The Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) ruling of the proposed Minto subdivision in Manotick (OMB ruling outrages village residents, Maria Cook, Ottawa Citizen, April 11, 2009) reminded me of a similar ruling by the Ontario Minister of the Environment with regard to the Alta Vista Transportation Corridor (AVTC).
With regard to Minto’s Mahogany subdivision, Brian Tansley, president of Manotick West community association, notes "Disappointed would be an understatement, we lost big time. Every single point that we raised was ruled down…The primary disappointment is the lack of justification for the ruling. In a legal document there's references to prior rulings to provide rationale for decisions. There were none of those.”
In the AVTC case many community groups, spearheaded by Citizens for Healthy Communities (CHC) and the Sierra club of Canada worked for many years to highlight environmental, induced traffic, economic, public transit and other community concerns surrounding the proposed development. Despite this, the minister ruled down every single point raised by the community.
These are two examples of governments, municipal and provincial, failing to treat community concerns seriously. In both cases public concerns were simply discounted in the interests of developers.
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