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The real issue about high-rises is not whether Ottawa can or should build them. This is Canada’s capital and we can build any number of towers we want. The problem with the Bayview development is that residents were misled by their leaders. Community design plans take time to do, and Bayview area residents stuck with it for seven years, working with the city and development industry to come up with a plan that council then approved. To now suggest this plan isn’t worth the paper it is written on, as council has done, is a betrayal.

At a 2012 planning summit, Mayor Jim Watson talked about ensuring that “development applications are not completely out of character with the neighbourhoods.” He called for “greater predictability and certainty when it comes to development in our city,” adding, “There are just too many surprises that upset local neighbourhoods when zoning changes.”

Fast-forward to 2018 and Watson now says community design plans aren’t cast in stone. Any developer can ask for changes, then council decides. And sure, developers can ask – but council doesn’t have to go along, as Watson said at the planning summit: “Our official plan and zoning bylaws have to mean something. We can’t have developers buying properties for inflated prices and then come to City Hall looking for massive up-zoning to recoup costs.”

Which leads one to wonder why council so willingly obliged when the developer asked for 65 storeys instead of the maximum-30 the community design plan established.