City council extends Ottawa's boundaries

Ottawa city councillors voted Wednesday afternoon in favour of expanding the city's urban boundary, but by a far more conservative amount than originally proposed.

The motion before council was to extend the city's boundary by 850 hectares to afford developers more room to build beyond the city's current limits.

Wednesday's vote saw only an additional 230 hectares approved — mainly in the area of Fernbank Road, near Stittsville in Ottawa's west end.

Diane Holmes, the councillor for Somerset Ward, said she strongly opposed drawing a focus to development in the city's outlying areas.

"We cannot continue to build roads into very low density residential areas, because they're impossible to use for transit purposes," she said.

Residents in urban areas, she said, were tired of paying for suburban expansion in the city.

"We cannot continue to burden those residents living in the more urban areas with the cost of rural expansion and suburban expansion."

Regardless of who pays, however, Clive Doucet, the councillor for Capital Ward, said the city isn't paying enough attention to who benefits.

"Look at the stands in this room. Do you see the public here? I see developers. I see developers' lawyers. I see developers' planners," said Doucet.

"It doesn't take much to realize who is going to benefit from breaking this urban growth line."

Doucet said he wanted any decision about the urban boundary put off until next year's election when it could be decided in a referendum.

Council defeated that motion and instead passed a motion to approve the Stittsville-area expansion.