Ottawa

Staff at the City of Ottawa are working on a fast-tracked feasibility study for an incinerator, set to return to council by mid-2025.

"No matter what, we're going to be generating waste, and as Ottawa continues to grow we need to make sure we have a means to deal with that," said Hoover-Bienasz.

There is also no getting around emissions, she said. Landfills create their own greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane.

Building an incinerator similar to the facility in Clarington would cost $450 to $500 million, according to the city's estimates, with annual operating costs of an additional $25 million.

Needle in a haystack I know, but if you happen to hear anything let me know if any clinics accepting patients!

On January 8, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) approved plans for a nuclear waste disposal facility at the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) site at Chalk River. The near-surface facility located about 160 kilometres northwest of Ottawa would feature a mound holding up to a million cubic metres of low-level radioactive waste about one kilometre from the Ottawa River.

The site was chosen for its proximity to existing waste sites at Chalk River Laboratories, where the federal government once operated nuclear reactors and over eight decades of nuclear waste accumulated. A former senior manager said the waste proposed for this facility is “intermediate level” and requires underground storage in a facility planned to be as deep underground as the CN Tower is tall.

The site is bordered by wetlands that drain into the Ottawa River, the water source for millions downstream. Citizens are also concerned that the underlying bedrock is porous, with the groundwater table very close to the surface.

A report prepared for the City of Ottawa's Transit Commission says that OC Transpo's electric buses are performing as well as the existing diesel fleet, allaying concerns about the future transition to a fully electric fleet.

The buses are meeting their mileage targets and are performing as well as or better than the 60-foot diesel buses and the double decker buses.

Ottawa City Council approved a nearly $1-billion plan in 2021 to replace the full OC Transpo fleet with zero-emission buses by 2036. The city says each electric bus saves 25,000 litres of fuel per year.

Thousands of people in Ottawa have seen their credit score dip or outright plummet because of old tickets and fines. Some go back as far as 2003.

"In January, the City contracted a new private collections agencies (sic) through a competitive process. Financial Debt Recovery (FDR) is the final collection agency in the process and only collects debts that have already been at previous City-contracted collection agencies and remain unpaid," said Joseph Muhuni, deputy city treasurer revenue, in a statement to CTV News Ottawa.

"FDR attempted to collect the debt and to date, has subsequently reported 103,000 unpaid Provincial Offences Act fines and 3,000 unpaid water bills to the credit bureau."

An Ottawa man found himself intercepting an investment scam Friday afternoon.

Tom St. Denis was on his lunch break at the Kanata Indian Supermarket when he happened to pass by an elderly woman being guided over the phone to use the store’s bitcoin ATM.

He got in his car to leave, but a bad feeling drove him back inside. When he asked the woman why she was using the machine, his bad feeling was justified…

Ottawa firefighters say five people crawled to safety through the roof hatch of an OC Transpo bus after a two-vehicle collision that caused the bus to flip and land in a ditch, according to Ottawa Fire Services.

While the passengers made their way to safety, firefighters crawled into the bus through the roof hatch to check on the driver before cutting through the windshield to rescue them about 10 minutes later.

Five passengers and the driver were assessed at the scene and refused to be taken to hospital, according to paramedics.

I am a petty man. Hell he probably just said it for the votes knowing what was coming. Either way it still makes me smile

Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched on Parliament Hill on Saturday in one of the largest such rallies in Ottawa since the Israeli invasion of Gaza began in October.

Waving the ubiquitous green, red, white and black Palestinian flag and banging drums, the group demanded an arms embargo and political sanctions on Israel and an immediate reinstatement of funding to the UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Work Agency.

Saturday’s March for Gaza on Parliament Hill was one of dozens of similar rallies around the world. The Ottawa march drew busloads of demonstrators from Montreal, Toronto and elsewhere. Police closed Wellington Street during the protest. Numerous fireworks were set off as well as red and green smoke grenades.

The Buddhist Congress of Canada is one of the co-ordinators of an online GoFundMe launched Friday to assist families of the victims of the mass killing of six people, including a mother and her four children, in Barrhaven late Wednesday.

“Our wish is to raise ($200,000),” organizers wrote on the post. The fund has raised about $20,000 as of Friday morning.

“The financial support for the victims’ families will be coordinated through the local Buddhist Temple (Buddhist Congress of Canada, 1481 Heron Road, Ottawa, Ontario. K1V 6A6).

Donations can be made at the site (below) or to the Buddhist Congress of Canada (BCC) by way of cash, cheques made out to BCC or by “e-transferring money to the temple’s email with a small note that it’s for this worthy cause, so that we can manually add it here.”

https://www.gofundme.com/f/an-unthinkable-tragedy-at-ottawa-mar-7?qid=28eddd4a82a424c6c14db70243c89f34

Calls to 911 started coming in at about 10:50 p.m., directing first responders to Berrigan Drive near Palmadeo Drive. It's a residential area close to two schools.

