It will be a good year for Rural Ottawa

On Wednesday, City Council met for the first meeting of 2024. I can’t help but feel excited for the upcoming year. You have heard, and will continue hearing from me, about the upcoming Rural Summit because it is significant. This forum will highlight the issues that need fixing and advance the goals that I have for improving the lives of folks who live outside the urban boundary.

The Rural Summit is vital because it provides an opportunity to accomplish the priorities we share in our communities.

For instance, as many know, removing truck traffic from Manotick is a top priority for me. As I’ve highlighted in the past, a major impediment to these efforts is the view among City staff that such a move can only be done in the context of a broader truck route review. However, this is not the case in other municipalities; there should be greater flexibility for solving this problem within rural Ottawa as it impacts our communities most directly.

Critical projects are delayed while awaiting approval from City staff, such as installing a traffic light at Perth and Shea, safety measures at Shea and Flewellyn, and generally, core infrastructure investments, including road resurfacing, sidewalk additions, gravel road upgrades, traffic calming, policing, and more. All these issues face similar hurdles: a slow, indifferent City that tries to apply a one-size-fits-all solution to all of Ottawa without any consideration for how different things are in the rural areas.

The Rural Summit is our chance to break this gridlock by focusing on these kinds of rural-specific issues and moving to a system of public administration that can better serve the needs and interests of folks in our communities. I am looking forward to continuing to deliver real results for rural Ottawa through this upcoming summit.

As the Rural Summit approaches, you can sign up to receive updates and share your ideas by emailing ruralsummit@ottawa.ca. Also, there will soon be a website page where you can access more information which I will share once it is live.