On November 14th, 2025, CAFES, Ecology Ottawa, and the Ottawa Field Naturalists Club, led by Ontario Nature and Friends of Stittsville Wetlands, sent a letter to the City of Ottawa urging Council and staff to strengthen municipal protections for Ottawa's wetlands.
Wetlands play an enormously critical role - they provide habitat for a huge number of species, store carbon, protect against erosion, stabilize shores, recharge groundwater, mitigate flooding, filter and clean water, provide resources for food and medicine, and provide important cultural and recreational opportunities for people and communities.
However, wetlands are consistently threatened by climate change, invasive species, changes in hydrology, land conversion (predominantly to agricultural lands), development, and expansion of the urban boundary.
In 2024, many wetlands in Ontario lost their protected status when the Province changed the scoring system that determined which wetlands were granted as Provincially Significant Wetlands (PSW). Noteably in Ottawa, this resulted in losing protection for 55 hectares of the Goulbourn Wetland Complex, and today in 2025, the City's proposed Official Plan and Zoning By-law amendments would further reduce municipal protections for another 74.6 hectares of Goulburn and 19.7 hectares of the Richmond Fen.
In fact, Ottawa and surrounding areas of eastern Ontario have had the highest rate of wetland loss recorded in the province from 2000 to 2020. The City must avoid these losses by ensuring all types of wetlands, not just those with PSW status, are strictly protected under municipal planning policies. This would also align with Climate Ready Ottawa, the City's climate resilience strategy. The Goulburn complex in particular received the highest possible score for flood protection and providing clean water. As we know, many areas of the City are especially vulnerable to floods and we have been seeing record-high rainfall from climate change in recent years.
As CAFES continues to expand our city-wide policy advocacy efforts, we also recently attended the Public Open House on the Bear Brook Watershed. The City is conducting a watershed study on the area to assess current watershed conditions and to gather community priorities for how to maintain watershed health into the future. Ironically perhaps, invited by watchful CAFES members at Greater Avalon Community Association, on Mon Oct 17th, CAFES ED Angela Keller-Herzog attended the E1-South Orleans - Wall Road Third Public Open House, only to learn that this urban expansion will wipe out several wetland areas and replace them with a municipal stormwater pond. Will this work? Has the water budget of the sub-watershed been calculated? Is this the most cost effective approach to manage water? Does anybody ever calculate the value of habitat for biodiversity lost? We have so many questions.
If you want to learn more about municipal wetland policy and existing conservation efforts, be sure to attend the CAFES Trees and Greenspace Caucus on Tuesday, December 2nd from 12:00 - 2:00pm via Zoom. We will be having special presentations from the City of Ottawa, Ontario Nature and Friends of Stittsville Wetlands followed by group discussions and community networking. Register here!
You can read the full letter below, and consider contacting your Councillor to express your concerns. You can also visit Friends of Stittsville Wetlands for more info, and check out Ontario Nature's resource page.
On Wednesday, June 11th, 2025 CAFES held a special Joint Caucus meeting to discuss ideas for the City of Ottawa's "A Green and Resilient City" service review feedback opportunity, and on July 29th CAFES submitted a detailed recommendations document to the City. The purpose of the City's service review is to examine municipal services that contribute to creating a greener, more resilience city - while focusing on service efficiency and identifying cost-saving opportunities.
CAFES' Joint Caucus on June 11th was organized in order to gather ideas and insights from our network on city services related to green infrastructure, tree canopy and greenspaces, waste reduction and diversion, the circular economy, urban density, emissions reporting, climate resilience, public transit, environmental stewardship, and equity. Following the caucus discussion, CAFES created a detailed submission outlining our recommendations - including specifying precisely which city services our recommendations fall under, and how they save the city money. Check out our submission below, and please feel free to use these recommendations to inform your own submissions on Engage Ottawa.
Members of the public are currently able to go online to Engage Ottawa and share your ideas - visit the link here to submit your comments. You will have to create an account or login to Engage Ottawa to contribute to this particular opportunity.
On Monday, June 30th, 2025, CAFES' Executive Director, Angela Keller-Herzog, spearheaded a rich feedback submission with the Peoples Official Plan Coalition (POP) to the City of Ottawa on the draft Climate Resiliency Strategy, known as Climate Ready Ottawa (CRO).
The City’s draft CRO provides a critical opportunity to reduce risk, protect health, and strengthen community wellbeing in the face of the climate crisis. The POP feedback document highlighted opportunities to make the CRO more actionable, inclusive, and community-informed. Our detailed feedback submission dove into several strategic outcomes surrounding flood preparation, extreme heat, the economy, resilient buildings, protecting drinking water, stormwater management, tree canopy, wetland conservation, parks, power outages, and more. We additionally addressed suggestions for implementation, best-practice benchmarks, and performance metrics.
Many of our comments, recommendations, and ideas were pulled from the CAFES Climate Resiliency Community Dialogues from 2023, in which we led 11 dialogue sessions with over 300 participants in collaboration with community groups and the City of Ottawa.
Ultimately, CAFES and POP commend the City for its leadership in climate resilience planning. We recognize this climate strategy builds on years of foundational work and cross-departmental collaboration and we look forward to seeing how our recommendations contribute to a more climate-ready Ottawa.
This item is expected to be coming to the October 21st, 2025 City Environment and Climate Change Committee (ECCC). Stayed tuned!
