What to do about the National Capital Commission (NCC)?
 

Over in the Rapid Transit thread, Uhuniau put forward this post in response to the NCC's positions in respect of the LRT plans:

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...postcount=3907

So what do we think? Abolish it? Reform it? Leave it as is? Emasculate it down to little more than Parliament's property manager? Make the entire national capital region into its own quasi-province or territory and fold the NCC into that?


Any move to abolish it would have to consider what to do with the NCC's numerous assets, primarily lands. Some lands, such as Gatineau Park, could reasonably be passed over to Parks Canada. Conservation areas, like the Mer Bleue Conservation Area in the Greenbelt, could be handed over to the appropriate provincial conservation authority. Lands being used by other federal agencies would go to them or PWGSC, as the case may be. Leased properties like that which the airport sits on could be turned over to whomever is leasing it after some appropriate buy-out. Road corridors like Island Park Drive and the Ottawa River Parkway could be handed to the municipality. But after such lands have been dealt with, we're still left with a lot of land with no particularly obvious recipient, including most of the Greenbelt. I'm sure lots of residents would fear those lands going into municipal hands, and even more so into private hands.

We also have to consider the fact that right now, as annoying as the NCC is at times, they are at least just one federal agency. With a lot of land turned over to other federal agencies, coordination becomes a lot more problematic.

Another fly in the ointment is that any federal land is nominally subject to an Algonquin land claim, so the creation of an extensive urban reserve, with all the attendant issues that raises, couldn't be ruled out (technically that applies even with no change in the NCC, but the chance of that occurring is remote, whereas a change to the NCC would be quite a different matter).


Personally, I lean towards keeping the NCC and working towards the creation of a quasi-province in the NCR that would simply absorb the NCC. In the meantime, look into reforming it.

Scrap it in its current form.

Parks Canada should take over NCC parks, under a new classification of National Parkways for the parkways and Gatineau Park should become a full National Park of Canada. National museums, the Central Experimental Farm and other tourist attractions should also come under Parks Canada.

The Greenbelt should be strategically reviewed piece by piece to see what its natural value is. Core assets like Mer Bleue and Stony Swamp could become owned by Parks Canada or provincial conservation authorities and less valuable portions that are reasonably developable should be handed over to the City of Ottawa or private owners.

The Hurdman lands and other inside-the-Greenbelt lands that are not of natural value should be sold to private owners, cleaned up and developed. My idea for the Hurdman lands is an extreme-density development area.

The NCC parkways should also be strategically assessed. Who I would hand each one to:

Ottawa River Parkway, Rockcliffe Parkway, Experimental Farm Driveway, Colonel By Drive, Queen Elizabeth Drive and the Gatineau parkways: Parks Canada should operate them as National Parkways.

Aviation Parkway: Should be sold to the MTO as part of the Kettle Island Bridge freeway. If the bridge is not built and a tunnel under downtown is built, Parks Canada should retain it.

Island Park Drive: Should become a City of Ottawa street. It is not much different than any other collector/minor arterial road in the area and really is only under NCC ownership due to the connection to the Experimental Farm it provides.

The ncc does a good job do you really want all that power they have going into the city council hands the city has enough issues with limited issues.I would love nothing more then to have a quasi-province where the ncc would be the key part and even have them or another agency run 90% of the ottawa and area from basic services such as garbage to parks etc even social services.

Many countries have capital commissions or agencies, especially federations. Washington DC has one that operates separately from the District of Columbia government, Canberra has one on top of the territorial governemment. While Ottawans only seem to look at the more visible side of the NCC, there are aspects such as location of foreign embassies, national monuments, management of official residences and other things specific to running a federal capital that are less obvious. These cannot be handed down to the municipal level, which are provincial entities.

I'm not sure why people think that dealing with Parks Canada or Public works directly would be more advantageous or less bureaucratic than the NCC. When the feds give money to the NCC, it is spent entirely on the capital area. Money given to Parks Canada gets spread out over the entire country and individual parks have to vie for money with another level of bureaucracy. Complaining about the NCC is like bitching about getting gravy on the side with your meat.

