70 Hectares Deforested in Tewin Suburb

Ecology Ottawa has been closely following the clear-cutting of 70 hectares of trees in the southeast corner of the city for several weeks now. News of the clear-cutting was broken first by CJRO Radio, a news outlet serving the Carlsbad Springs community, in mid-February; but the situation came into greater prominence when CBC’s Kate Porter published a story on March 1.

The landowners—the Algonquins of Ontario, and their development partners, Taggart Group—had been razing the forested lands under cover of night and behind a buffer of trees that prevented the local community from detecting the destruction—at least, for a time. But soon residents began noticing the sounds of the night-time operation and seeing trucks stacked with logs exiting the fenced-off site. A drone flyover by a community member confirmed that the landowners were engaged in an extensive clear-cutting operation.

A memo from the City of Ottawa reports that they were notified of the clear-cutting on February 17. Five days later, they issued a stop-work order so that they could assess how the operation related to the City’s Tree Protection Bylaw. Strikingly, the landowners had undertaken this massive operation without a permit.

When pressed, the first rationale that community members were given for the deforestation was clean-up in the wake of last May’s derecho. The rationale soon shifted, however, to an agricultural operation—the first such indication that the landowners had any such intention, according to the community.

Clearly Taggart had done its homework: the Tree Protection Bylaw allows an exemption for destroying trees without a permit when the destruction is “part of an agricultural operation by a farming business.” Another exemption obtains when a tree poses “an immediate threat to public health and safety”—language that Taggart used in a letter sent to the community.

And indeed on March 7, the City’s general manager of planning, real estate and economic development, Don Herweyer, lifted the stop-work order, allowing the ravaging of these lands to proceed.

That the landowners would engage in ecological destruction on such a scale is surprising in light of their claims to the contrary throughout the process of approving these lands for development. The Tewin website, for example, promises “to help create a place that is healthy, respectful, sustainable, and connected to the earth.”

Also surprising is the complete lack of notification of the community, when they were repeatedly assured that they would be consulted at various stages of development. Tewin has since invited community members to participate in a “community advisory committee,” although any community members would be barred from meaningful contributions: the chair’s role, for example, would be “to act as a liaison between TCAC Members and the Tewin Project Team,” and other committee members “will serve as a resource for communication to and from the community but will not have formal decision-making powers or vetoes.”

Most surprising, perhaps, is the City’s sanctioning of such wanton devastation. For one thing, its Tree Protection Bylaw is new, having taken effect in 2021. If the bylaw couldn’t stop such an egregious case of tree destruction, what good is it? For another, the City in 2019 declared a climate emergency and acknowledges full well the importance of trees in fighting climate change. Yet they still permitted the clear-cutting.

Many of these concerns were raised at the March 21 meeting of the City’s Environment and Climate Change Committee—which happened to fall on the International Day of Forests—both in the twelve delegations given by concerned groups and community members and in the Committee’s deliberations that followed.

Unfortunately, it was not within the Committee’s mandate to overturn the City’s decision that an exemption to the Tree Protection Bylaw be accorded. Instead, the Committee took on larger issues, such as whether the bylaw needs reexamination and what processes need to be in place to prevent future such destruction—because many forests around the City could be subject to the same fate. The Committee meeting also occasioned the emergency of new information, such as that it was only after the stop-work order was imposed that the landowners applied for agricultural purposes.

As Ecology Ottawa mentioned in its delegation at the Committee’s meeting, Ottawans are outraged. A form letter on our website asking for an investigation, accountability, and prevention resulted in almost 1000 letters sent to government officials, and a similar petition garnered over 600 signatures. Over 100 of our supporters also wrote to Committee members to ask them to consider the issue at the March 21 meeting.

We will be keeping our eye on this issue in the weeks to come. If you want to take action, please visit our website (ecologyottawa.ca/tewin_clear_cut) or contact us at [email protected]. Let’s keep Ottawa green!

William van Geest is a Living Cities Program Coordinator at Ecology Ottawa.