Inside, emergency responders found six people dead and one injured person, who was taken to hospital.

A spokesperson for the Sri Lankan High Commission who did not want to be identified told CBC the deceased include a Sri Lankan woman and her four children, and that the father, also Sri Lankan, survived but was injured.

[…] investigators do not believe it to be a case of intimate partner violence.

EDIT:

A previous version of this story called the incident a mass shooting, based on an interview with police Chief Eric Stubbs. In fact, it was not a shooting. The cause of death has not yet officially been released.

Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe said online that his city hall office was broken into overnight Tuesday, March 5, 2024. The mayor noted that it did not appear politically motivated.

It’s that dreadful time of year again! Here’s your reminder that the clocks are springing forward 1 hour at 2am Sunday morning.

Ottawa's homeless shelters are struggling to keep up with demand as the rise of newcomers puts pressure on the already overburdened system.

The Ottawa Mission is seeing many newcomers looking for shelter and they now account for nearly 40 per cent of its clients, according to its CEO

"We're easily at about 115 to 120 per cent [capacity] per night, and those people have to be fed three meals a day," said Peter Tilley.

"Don't forget, we're also turning away another 60 to 70 people per night who when they arrive, half of whom are newcomers,"

...

The Canadian Space Agency has confirmed a west Ottawa spacecraft laboratory it calls "Canada's national facility for spacecraft assembly [and] integration" is closing at the end of March 2025.

Bryden Denyes, area roads manager with the City of Ottawa, says maintenance crews remain vigilant to patch-up any road imperfection, and in 2024, have so far have filled around 27,000 potholes.

According to city data, the average number of potholes filled annually over the past three years is about 214,000. However, on a month-to-month basis, there has been an approximately 25 per cent decrease.

Average ice levels usually range from 15 to 18 inches of ice, but this year the average has been between 2 to 8 inches.

“So, at this time, we still have a tentative blasting day scheduled for March 2, but that is completely weather- and condition-dependent. … With this warmer weather, we are expecting flows to start to pick up later in the weeks. We may have to adjust our plan,” Denyes said.

Flood response has begun drilling test holes and preparing equipment in the event that there is a risk of flooding to neighbouring communities along the Rideau River.

In the case that ice-blasting is not required this year, the flood response team will deploy the amphibious excavator, which will be used to break away any remaining ice on the Rideau River.

Councillors have been told in a slide presentation on Stage 2 construction on late Tuesday afternoon that OC Transpo is giving themselves a wider timeline than had been previously announced with an opening day potentially being in September.

Construction for the Trillium Line was originally scheduled to be completed in August 2022, but was delayed until September 2023. On Sept. 29, Amilcar said that based on the progress to date, a fall launch was no longer possible and would be delayed again.

This could mean the Trillium Line would open a full two years behind schedule. This would be the third major delay.

New statistics, obtained by CTV News Ottawa through an Access to Information request, shows OC Transpo drivers received 87 speeding tickets from automated speed enforcement cameras and 56 tickets through the red light camera program in 2023.

Tickets issued under the red light camera and photo radar camera provisions in the Highway Traffic Act are owner liability offences, meaning the city of Ottawa is legally responsible to pay the fine as the owner of the vehicle.

Ottawa Police Chief Eric Stubbs says a pilot project to equip local police officers with body cameras is expected to begin around the end of this year or the beginning of next year.

The idea has the backing of the Ottawa Police Association, which says it has been advocating for body cameras for more than 10 years.

"We're going ahead and installing that product this year into the service, which also includes what we call video oversight — the cameras in our interview rooms when we're recording witnesses, victims or suspects during interviews," he said. "So, that's going ahead this year. The DEMS is a foundational piece that you need for body-worn cameras so you can store all the video. So, that part will be rolled out in 2024."

"We are preparing for a pilot with body-worn cameras and what we call ALPRs — automated licence plate readers, but basically, they're dashcams — and that pilot will follow the DEMS and the video oversight installation. So, we're looking at the end of 2024 or beginning of 2025 for that pilot to start."

It didn’t break any speed records, but Ottawa’s LRT is finally on its way to Orléans.

The first test run of a train along a portion of the 12.5-kilometre eastward extension of the Confederation Line occurred Sunday night, with a train travelling one stop from Blair Station to Montreal Road, said Mike Morgan, director of the LRT construction, in a memo to the mayor and members of council on Monday.

That’s about three weeks later than had been forecast in the last update on construction given in December.

The Alstom Citadis Spirit train crept east from Blair to Montreal Road while crews walked beside to make sure the train’s pantograph, the flexible arm that connects it to the overhead power lines, functioned properly. The testing occurred after regular Confederation Line service stopped for the night.

More testing will continue this week, Morgan said.

With the upcoming onslaught of warm weather this week are you changing your winter tires early this spring?