Ecology Ottawa’s Council Watch

At Ecology Ottawa, we love working on the grassroots level, empowering people to take ecological action in their community. Another side of our work, however, is on the level of policy making. Our Council Watch program is an example of this type of work.

Council Watch is a volunteer-powered group coordinated by Ecology Ottawa that

• identifies issues of ecological significance before Council

• recommends actions for Ecology Ottawa and/or the Ottawa ecology community to take on these issues

• conveys issues before Council to the broader public

Working on the governmental level is critical for pursuing our ecological goals. The policies created on this level affect our lives on a daily basis and shape our city in untold, long-term ways. One of our goals with this work is to help make City Hall more accessible to the broader community—because when it comes down to it, not everyone has the stomach to watch an eight-hour meeting or learn about the minutiae of zoning variances. Another goal is to stay current on the constantly changing issues before City Hall—such as those connected to the ravaging of 70 hectares of forested land that we wrote about in an earlier issue of this newsletter. Finally, we hope the fact of Council Watch’s surveillance encourages elected officials to make sound ecological decisions.

While Council Watch took a hiatus last year that included last fall’s elections, we’ve steadily been growing and finding our rhythm since we revived the program in January of this year. Currently, we’re a group of around 20 volunteers. Our bread and butter is watching meetings, whether of the entire City Council or one of five committees that we follow: Environment and Climate Change, Transportation, Planning and Housing, Transit, and Agriculture and Rural Affairs. (See here for a complete list of committees.) We also produce reports—most of them internal, which we share within the Council Watch team and Ecology Ottawa staff, but also several public reports or analyses on issues we think deserve special consideration, such as NIMBYism threatening our affordable housing goals, a summary of damage from last year’s derecho, and the approval of funding for electric OC Transpo buses.

We’ve also been working on the program’s infrastructure and longer-term projects. Earlier this year, we published our shiny new primer on City Council. We’re also developing records of votes that we can use for assessing councillors’ record on various ecological issues and a page providing quick access to contact information for entire committees at a glance. If there are any other resources that you'd like to see, please let us know!

If you’d like to join us, find out more about the group, or send feedback, please contact the group’s current coordinator, William van Geest. We welcome a variety of participation, including watching meetings, writing reports, producing social media content, keeping records, translating, or webpage support.

We’re pleased to have been offered the opportunity for regular contributions to the PEN. This will help us fulfill our goal of making City Hall accessible to a broader public! Please look for our contributions in future issues.

And in the meantime, if you’d like to watch City Hall on your own time, here are few resources to get you started:

• Agendas and Minutes

• YouTube channel of all City Council meetings

• “How City government works” by the City of Ottawa

Help us hold Ottawa City Hall accountable!