Ottawa’s 2024 Rural Summit

Residents may have heard that Ottawa is set to host a Rural Summit. This summit, the first of its kind since 2008, represents a unique opportunity for our communities to have their voices heard, to share their views on the unique challenges facing rural Ottawa, and to contribute to solutions to meaningfully improve life for rural Ottawa.

Over the coming days and weeks, City staff will be working with a group of residents from all five of the City’s rural wards to design and shape how the summit will proceed. The summit will be composed of at least six meetings – a meeting in each rural ward and a final culmination meeting near the end of the year. Residents will have many opportunities to participate, so please stay tuned for more information; I will share information as I receive it in my newsletter.  

While I do not want to put my thumb on the scale or presuppose the outcome of this summit, I do have some goals that I hope to achieve for rural Ottawa.

At the core of many issues facing our communities (such as truck traffic in Manotick, a lack of service delivery in rural areas, road and infrastructure maintenance, traffic control devices, and much more) is the fact that rural Ottawa is treated the same way as urban Ottawa. The “one-size-fits-all” approach means that rural Ottawa has difficulty solving issues that are unique to our communities as the process through which issues are solved is a City-wide process.

With this in mind, I would like for the summit to explore options to improve how decisions are made so that rural Ottawa can set its own priorities more effectively. Additionally, I would like to develop a system to make the City more responsive to rural concerns; it should not take as long as it does to implement simple solutions in our communities and it should not be as onerous as it is to navigate City services.

These are a few ideas that I will be advancing through the rural summit. It is important that residents participate in this process as the rural summit is an exceptional opportunity to make meaningful progress on the issues that matter most to our communities. For more information on the City’s rural summit, check out the interview that I did alongside Councillor Kelly on CTV.