South March Highlands Management Plan Open House April 30

In November 2007 the Fifth Column discussed the South March Highlands Management Plan and the suggestion by the Kanata Environmental Network (KEN) that public use of the lands be kept to the periphery. Fortunately that view is not shared by any other environmental or user group, nor is it shared by the City of Ottawa.

If you want to know what is going on with the plans for the South March Highlands and want to have your say the public consultation process is about to begin. The first public meeting will be an open house from 7:00 to 9:00 PM at the Kanata Old Town Hall on March Road, near Klondike Road, on Wednesday April 30, 2008. This will be a relatively informal drop-in format as the consultants (Douglas and Ruhland Associates, landscape architects) “would rather engage and talk directly to those interested than have a formal presentation at this point in the process”.

Click here for a link to the Terms of Reference for the South March Highlands Management Plan, which includes the following information (extracts):

These forest lands include some of the most significant ecological features and functions within the City of Ottawa. It is the most ecologically diverse landscape in the City, overlies a section of the Canadian Shield and provides an exceptional natural environment experience. It also provides significant cultural and recreational resources with extensive use (hiking/walking and mountain biking being the two most prominent) by the immediate community, the larger City population, and in the case of some activities such as Mountain Biking, people living outside of the City.

Several issues have emerged in the area:

· The area is well known as a mountain biking and hiking/walking destination and at present, an extensive informal trail network has developed. There is the possibility that the location of certain sections of trail and/or the construction techniques that were used to build the trails are not necessarily consistent with the protection of natural values in the area. At the same time significant volunteer efforts have been made in recent years to implement lower impact trail construction techniques within the City owned conservation forest.

· Potential conflicts between users (nature appreciation, casual walkers, mountain bikers, hikers).

· Increased indirect impacts (edge effects, loss of interior habitat and connectivity ecological support systems) and use impacts as designated development areas build-out.

· There is no interpretative plan or efforts to direct the current range of users to protect or take advantage of features in the highlands.

· There is a lack of formal access or trail-head provisions.

· The need for a trail section or access for physically challenged residents has been raised.

· Limited existing tools to manage the form and intensity of recreational or other use in the area.

Objectives:

The overall objective is to design a management strategy that will provide long-term management direction for a 20 year period which provides for protection of the significant ecological features and functions of the South March Highlands while allowing users to experience the area through appropriate recreational activities in a way which is both manageable and sustainable in terms of the City’s, and stakeholder and user group resources.

The planning process will include:

· Participation in a project initiation open house to introduce the project to the community.

· Identification of use and management objectives through a stakeholder workshop and/or other consultation approaches to gain stakeholder input.

· Identification of opportunities for appropriate recreational use (open air recreation including hiking and biking, education, nature appreciation) and concerns related to inappropriate use and strategies to mitigate the effects of recreational use…

· Review and incorporation of best practices for low impact recreational use/trail development and management of near urban/urban natural features

· Develop detailed management recommendations

o Management of uses – where different uses should occur, how to control impacts.

o Management of future stressors (adjacent development, climate trends, invasive species)

o Recommendations related to connectivity to other landscape features within and outside the forest; and longer term strategic objectives for preservation of ecological integrity such as additions to the forest.

· Conceptual plan for infrastructure (recommendations for trail location, trail treatment, access).

o Trail location options (including an accessible trail)

o Trail treatment and design options

o Use management (signage, etc.)

o Access and potential trail head/ parking locations

o Interpretive resources (e.g. kiosk).

The Fifth Column hopes to see you all at the open house on April 30.

Back On My Bike With My New GPS

Well spring has finally come, even if it has been interrupted for a few days, and I finally got back out on my bike. Early this week I got out on my Brodie Sterling hybrid for some rides around Kanata and the back country roads. I got to try out my new Garmin GPSMAP 60Cx GPS unit and I was very pleased with it. I am looking forward to getting back on the bike again early next week when the spring weather returns.

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A Back Room Deal to Save Canada

I am sure the Liberal Party of Canada was trying to do the right thing when they chose Stéphane Dion as their leader. Indeed they may even have been doing a brave and courageous thing by deciding to choose what appeared to be a man of policy and substance rather than one of image and style. They may have chosen the man they thought would make the best Prime Minister, rather than the best leader of the opposition. We can only hope so, because he has proven to be a dismal failure as leader of the opposition. And with him at the helm the Liberals have been an absolute failure as Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.

The opposition has a number of roles in a Parliamentary system. One of course is to oppose those policies of the government that they disagree with. The other is to play a constructive role in improving government policies and legislation. But the primary role of the official opposition is to be a government in waiting, not to be an opposition in hiding.

One of the most basic facts of life in a democracy is that a party cannot become a government without getting elected, and a party cannot get elected if they are scared of an election. If I was a Liberal I would be scared of going into an election with Stéphane Dion as leader. Just as Stephen Harper will be judged on his role as Prime Minister in an election, so will Stéphane Dion be judged on his role as leader of the opposition.

