“Sometimes it’s sort of portrayed as a zero-sum game, where anything we do to support one part of the city comes at the cost of another part of the city.”
From improving ditches to preserving the character of Ottawa’s outlying villages, Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and the city’s five rural councillors outlined 10 commitments at the first “rural summit” in 17 years.
The last summit happened in 2008, seven years after municipal amalgamation combined all of the Ottawa-Carleton region’s cities, towns and rural municipalities into one city covering almost 2,800 square kilometres.
Of that vast territory, about 80 per cent is rural, but only 20 per cent of Ottawa’s population lives in rural communities.
“Its not always easy in a city like Ottawa to balance the needs of rural residents, suburban residents and downtown residents,” Sutcliffe told rural residents at the event at Sir Robert Borden High School on Saturday.
“Sometimes it’s sort of portrayed as a zero-sum game, where anything we do to support one part of the city comes at the cost of another part of the city. So, if we do something for rural residents, then it must be something negative for downtown residents. I don’t believe that at all.”
The move to hold a rural summit started in December 2022 with West Carleton-March Coun. Clarke Kelly. Almost two years later, after a series of surveys and in-person workshops to gauge major issues, the summit was headlined by Sutcliffe and the five rural councillors representing Rideau-Jock, West Carleton-March, Osgoode, Orléans South-Navan and Orléans East-Cumberland.
Among the 10 commitments announced Saturday:
1. Conduct a water rate review and improve rural ditches
Noxious weeds and standing water in ditches are major issues for rural councillors.
“This is one of my top concerns, if not the top concern in my office,” Kelly said.
Sutcliffe said the city was working to double the budget for ditching and drainage infrastructure by 2025. That will add $1.8 million for a total of $3.6 million.
City staff are also to develop a plan for ditch infrastructure to address safety hazards posed by noxious weeds and standing water, focusing on improving maintenance and creating clear protocols for managing ditches.
2. Strengthen the mandate of the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee
Changes in the ARAC mandate will ensure the rural voice is “front and centre in city planning,” Sutcliffe said.
There are some matters that should have gone through ARAC as well as other city hall committees, but did not go to ARAC, he said. “We’re going to make sure that the mandate is clear and that any issue that should be going through ARAC is going to go through ARAC.”
Osgoode Coun. George Darouze, the ARAC chair, said rural residents didn’t want to see urban solutions in rural settings. Strengthening the committee’s mandate will ensure that a rural lens is applied to decisions, he said.
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3. Ensure there’s a dedicated rural lead in every department in the city
Every department in the city will have someone who is able to look at issues from a rural perspective, Sutcliffe said.
This is a mechanism that will help address long-standing and complex issues, Kelly said. About 17,000 people work for the City of Ottawa, but sometimes it’s hard for rural residents to find the answers they’re seeking, he said.
“Having someone in each department that we can go to to navigate will be a great step forward,” Kelly added.
4. Improve rural paramedic response times
Although health care is a provincial responsibility, delays in off-loading patients at hospital emergency rooms are having a negative effect on wait times in rural communities.
Paramedics must remain in the emergency rooms with patients they have transported until hospital staff assume responsibility. Even though there are dispatch points for paramedics sprinkled throughout the city, hospitals have become the dispatch points, which has increased response times, Sutcliffe said.
The paramedic service’s new dispatch system has already improved response times. Meanwhile, the city plans to hire 23 additional paramedics in 2025 and another 23 in 2026 and to work with the province to improving off-load times at hospitals, he said.
Building dispatch points in rural communities will ensure that ambulances are waiting there, not at hospitals, Orléans East-Cumberland Coun. Matt Luloff said.
“If you are out in Metcalfe or Osgoode, Constance Bay, Cumberland or Sarsfield, you cannot be worrying about how long it will take an ambulance to get from the General Hospital to your place.”
5. Create a rural list for prioritizing intersection signals
The city has 24 councillors. At budget time they all want traffic signals or new intersections, Sutcliffe said. There’s a process at city hall to determine the priorities, but the busiest parts of the city are more likely to get top billing.
The plan is to change that process to add a standalone list for rural communities so that comparisons are between rural intersections. That measure will be in the 2025 budget, Sutcliffe said.
“This will help us invest more effectively in rural intersections, without the kind of competition that has existed in the past.”
6. Get the rural perspective on road renewal projects
What works in downtown doesn’t always work in rural areas. Prime example: a roundabout in Richmond that wouldn’t accommodate farm equipment.
“After the work started and after almost a year of trying to communicate that the design wasn’t going to work, I surprised city staff and the consultants on site with a farmer who was gracious enough to bring his tractor and drove right over the roundabout to show them it wasn’t going to be wide enough,” Rideau-Jock Coun. David Brown said.
Sutcliffe said the city was “committed to consulting with rural councillors on road renewal projects to ensure that the designs in these areas meet the unique needs of rural residents.
“This is really important because we have intersections where there are cars and there’s also large farm equipment going through the same intersection. We want to make sure we’re not using the same model for somewhere downtown.”
7: Streamline planning for rural applicants
Rural residents have often commented about the hassles of minor rezoning applications and severance applications. Beginning in 2025, the city will streamline the process to ensure applications are processed more quickly, smoothly and easily, Sutcliffe said.
“Excessive red tape is a challenge for rural projects,” Orléans South-Navan Coun. Catherine Kitts said. “I think the addition of rural experts available to help residents will be big.”
8. Develop a balanced rural growth strategy
The character of historic rural villages in the city must be preserved, while allowing for thoughtful development, Sutcliffe said, adding there will be a review in 2025.
“We don’t want to have a scenario where they’re getting over-developed or getting packed in suburban-type developments. We don’t want that kind of densification in rural areas,” he said.
9. Get recognition from the province that Ottawa is a “rural city”
Many rural communities in Ontario are eligible for grants and other provincial support in emergencies, but Ottawa is not recognized as rural city because its also a metropolitan city, Sutcliffe said.
“Sometime the province thinks of us as being a city like Toronto or Windsor or Hamilton. We’re not,” he said. “We’re a city that includes a high rural component, and we should have access to the same support for our rural communities that other rural communities get.”
10. Hold another rural summit in the next four years
There will be another rural summit in 2027 or 2028, within the first two years after the next city council is elected in 2026, Sutcliffe pledged.
The measures announced Saturday are just the beginning of the conversation, he added.
“The steps we’re announcing today will won’t just achieve some specific outcomes, they are going to assure that, going forward, city hall is more attuned and responsive to the needs of rural residents.”
Speaking to reporters after delivering his remarks, Sutcliffe said he did not have a cost for the entire package of commitments, but everything on the list will be presented in the upcoming 2025 budget process to be presented on Nov. 13 and voted on Dec. 11.
“We have five very engaged councillors, we have a rural affairs office at the city, the city manager (Wendy Stephanson) has been very engaged in this process. I’ve been very involved in this process,” Sutcliffe said.
“So we all want to see results, and we’ll continue to follow up and make sure everything we talked about today is implemented.”
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