city must provide to those who have contributed to our community for decades. 'New Ways to Bus' seems to be creating 'New Ways to Isolate Seniors' instead of making it easier for them to get around the city. Article content
