Engagements on the Vulnerable Infrastructure Zone Bylaw

Newsletter: May 8, 2025

I have been very engaged over the last week developing legislation for a vulnerable infrastructure bubble zone bylaw. As the nation's capital, we host a lot of protests throughout the year, and most of them are peaceful. But in recent years, we've had repeated incidents of bad actors using the cover of protests to intimidate students, medical patients, and religious practitioners. It's important to protect the free speech rights of protestors but we also have to ensure as a city that we are protecting the charter rights of bystanders trying to access their places of worships, schools, or hospitals free of intimidation or harassment. More to come next week, but as one of the leaders on this file, I would be happy to speak to anyone who has an interest, questions or concerns about this upcoming motion.

Newsletter: May 16, 2025

This was a very busy and very impactful week for me as a city councillor.  I have been the lead on the Vulnerable Infrastructure Bubble-Zone bylaw and this week in committee it passed 14-2.  See my comments, the mayors engagement on CBC, my interview with CTV news and the CBC. The bottom line is that staff have been directed to take no more than 9 months to develop regulation that will keep very precise locations like hospitals, faith sites, schools, and long-term care facilities safe from protests designed to intimidate and block access to these sites. For me, this is about balancing competing charter rights, and ensuring everyone can go to their schools, hospitals, old age homes, or places of worship free of intimidation and with safe access. The eventual bylaw will be very narrow. If you’re protesting City Hall you won’t be impacted by the church across the street, because your protesting your gov’t not that church. Asking protestors to simply move their demonstrations up to 80 meters back is a minimal impact to the free speech of the protestor while maximizing protection of the charter rights of vulnerable people.  I wish this motion wasn’t necessary, but we have seen repeated incidents in Ottawa that show Council had to step up.  If this is something that you have questions on, please reach out as I would be happy to discuss the nuance in threading this needle.