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By Joanne Chianello, The Ottawa Citizen
City council voted Monday in favour of a land swap that would protect 10 acres of Kanata’s Beaver Pond Forest, and urged the incoming council to acquire another 29 hectares of land of the old-growth forest in order to prevent the “massacre” of an old-growth forest.
Kanata North Councillor Marianne Wilkinson championed the land swap, which will “provide a natural access from the Beaver Pond lands to Trillium Woods,” according to her motion. The developer known as KNL Lands — a partnership of Urbandale Crop and Richcraft Homes —agreed to the deal last week. KNL agreed to exchange this land in return for having to set aside an equivalent amount of land in a future development. The swap shouldn’t cost the city anything.
The land-swap motion was carried easily. The more contentious part of the debate was around whether this outgoing council, which had its last decision-making meeting Monday, should urge the next council to try to buy another 29 hectares of the environmentally sensitive land from KNL, turning it into an ecological reserve for the city.
Although the city has not entered into negotiations with KNL for the land, the developer has indicated that it’s looking for at least $25 million, plus another $8 to $10 million for loss of profits. That’s a lot of money for the community to raise, or for the city to take on as debt, council heard from some skeptics around the council table.
But Wilkinson argued that the motion did not address any financing issues, and focused only on whether the issue “can go forward with information to the new council.
“I have here over 1,000 names of people who have signed up to help raise money, and this includes corporations as well as individuals, and they’re not all even living in Ottawa,” said Wilkinson. “The choice we have here is a massacre. Every one of these trees will be cut 100 per cent in the development area. And then they go in with the blasting and turn it into the moonscape. This is the highest quality of environmental land in the entire urban area of Ottawa.”
When some councillors questioned whether the community could raise the money, Capital Councillor Clive Doucet said: “This council would be arrogant in the extreme to say to a community, ‘You can’t do this, we don’t believe in you.’ Because that’s what voting against this is. And I don’t think that’s a great message to be sending to new council or the old one.”
The motion eventually passed 13 to eight, meaning the new council will be looking at the possible purchase. The motion also stated that no destruction or removal of trees would be permitted prior to the new council’s deliberation.
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