But the fact is that we have a dysfunctional federal Parliament with a minority government that tries to govern as a majority and an official opposition that seems to believe its role is to enable them to do that. An election with Stephen Harper leading the Conservatives against a Liberal Party led by Stéphane Dion would leave voters shaking their heads and throwing their hands up in despair.

As a New Democrat, perhaps I should rejoice at the situation and NDP prospects in such an election. But I fear such a situation could cause the NDP to see it as an opportunity to replace the Liberals, by moving further to the centre in an attempt to seek election as the government. We do not need the NDP moving further to the right and becoming a pseudo Liberal government. Let the Liberals do that.

What we need is for a rebalancing of the political compass in Canada. We need to move the Conservatives from their extreme right wing position back to the right of centre position of the Progressive Conservative Party. To do this we need the Liberals to move back to the left of centre from the right of centre. And we need the New Democrats to move further to the left so that the pressure is on the Liberals to move left, rather than right to remain in the centre.

We need this to happen now, before, not after, the inevitable election that the Liberals can only avoid for so long without losing total and permanent credibility. The Liberal Party needs to go into an election with strong leadership from the left of the party not wishy washy leadership from nowhere.

We need a deal within the Liberal Party. We need Stéphane Dion to step down and Bob Rae to take over as “interim” Leader and defeat the Conservative government and lead the Liberals into an election that the New Democrats will fight from the left.

So how does the Liberal Party broker such a deal and get the support of all the leadership factions. If there is one overriding Liberal Party principle it is the quest for power. So the deal is that Bob Rae be given the chance to lead the Liberals into power. If he succeeds there will be no serious challenge to his leadership when the official leadership race is held. If he fails he does not seek the leadership in the official race.

Parliament has been most progressive with a left of centre Liberal government being pushed from the left by a strong New Democratic Party. Just think of what could be achieved by a minority Liberal government led by Bob Rae with a strong NDP holding the balance of power. Compare that to what we have now.

Zoning: Developers vs the Environment and the Public Interest

I was out on my bike yesterday riding along Huntmar Road and the Carp River, including land on the flood plain that the city has approved for housing development. Along parts of my route you could not even tell where the river is as everything is flooded alongside it.

As I passed the Corel Centre I recalled the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) rezoning battle for the proposed NHL arena lands.

My wife and I were amongst the official objectors to the proposal to rezone thousands of acres of high quality farmland for commercial development, including the arena. The result was unusual in that we essentially won the battle with the well funded developers. The arena and 100 acres, was allowed to be developed but the remaining thousands of acres were protected and conditions were put on the development to protect the surrounding land from development, including limiting sewage and other services to the size necessary for the arena and requiring the developer to pay for the Highway 417 interchange because it would only be serve the arena project.

The only reason we won this unusual victory was because of timing. The battle was waged during the short period that Ontario actually had a progressive government (Bob Rae’s New Democratic Party government) that cared about protecting the environment and protecting farmland and our food supply. It was the dedicated officials from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food (OMAF) that carried the major weight of the battle, otherwise the various public interest groups would not have been able to compete with the financial resources of the developer.

Interestingly the quality of the farmland was not an issue at the hearings, although it was an issue in the developers PR campaign. Even as the developer was presenting to the OMB it’s consultants report, that agreed that the land was high quality agricultural land, the developer was waging a public relations campaign of lies to claiming the exact opposite of what they were saying to the OMB, a quasi-judicial board. They knew better that to try to lie to the OMB but lying to the public was no problem for them.

So why was I biking through all sorts of development adjacent to the arena. It is essentially because the rules favour the developers. A victory for the developers is always permanent. A victory for the environment and the public interest is always temporary.

Once developers get land zoned for development it can virtually never be taken away no matter what environmental or public interest arguments and evidence might be presented. To do so would take away their “property rights” and that has financial implications - it would be reducing the monetary value of their land.

However land that is zoned to protect it from development for environmental and public interests reasons has no such long term protection. The developers can keep trying again and again until the defenders of the environment and public interest can no longer afford to keep fighting. It appears that the environment and the public interest has no monetary value.

One of the most troubling cases involved land adjacent to the Trillium Woods in Kanata that was designated as environmentally protected and purchased by a developer (Minto). The City was forced to purchase the lands when the OMB basically ruled that because the land was owned by a developer the developer could do whatever it wanted with it.

This is the type of irrational thinking that leads to the argument that we have to destroy the environment or the economy will collapse. The fact that there would be no economy without the environment is irrelevant because there is no monetary value placed on the environment.

If we are going to have livable communities we have to place a value on the environment that we live in. Once land is designated as protected from development those environmental rights should have the same permanent status as developers rights to destroy the environment (and farmland) have.

It’s Official - Drunk Driving Kills

Drunk driving kills. High speed chases are unsafe. Seat belts save lives. A long expensive process to tell us what we already knew.

