I agree.
Whatever faults the Greenbelt has, it seems a bit of a cop-out to use it to address bad planning elsewhere in the city. I find it hard to believe that between Kanata Centrum, Barrhaven Town Centre and the area around Place d'Orléans as well as existing underused federal sites within the Greenbelt that we can't find enough employment land. What we really need is a three-level strategy to actually start doing something with them. It also seems a bit much to blame Council in the way Denley has here:
"The problem has become acute because short-sighted councillors keep redesignating employment land for residential and commercial uses."
And out of curiosity who recommended this? Did councillors just go out on a whim and do this?
As for the contention that the Greenbelt is "in the centre of the city" I would point out that the distance from downtown Ottawa to Stittsville is roughly the same as that between The Hague and Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Between them is a swathe of farmland similar in size to the western Greenbelt and another city, Delft. Different contexts to be sure, but it does put things in perspective, too.
Fwiw, one of the firm's directors is the Chairman and CEO of McCormick Rankin International...