The Airport Parkway gives you a little taste of what happens when the NCC transfers reponsibility to the municipality. What was a somewhat scenic and uncongested roadway with manicured lawns has turned into an overused road (because of municipally added road connections) and a totally abandoned and unmaintained landscape. The consequence is that Bronson Avenue has been turned into King Edward Avenue No. 2. A semi-expressway.

I would not trust the city with any NCC lands. Frankly, I wouldn't trust the city building LRT along the Ottawa River Parkway. It is almost a guarantee that it would soon be an eyesore.

The Museums are Crown Corporations, and the Experimental Farm is Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, not the NCC

I wouldn't look to DC or Canberra as much in the way of models to emulate.

Why not? I can't see any reason why not.

No, complaining about the NCC is like bitching about getting a mixture of liquid turd and glass on the side with your meat.

There you go, identifying an NCC problem right off the bat: the fixation with "scenic" and "uncongested" and "manicured lawns" in conjunction with "roadways". Classic 1930s Radiant Garden City Beautiful thinking that has gone a long way towards ruining Ottawa.

That happened loooooong ago, even before any changes in administration or added connections.

I still don't know why we needed to drive through trees to the airport, anyway. Anyone?

suggest you try looking a little harder, 150 years of constitutional practice is one easily visible reason.

I didn't say emulate, those capital commissions are there out of some necessity because they are federal capitals and have to deal with the hierarchial structure of government. You can't have lower levels dictating to higher levels of authority.

You'd make a terrible plumber without awareness of backflow. No wonder you are getting a mixture of liquid turd and glass on the side with your meat.

Ruining Ottawa? That is pretty extreme. We have to understand that the current designs for parkways etc. did arise in the 1930s and 1940s and in some cases even earlier. It was and I would add is still better than was there before. The NCC and its predecessors opened up water side land for public access. Previously these areas were blighted with industry, rail yards and in some cases shacks. We may want something different today but these things evolved when parkways were considered the best choice and it is difficult to change this now. In any event, in many cases, it is still the best choice. Lining the Ottawa River shoreline with condos is not necessarily desireable.

Regarding the Airport Parkway, it is a whole lot better than what preceded it. The old airport access road was a disgrace to the city.

You are wrong about the connection to the airport parkway. One of the first things the city did after taking over the Airport Parkway was to build the access ramps at Hunt Club Road. This was not done by the NCC. This is the main source of congestion on the Airport Parkway.

yea they piggy back'd on the feds investment for sure, at this point, for what its worth.. I'd just like to see Bronson fixed, and widened, however possible, it need left turning lanes asap... When the project comes up in the next few years the city will have to certainly twin the airport parkway due to traffic and growth in the south - especially south riverside (+++ the new strandherd-armstrong bridge.. :shrug:

That is exactly what is going to happen when the Strandherd-Armstrong Bridge opens. Traffic from Barrhaven is going to flood to the east side of the river. It is inevitable. Any gains from widening Limebank and Riverside are going to be lost almost overnight.

This is the sad part of losing LRT on this corridor. That was going to keep traffic down to a manageable level. Basically, we will have to widen every north-south road.

I think the NCC is too powerful as is. Their mandate seems to be too broad to do any one thing well.

I'm not sure how constitutional it is, but I would love to see another tier of government created, a federal regional municipality for the capital region (not a territory or a province), allowing member municipalities to remain a part of their current provinces but giving them the authority to form a regional council. I would keep the NCC, a scaled down version of its current self, but I would transfer some of their responsibilities to the regional council. The regional council could advocate for local interests in the region and the NCC could advocate for national interests in the region. Right now it seems federal/national interests come before local interests in the capital region.

