Councillor Lo Motion Against the Tree Protection By-law

At the February 17th 2026 Environment and Climate Change Committee (ECCC) meeting, Councillor Wilson Lo moved to amend the Tree Protection By-law to permit residents to alter or remove trees on their property without restriction, essentially negating one of the City's most important tree protection policies. You can read the two motions here.

The first would allow any property owner to cut, alter, remove a tree and the tree roots from their property at their will regardless of the provisions laid out in the Tree Protection By-law and without any kind of restriction or permission needed. It would also permit the City to remove any municipal tree at its cost at the request of a resident without restriction if an arborist or engineer confirms the tree poses a risk to property.

The second motion is specific to the Gospel Oak Fairlop neighbourhood and states that the City would remove any tree in this neighbourhood at cost at the request of any adjacent property owner any time this year until the end of 2026.

We find this disregard for the urban canopy and existing protective measures to be quite alarming and problematic. As we know, as climate change intensifies our city - urban and rural areas alike - need strong regulations to protect canopy trees more than ever, not just for the ecological benefits they provide but for allowing residents to have clean air, flood mitigation, shade and cooler temperatures. Having a Tree Protection By-law in our City is enormously important in ensuring that distinctive trees with a 30 cm trunk diameter will be retained unless a permit is received.

As a network, we cannot accept such anti-environmental motions that blatantly oppose critical tree protection measures. We are anticipating the motions to come onto the agenda of the next ECCC meeting - scheduled for 9:30am Tuesday, April 21st, 2026. Did you know that you can come and witness these committee meetings in person and speak for 5 minutes?

CAFES is planning on mobilizing our members to take action with us:

• Contact your City Councillor to inform them that you are strongly opposed to Councillor Lo's tree motion and insist that we need strong tree protection policies in Ottawa
• Urge your Councillor to attend the next ECCC meeting to speak out against the by-law - Councillors who are not on the committee can still come to other committees if they wish to speak.
• Once the motions are on the agenda, sign up to give a public delegation (see list of upcoming meeting and info on delegating here).
• CAFES is planning a written submission that we will share with our network members to adapt - stay tuned for more info.

For comments and if you are ready to engage on this, please contact Erica at eshardlow@cafesottawa.ca