NCC draft report released.
The National Capital Commission began the latest phase of consultations for the proposed interprovincial bridge in early June and a draft compilation of the information they gleaned from those events was made available to the public on July 27.
map created by Kevin Best
Despite a recent series of public meetings and consultations, east end residents remain uncertain of the National Capital Commission-led process that will decide the future location of the proposed inter-provincial bridge.
The first draft report of the June consultation was released on July 27 and residents who were wary of the process in the first place still have mixed-feelings about the process, which asked them to define what a community values when it comes to a bridge.
Christophe Credico, chairman of the Manor Park Community Association’s bridge committee, was not pleased with what he has seen in the report.
It appeared to be nothing more than a compilation of raw data, he said, wondering whether the information will eventually be presented in a more useful format.
The consultations were commissioned by the NCC and have been conducted by consulting firm Roche-GENIVAR. The public’s input expressed in the report was compiled from a pair of public consultations as well as information gathered by an online survey.
The public consultations took place in the space of a week at the beginning of June. Announced at a public meeting only a couple days before the consultations began, many residents complained they were forced to scramble to make it to the evening and weekend workshops. The consultations asked residents living in each of the three proposed bridge corridors to describe their priorities and values regarding both the project and their neighbourhoods.
Residents from each of the proposed areas – at the Kettle Island, Lower Duck Island and the Gatineau Airport/McLaurin Bay corridors – have expressed concerns about the impact a bridge would have on their community.
Credico attended a World Café workshop as well as filled out a do-it-yourself kit online. He said it took him at least a couple of hours to complete, with well thought out answers and comments. He did not see anything of the sort in the draft report.
“It seems like it is all verbatim crap comment,” Credico said, adding that he felt the draft excluded the more well articulated comments.
He said some of his responses appear to be reflected in the bullet points contained in the report.
“Maybe (the NCC) would say the points that I raised were in the bullet points,” Credico said. “But it leaves me feeling that by completing this report and completing the hastily executed consultant round that they can check the box that they consulted the public and they know what our values are.”
Fred Gaspar, director of federal transportation co-ordination for the NCC, said that if an issue is mentioned in the draft report, the NCC sees it as adequately captured, regardless of how it is reflected in the report. He would not comment on the content of the draft report, but did talk about the purpose of the report and what the next steps in the process are.
“This first round is the gathering of the community values and what this input serves as is for the consultant to perform the technical work with a better understanding of what items are particularity relevant and need to be mitigated in the context of their consideration of where a bridge could go in one of the three corridors,” Gaspar said.
He used the impact of noise as an example of a core community value
“If noise is a concern, we now know we need to study the mitigation of noise in the context of this study. That is the role that these community values play.”
The consulting firm will now move into the technical aspect of the study and then report their findings back to the communities.
“The consultant reports back to the community their technical findings and if they can’t think of anything to mitigate the impact of a certain concern, then it would then be a factor that would be considered,” Gaspar said.
The issues identified by the communities would be marked as high threshold factors. Each corridor could have their unique high threshold factors, Gaspar explained, which would then weigh on a given corridor’s prospects of becoming the bridge location.
Gaspar said the next step in the bridge process was to hold another public meeting to ensure the report has properly captured the values of residents in each of the affected areas.
However this only led to further suspicion among residents, said Credico, who added the consulting firm only informed the community a few weeks ago about the meeting, which was to be held on Aug. 3.
Credico said Manor Park supported a request by the Rockcliffe Park Community Association to have the meeting rescheduled because of the short notice.
He said the consultants did not respond to the rescheduling request until July 28, only a few days before the proposed meeting was to take place. The meeting has now been rescheduled for Sept. 14.
“It is hard to trust them, something as simple as planning your lives – pretty basic things you would expect they would plan appropriately. That is why everyone is on edge,” Credico said. “Granted they did postpone the meeting, I guess that is a positive thing in the end.”
Calls to the consultant Raynald Ledoux from Roche-GENIVAR, who is now working on the file, were not returned by press time.