The ncc is funded by the feds so to a degree it should focus on national interests and really that is how it should be you can't say it should only matter what the locals want.As for another agency sure that is something that may work it could replace city council you could not have the ncc/fed regional municipality/city council it just would not work.

There's not a lot of City Beautiful in the planning of Ottawa. The one City Beautiful plan we did have, the Holt Report, effectively went nowhere. About the only City Beautiful-type concept that went anywhere was the War Memorial with its location at the top of Elgin, with the square itself being one of the nicest places to look at Parliament from. Frankly, we could have done with more City Beautiful.

There's a little more Garden City in the guise of the Greenbelt and in the numerous parkways, but even there the Garden City concept of having much more self-sufficient satellite cities never really went anywhere, and the "satellite cities", such as they are, aren't even organized on Garden City lines.

As for Radiant City... the main expressions of that seem to be in the various federal government office parks (Tunney's Pasture, Confederation Heights, Hull). There's not a lot otherwise. There's also some of Le Corbusier's love of razing things (LeBreton, Hull).

Even the Gréber Plan's influence is overstated. Very little of it came to anything other than the railway relocations and the Greenbelt (and never did we get the combined rail and road bridge over at Lower Duck Island). The road network of the Gréber Plan was a far more "Parisian" network with Parisian-like streets and boulevards, but what we ended up with were American freeways and expressways in their place. The neighbourhoods that were built post-war were quite different than those envisaged by the Gréber Plan.

Basically the modernists took the Gréber Plan's freed-up railway corridors from the railway relocation to build freeways and expressways, and the rest of it was cast aside. Then the townships and the developers went wild.



I agree completely. Those north-side access ramps at Hunt Club handle most of the traffic on the Airport Parkway south of Brookfield Rd.

It's also quite likely in the event of widening the Airport Parkway that it'll only be widened as far as Hunt Club.


But that's not really an issue in Canberra or DC. In both cases, the territory of the capital (a territory in Australia, a district in the US) is under federal jurisdiction (i.e. just like the three territories in Canada) without any other "sovereign" levels of government in the way. If the local municipal government proves problematic, it can theoretically be legislated out of the way. Any commissions they have are merely there to carry out the planning itself.

In unitary or centralized states, again the local government is generally not an insurmountable obstacle for the central government.

I don't think there is another country where the federal capital can be effectively held hostage by a nominally lower level of government. The federal government, after all, has no zoning power so the only "planning" powers it has are related to its possession of land (past and present), the exercise of the power of expropriation, the threat thereof, and moral suasion (which is basically a polite way of being threatened, or blackmailed, as the case may be).

:D

As I wrote previously, the NCC's powers are actually quite limited. The only power they effectively have comes through the power to expropriate. They have 'power' as a landowner that can't themselves be expropriated. In other words, they have a fair amount of power to obstruct others but not a lot of power to do anything much themselves without spending vast sums in the process.

Such a body would basically have to be created by some kind of "treaty" between Ontario, Quebec and the federal government so as to delegate the necessary powers from the provinces to the federal municipality.

An interesting possibility, at least from the Ontario side, would be to empower the NCC or some other similar federal body under Ontario's Places to Grow Act. That would give the NCC real planning power over the City of Ottawa. I would guess that similar powers could be delegated by Quebec, but maybe not as cleanly as with the Places to Grow Act (i.e. it would require dedicated legislation). This possibility is basically a "light" version of a full-fledged federal municipality.

And the local governments put local interests before those of being the capital region. The ongoing farce that is interprovincial transit is a pretty good example of this.

According to the federal budget announced today, the NCC will no longer be resposible for festivals such as Winterlude, Tulip Festival, Canada Day, etc... Those responsibilities will be passed on to Heritage Canada.

And ironically, festivals are one of the only things the NCC did well. Let's hope this is the first step in the dismantling of this obstinate and unhelpful organization.

This is hopefully a step towards abolishing the pathetic NCC, while keeping its assets under Heritage Canada (i.e. parks, parkways, museums) and getting it out of the development business.