Hello,

Happy Halloween…

This month I’ll start off by pointing out a few quick items before launching into the rest of the newsletter:

• An upcoming People’s Forum for the Lansdowne 2.0 project, hosted by Better Ottawa, will take place on November 3 from 6:30pm to 8:30pm. You can find more information and sign up here. Neil Saravanamuttoo and the Ottawa Lookout are both great resources to get up to speed on where things stand.

• The City of Ottawa’s draft budget will be tabled at on November 12. After that, residents can provide feedback by 1) asking questions through the City’s Engage Ottawa webpage between November 12 and December 8; or 2) joining a standing committee meeting, where members of the public may provide written and/or oral submissions for issues related to items on the Committee’s agenda. (You can also live stream meetings and access past recordings on the Ottawa City Council YouTube Channel, and regular City Council meetings are broadcast live on RogersTV Cable 22 and live streamed on the RogersTV website.) Council will approve next year’s budget on December 10.

• There is a lot of recent news regarding the Tewin land development. CBC reports that City Council voted to move ahead with the development earlier this month, and the Narwhal published an article about it, too. The Ottawa Lookout has also been covering the issue.

Stories from the PEN!

This month’s stories from the PEN include:

• In “What is causing the drought in the Ottawa Valley?,” Lynn Jones delves into how mismanagement of land and forests has disrupted the ‘living climate,’ offering insights beyond the routine blaming of fossil fuels for worsening weather events like drought. (That’s not to say fossil fuels don’t play any role, rather that there is more to the story)

• An anonymous author was on the ground for the recent No Kings Protest in Ottawa, raising concerns that “as Canadians watch what is happening in the United States, they are not paying enough attention to the authoritarian impulses becoming emboldened in Canada…”

• And PERC’s Board Chair Stefen Klietsch provides an overview of the Citizens Climate Lobby event “The Peoples’ Ministry of the Future,” which he attended last week.

From the PEN Archives

The 1999 October PEN warned that a “disguised version of the defeated Multilateral Agreement on Investment” (MAI) could resurface at an upcoming ‘Millennium Round’ series of talks a World Trade Organization conference scheduled for later that year. The talks were expected to “emphasize liberalizing such sectors as health care, communications, education, culture, agriculture, and forestry among the WTO’s 134 member nations.”

Editor’s note: The draft Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) had been negotiated in secret between members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development between 1995 and 1998. The draft “gave corporations a right to sue governments if national health, labor or environment legislation threatened their interests,” writes Global Policy Forum [archived]. Those negotiations failed, though there was an attempt to reinvigorate them during the the 1999 Millennium Round conference—which was with anti-globalization protests, like the Battle of Seattle—and again at WTO Ministerial in Cancun in September 2003, during which “a group of more than twenty poor countries united in demanding a fairer trade deal.”

Other News

• A $2.5 million donation by Franklin Holtforster and his family is the Ottawa Food Bank’s the largest donation ever, reports CTV news. The Ottawa Food Bank reported over 560,000 visits to the 90 organizations it worked with last year, and Wilson said, “we’re not seeing any relief this year.”

• Ontario’s provincial government launched “One Project, One Process” system it says will speed up mine development and “[unlock] the full potential of Ontario’s metals and mining sector, including the Ring of Fire.”

• The National Capital Commission (NCC) announced that there were more than one million visits to waterfront sites at Dow’s Lake, River House, Westboro Beach, and Kìwekì Point this past summer.

• On an October 28 event at City Hall, Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and Sonya Shorey, President and CEO of Invest Ottawa, unveiled a blueprint for a “five-year (2025–2030) living strategy to position Canada’s Capital Region as the nation’s premier Defence Innovation Hub.”

• Housing advocates say that Ontario’s proposed new housing legislation will hurt long-term renters and vulnerable tenants—like seniors and students—by ending protections like rent control and indefinite leases, CBC reports.

• CTV News writes that two more office buildings in Ottawa are being converted to residential spaces.

• The City has reported thousands of cases of illegal dumping since imposing its three-item limit for trash pickup.

• Residential wells across Eastern Ontario were running dry by early October this year, including in Ottawa’s rural areas.

• Parents of children adopted from other countries are saying that an item in the Canadian federal government’s overhaul of the Citizenship—which requires that a Canadian child born abroad must demonstrate a “substantial connection” to Canada—is “inherently cruel,” reports The Guardian.

I look forward to connecting with you again next month through the PEN Newsletter. In the meantime, please use the comments section of the newsletter or email [email protected] with thoughts or questions.

—Christopher Bonasia, PEN editor

PERC appreciates all of our readers for giving us this chance to connect with members of our community, and we love being able to provide you with a forum to discuss pressing environmental and social justice issues.

But we also rely on your support to make this happen. If you are interested in helping our organization continue to use storytelling and networking to help individuals, non-profits, and community groups work locally for a greener and more peaceful world, please consider making a donation to the Peace and Environment Resource Centre.