A Nineteenth of A Cent For Your Thoughts

That’s what a penny buys today, compared to 1914, which is as far back as the Bank of Canada Inflation Calculator goes. The buying power of a penny back in 1914 was equivalent to 19 pennies today and nobody saw the need for a nineteenth of a cent coin. So why do we need a penny or a even a nickel today, which was worth almost a dollar (94 cents) back then in today’s buying power. We already have the loonie so we don’t need the nickel. But I would keep the dime, even if it is, relatively speaking, the equivalent of having a half cent coin in 1914.

In fact we have acted at the other end of the coin spectrum by recognizing inflation has turned one and two dollar bills into small change, so we added two new coins, the loonie and the twonie. Now it is time to eliminate the two at the bottom, the penny and the nickel.

For those that are concerned about losing a few nineteenths of a cent in the rounding process we could require that all prices be a multiple of ten cents and that all sales taxes be rounded down to the nearest ten cents.

Pat Martin has the right idea we just need to take it to the next logical step.

And while we are at it maybe retailers can stop treating customers as idiots with their silly pricing, such as labeling an item $1.97 to try to make us think it is priced under two dollars. Does anyone really think a car buyer does not know a sticker price of $29,989 really means $30,000. But then again, anyone who watches television commercials these days knows retailers think we are idiots.

The Other Videotape - Lukiwski affair

The Fifth Column has come across the transcript of a videotape taken during moving day in the Saskatchewan Legislature. The text follows:

SakPartyStaffer: It’s time to party. We’re all packed up and moving into the government offices.

SaskPartyMLA: Yep, I can’t wait till those queer loving commies have to move into the opposition offices.

SakPartyOfficial: Yep, I cant wait to get out of here and into the government wing,

SaskPartytMLA: Think we should do a last swing through the cupboards and cabinets in case we forgot anything.

SaskPartyStaffer. No, we’ve got everything important. It’s time to party.

SaskPartyOfficial: But we wouldn’t want to leave anything important behind.

SaskStaffer: But we did doublecheck all the cabinets labeled secret, that’s good enough.

SaskPartyMLA. But we did have some pretty wild parties and I remember some really good videos that those people wouldn’t appreciate.

SaskPartyOfficial: Yea, especially back when we called ourselves Tories.

SaskPartyStaffer: But nobody would be stupid enough to keep those tapes in the office.

SaskPartyMLA: OK lets get out of here. It’s time to party.

SaskPartyOfficial: Don’t forget to bring the video camera.

The Fifth Column Poll & Detailed Comments

I have written a series of questions that I ask visitors to the Fifth Column to answer. They will appear at the top of the blog until the summer. The Fifth Column encourages you to make more detailed comments by posting them as comments to this post.

The Fifth Column: First Year In Review - The Commentary

The Fifth Column has become perhaps not what I was hoping for when I first planned on writing Internet columns when I retired, which was to make a real name for myself with my self-assessed great writing. But a lot has happened since then, primarily the invention of the blog and the proliferation of blogs and bloggers, including many more dedicated and better than I could ever hope to be. There are some really great blogs out there and I am privileged to be in their company, even as a minor blogger.

I suppose with almost 5,000 visits by 3,670 visitors in my first year of blogging I should not feel too bad. From checking my stats I do have a sense that I do have some regular visitors and I know some bloggers have linked to me, either to the blog itself or particular posts. I do feel good about that. My biggest disappointment is in the lack of comments and I am not sure how to interpret that.

I do wish I had a greater sense of who was reading the blog and why and how many regular readers I have. I plan to post some poll questions in the near future to try to assess my readership better.

The blog did seem to take off, relatively, when I started posting daily (weekends and holidays excluded), in September, as well as when I became listed on Progressive Bloggers and New Democrats Online. I try to post at least one substantial post a week as well as shorter observations on the other days. I do not always follow the pattern and sometimes it is primarily medium length commentaries that get posted. I wonder if trying to post daily reduces the quality of the posts but then I think if I consider myself a blogger I should be able to have something to say everyday.

My blog also tends to be not just a political blog but to sometimes be a more personal blog.

The main thing that keeps me writing for a relatively limited audience is that I am also writing for myself. One of the first jobs I applied for after university was as a journalist but I did not get that job. Then I ended up working for the House of Commons where I was paid to read what Members of Parliament said and figure out what it meant. I left when the job was essentially dumbed down by new technology that allowed the work to be done faster by fewer people. The blog gives me a chance to write and express my own opinions after reading and analyzing other’s opinions for most of my life.

Lately I have found myself, more excited about blogging and thinking of more things to write about, even thinking that perhaps I should post on more than one subject per day. One thing I do try to do is to not just follow the “party line” but analyze the situation and call things as I see them - to be a progressive minded, but independent blogger.

The Fifth Column: First Year In Review - The Stats

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The Fifth Column: First Year In Review - The Commentary will be posted tommorrow.