Wednesday October 6, 2021
What Ottawa is Talking About – 6 October 2021
▪️Mayor Jim Watson does not want the lack of an O-Train link to delay the new Civic Hospital Campus. The National Capital Commission has given their approval to the new Civic Hospital proposal on the condition that it have an appropriate link to the Dow's Lake O-Train station. The Civic Hospital proposal has not included any funding for connecting it to transit. [CBC]
▪️La Pêche town council has banned new AirBnB applications after 500 people partied in a house over the weekend. Some partiers came to the house en masse in school buses, [CBC]
▪️The City’s finance and economic development committee has recommended giving an automatic tax break to all business property owners under 25,000 square feet. The intent is to give a break to small businesses but council decided to give the break to the property owner, rather than the business leasing the property, with no guarantee the break will flow down. Council also decided to make the break based on property size rather than revenue or number of employees, meaning a profitable cannabis shop could get the break over a struggling garden centre (for instance). The 15 per cent tax break would cost the City $10 million. [CTV]
