Council must focus on building safe, affordable, healthy communities

From the desk of: Rideau-Rockcliffe Councillor Rawlson King

Rideau-Rockcliffe is rich in history. With two heritage conservation districts and individually designated homes through the ward, heritage is woven within the fabric of our communities and neighbourhoods. Therefore, for this new term of council, I pushed to create a full standing Built Heritage Committee, which was unanimously approved by council.

I believe the creation of a new standing committee demonstrates our collective will as a municipality to protect, promote, and preserve our city’s built heritage. Ontario Bill 23 includes changes to the Ontario Heritage Act, which will require the City of Ottawa to be more agile to protect its heritage resources.

The creation of a full Built Heritage Committee will streamline the city’s legislative process by removing the need for additional approval through the Planning Committee and it will have minimal impact on city staff in terms of work and cost. The creation of the new standing committee will also enhance its advocacy role. Most major municipalities in the province, including Toronto and Kingston, have had their respective heritage committees report directly to council for years. It is important that we signal our intent to protect Ottawa’s superb built heritage to maintain our special sense of place.

With the advent of a new term of council, I am continuing my objective to help build safe, affordable, and healthy communities. Working with council and the community, our city created an anti-racism secretariat that consulted with more than 1,000 Ottawa residents and community stakeholders. The resulting comprehensive anti-racism strategy has identified concrete actions to remove systemic barriers in city programs, services, and policies.

Council must work to deliver the poverty reduction strategy and food security policy that it started last term.

Homelessness and health

Council must also act to address the growing threat of homelessness by advocating for more affordable housing and by improving social services. Despite the challenging economic headwinds, we must continue to invest in people and policy innovation. This includes:

• enabling land trusts,
• helping diverse communities to provide culturally responsive affordable housing,
• investing in non-market public housing,
• ensuring that we reduce the cost of transit, and
• making recreational activities more accessible through lower fees.

It will also be important that we focus on improving the health of our communities. I believe Dr. Vera Etches and the team at Ottawa Public Health should be commended for their incredible resolve to keep our city safe over the past two years. While our public health agency performed in an exemplary fashion, the pandemic has revealed the socioeconomic and racial disparities that need to be addressed.

We have begun some of that critical work through investment in preventive health measures such as neighbourhood health and wellness hubs, but we will need to do more.

Working together

As we move forward, it will be imperative that we take more action to protect our environment against the existential threat of climate change. This will mean working to ensure that we implement our climate change master plan, to implement the conversion of our transit fleet and pursue the deep retrofit of buildings.

Council will also need to be diligent to deliver a fair and transparent urban planning process in the face of provincial changes that aim to remove planning powers from local government and the public participation of residents. We therefore will need to consistently work to improve democracy and accountability at city hall to address the massive fiscal and light rail transit oversight challenges that confront us, and fight climate change to create a greener, more liveable city.

We also need to work together. In an age of political polarization and ideological division, our city and its people will only prosper if we all collectively seek common ground. Governments need to be able to coordinate during times of crisis and members of council need to be able to cooperate to advance the interests of all Ottawa residents.

I am excited to pursue the concerns of residents who are seeking more housing, more green space, the protection of our built heritage, significant investments in affordable housing, in traffic management, snow removal, road and pathway maintenance, in pedestrian and cycling infrastructure, in reliable transit, and parks. With the next four years being critical for our city, while we must deal with all these serious problems, I remain optimistic about the collective prospect of success.

Editor’s note: In December, Coun. King was appointed chair of the Built Heritage Committee. He also serves as council liaison for the city’s anti-racism and ethnocultural relations initiatives.