Update from the Rural Summit 2024
Earlier this month, Ottawa held its first rural summit in almost 17 years. I was proud to stand alongside my rural Council colleagues and the Mayor to announce a number of improvements that are immediate outcomes from the summit.
Though there were many investments and priorities announced (doubling the investment into ditching and stormwater management, hiring paramedics to improve response times, and more), I wanted to share what I believe is the most substantial of the outcomes: improvements to governance.
I know what you’re thinking. Governance? What does that even mean tangibly and why does improving it mean so much for rural Ottawa? Why is this the priority rather than the thousands of other ideas that came forward during the summit?
To understand why improvements to governance are so vital, I think it is important to take step back and examine the problems that the City has.
Residents often tell me that it feels like things aren’t getting done or aren’t getting done right. Ditches aren’t being cleared and maintained, roads are in poor condition, gridlock is strangling our villages, development is proceeding quickly but haphazardly, and more. There is a feeling that the problems we are facing are growing more quickly than our ability to implement solutions.
Though this issue is not unique to Ottawa, it is particular to our municipality in some ways. Much of this comes down to the fact that, as an amalgamated City of over a million people spread across nearly 2800km2, of which roughly 80% of our landmass is rural, one size solutions do not work. Many of Manotick’s needs are different than those of downtown Ottawa and we need a way of governing that reflects this.
Yet we don’t have such a system. Most decisions are made centrally with only token consideration for the significant differences between communities. This is why it has taken years to start seeing meaningful progress on issues like removing trucks from Manotick; the City is unable to conceive of doing things differently in areas where needs, interests, and challenges are so very different.
Put simply: the way that the City is governed does not work for the people who live here. We need a new approach to governance.
Governance is the chief problem that the City has across all subject areas. It holds us back everywhere. And now, through the Rural Summit, we are taking significant steps toward fixing it in our communities.
First, the mandate of the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee will be strengthened and ARAC will have greater budget authority. This will give Councillors from Rural Ottawa greater decision-making power on matters that impact our villages and rural communities so that we can better advocate for policies that reflect the interests of rural residents.
Next, the Rural Affairs Office – the group at the City responsible for policy development and coordination in the rural areas – will be enhanced with additional resources. This will make it so that the ideas shared at the Rural Summit are able to make their way into policy development more quickly and that future policies impacting rural Ottawa are better managed.
In addition, the City will be designating a Rural Lead in each department. This will mean that each group at the City has the expertise and knowledge necessary to make sure that programs, services, and investments are better tailored to the needs of rural Ottawa. It also means that Councillors’ offices will have clearer points of contact in each department so that we can advocate for our communities more directly.
These governance changes will enable the City to accomplish a wide range of other priority outcomes from the summit – outcomes that I am excited to share with the community in greater detail in the coming weeks.
For the first time since amalgamation, we are going to actually fix the broken approach of imposing urban ideas on rural residents. The Rural Summit is putting our communities back in the driver’s seat of our own affairs and interests. I am excited for all the promise this holds for rural Ottawa.