Quiet kayak along Green's Creek

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Impacts on Our Community

• The residents in the east end of Ottawa will be profoundly affected in the following ways:

Environmental Issues

• Increased traffic, noise, and toxic emissions.

• Major traffic jams in the east end, all the way to Cumberland and even Rockland, including much longer commutes for all east-end residents. 

• The Greenbelt and other green spaces in the city will be desecrated and, as evidenced by the recent uproar in Toronto, encroaching on the Greenbelt and other green spaces in the city will be strongly opposed by all affected communities. For more details, click on this link: Ontario government tables bill to return lands it removed back to Greenbelt | CBC News.

• Any bridge would eliminate valuable farmland, and cause irreversible environmental damage such as toxic plumes, soil erosion, riverbank instability, water-level issues, damage to fish habitat, and possible landslides.

Ecological Issues

• Both the Lower Duck Island and McLaurin Bay corridors (Corridors 6 and 7) would severely compromise fragile ecosystems and seriously affect endangered and threatened species, and species of special concern.

• On the Quebec side, both options would also adversely affect local ecosystems and protected wetlands and destroy the planned Outaouais Wildlife Preserve from McLaurin Bay to Plaisance. Both corridors would carve up this sanctuary.

• The Refresh Study identifies potential instability/erosion and liquefaction of sands and risk of landslides on the river banks of the Ottawa River shorelines in both locations.

• Both Greenbelt corridors will be difficult and costly to build, due to engineering challenges, such as extremely deep foundations to cope with riverbank instability. Major erosion issues would be present at all sites.

• The bridge at McLaurin Bay (Corridor 7) would be the longest and most expensive since it would cross the river at an angle and would have to be built over an extensive wetland and Rivière Blanche.

Financial Issues

• The total projected cost of the project was over $2 billion in 2010.  Today, it would be close to $3 billion, and could easily increase substantially, given the unpredictable nature of the project.

• This cost estimate does not include any lifecycle maintenance costs which, along with the supporting infrastructure costs, will be substantial and borne by all Ottawa taxpayers, at least until the Province of Ontario officially takes ownership of Highway 174, for which there is as yet no definite commitment or timeline, even though there are few if any benefits for the city.

• The federal debt is at its highest, and projected debt-servicing costs due to high interest rates have doubled.

• Other approaches to improving interprovincial connectivity that are far less costly and much less impactful on the environment could be considered. For example, both Ottawa and Gatineau are proposing to the federal government a cost-shared interprovincial transit loop that would address the same goal of interconnectivity.

• To date, over $10 million has been spent on this project for which there has been no public consultation specific to a 6th crossing. This does not include the cost of creating the new PSPC Bridge Project Office. Additional costs for traffic and truck origin and destination studies and consultations are still unknown.

Political Issues 

• The lack of transparency demonstrated so far by PSPC and the NCC is concerning. The NCC has published a Summary of the Refresh Study, but accessing the full version has been challenging.

• We have also needed to submit over 20 Access to Information requests to gain detailed information on the project. Many requests remain mostly unanswered or are redacted.

• In 2021, PSPC created a Bridge Project Office, which has just become accessible through the PSPC Real Property website (https://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/biens-property/cn-bn-pp-eng.html). There was previously no telephone number or email address available. By the way, you can click on that link to request a copy of all NCC’s relevant reports.

• The results of several related studies (i.e. the Origin-Destination Survey, the Commercial Goods Movement Survey, and the Geotechnical (Drilling) Study completed in 2023) are scheduled to be published in the Spring and Summer of 2024. Therefore, since politicians and elected officials must inform their respective constituents of any major project affecting them directly, we expect full transparency for the next stages of the Bridge Project, including full access to the relevant reports, and being consulted in due time BEFORE a final decision is made. 

• The mandate of the new PSPC Minister has not changed:

“Continue to improve crossings in the National Capital Region, moving forward with Budget 2019 commitments to replace the Alexandra Bridge, addressing the demonstrated need for an additional National Capital Region crossing with the Long-Term Integrated Interprovincial Crossings Plan...” https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/mandate-letters/2021/12/16/minister-public-services-and-procurement-mandate-letter   

• The NCC Long-Term Integrated Interprovincial Crossings Plan is at odds with the very concept of building a new bridge in the Greenbelt.

Other Factors

• The studies do not properly address the extensive recreational riverside infrastructure, which forms a heavily used network for active transportation, recreation, and walking throughout the year.  

• Furthermore, each bridge will slice through the Sir George-Étienne Cartier Riverfront Park.  According to The Public Consultation Report (December 2021), the Park was identified as “a civic gem to be preserved”, with tens of thousands accessing paths/parks for walking, running, biking, skiing, and other uses. 

• The calculation of “jobs created” by the bridges is misleading. It is based on the number of vacant business-zoned properties in the research area. The change in methodology increased “job” creation in Gatineau for McLaurin Bay (Corridor 7), from 3,272 in the 2013 studies to 7,750 in the refresh study of 2020, whereas in Ottawa for the same period, from 0 to 57 (Refresh Study, Table 8-2).