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Rural people, stay tuned. Mayor Bob Chiarelli has great news for you, perhaps as soon as next week.
The city will finally end its pigheaded fight to restrict the number of animals on farms within its boundaries. It’s exactly the right thing to do, and only four years and $1 million too late.
The city’s fight against a hog farm near Sarsfield is a bizarre saga that involved taking its own chief building official to court for doing her job, spending more money on an unsuccessful appeal of that court decision, then stubbornly inserting restrictions on factory farms into the city official plan.
The official plan provision was predictably appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board by the hog farm owners and a local farm business group. The city had to be defended by an outside planner and lawyer, because city staff didn’t support the politicians’ actions. The OMB told the city to reach a solution through mediation and a deal is imminent.
The city’s position that there were too many pigs on the farm was a loser from the start. The impact of farm manure on the environment is regulated by the provincial Nutrient Management Act, not by the city. The act was passed by the provincial government to replace a hodge-podge of local bylaws across the province, and to make sure all farmers work under the same rules, no matter if they are in Ottawa or the rural counties.
None of that mattered to city councillors as they bulled ahead, undeterred by reality and mounting legal bills. The big concern was the pig manure might contaminate ground water, or seem smelly to people 1.5 kilometres away in Sarsfield.
Councillors have been briefed on the city’s mediation position in camera, and another meeting with the parties was held this week. Most of those involved are circumspect, but West-Carleton Councillor Eli El-Chantiry confirms the city is going to fold. The details are expected to go to council in January.
Surely Chiarelli won’t be crass enough to try to turn this loser to political advantage by pretending that the city retreat is somehow inspired by this week’s rural summit. El-Chantiry says the city has no choice but to give in. The city’s position is “unsound and ridiculous,” he says, and it had “no hope in hell” of winning at the OMB.
“When are we going to learn?” he asks. “Let’s stick to what we can do and work with these people instead of fighting.”
El-Chantiry doesn’t think that ending the pig fight can be a winner for the mayor.
“How much credit can he take? He’s one of the ones who originally supported it.”
The city does come away with a crumb. It is monitoring the health of Sarsfield residents and the quality of the surface and groundwater. It’s a last attempt to make some sense of its position, but it’s an empty gesture. Even if the farm is found to have contaminated the water, that’s the ministry of the environment’s jurisdiction, not the city’s. And how is this particular farm really any different than any of the others that spread liquid manure on their fields?
The hog farm fight was perhaps the best symbol of the city’s failure to understand agriculture. Why would a group of politicians downtown, most of whom don’t know one end of a pig from the other, be the ones to tell a farmer how large his operation should be?
Phil McNeely was the city councillor who fought hardest against the hog farm. He is now the MPP representing Ottawa-Orleans. McNeely still defends the seven-figure expenditure of public money as worthwhile.
“It was a fight that should have been fought, and it should have been won,” he says, while acknowledging that the provincial legislation is, and always has been, supreme.
“I don’t like the legislation but I can’t change it,” he says. The MPP concedes that his fight against the pig farm probably helped him get elected. “It certainly gave me a high profile in the community.”
McNeely’s successor, Rob Jellett, says the city had valid concerns about the health and safety of Sarsfield residents, but provincial legislation limits its role.
“Why spend any more money on something we can’t win anyway?” Jellett says.
As is so often the case at city hall, one has to ask where the accountability is. Over a four-year period, councillors wasted $1 million of our money on a fight their own staff told them they couldn’t win. Throughout, they acted with the kind of irresponsibility one so typically sees when people are spending someone else’s money.
The height of absurdity was when they took their own chief building official to court and the taxpayers were paying for one lawyer to defend her and another to attack her.
And this is the same council prepared to spend $200,000 a year running and following up on a snitch line to see if their employees are wasting money. If they want to find waste, all they have to do is buy a mirror.
Contact Randall Denley at 596-3756 or by e-mail, rdenley@thecitizen.canwest.com
© The Ottawa Citizen 2005