Central Experimental Farm: The Assault Continues

 

 

Friday, June 14, 2024

By Leslie Maitland

Heritage Ottawa and others worked for years to persuade the Ottawa Hospital and the Government of Canada not to build on the Central Experimental Farm’s (CEF) prime research fields, and instead to take a site that had never been used for agricultural research. That is how the new Ottawa Hospital came to be under construction on the former Sir John Carling site.

We thought that was the end of threats to the farm but in fact that was just one salvo. Now, developments are proposed in the periphery of the Farm which will shade some of the research areas substantially and may render them useless for research. 

This bears repeating: the Central Experimental Farm (CEF) is an agricultural research station. We all love the pretty bits: the Arboretum, the Ornamental Gardens, and the Agricultural Museum, and we sometimes forget that these features were also once active research areas. But the raison d’être of the CEF is the work that researchers are doing in the here and now on cereal crops in support of Canada’s agricultural industry, research which in turn assures our own food security. 

The current threats come from proposals to build tall residential towers on the periphery of the Farm. The first to receive permissions to build are the towers proposed at 1081 Carling on the northwest side of the Farm. These will cast shadow on Field #1 especially in the late afternoon. Worse is the proposal for residential towers at 780 Baseline Road (you will know this as the strip mall with the Lone Star Restaurant). Being on the south side of the Farm, the shading will be more extensive and for longer periods of time throughout the day. As a rapid transit corridor, Baseline Road has been identified for intensification all along its length, so future developments along that road will only add to the problem. 

Why can’t the federal government stop this? Because the regulation of cities is a provincial jurisdiction, and the Planning Act doesn’t have any carve outs for research institutions that need sunlight. The City of Ottawa’s fresh-off-the-press Official Plan unhelpfully identifies the Farm as greenspace, even though the previous OP identified the farm as a research institution. The change in classification opens the door to very permissive allowances for shading.

Agricultural and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), responsible for the CEF, provided analyses by AAFC scientists of the shading threats posed by both the Carling and Baseline proposed developments. The scientists’ analyses were pretty definitive: the damage will threaten the viability of the research plots. The City of Ottawa was not inclined to accept the AAFC scientists’ conclusions, and instead required the developer to seek a third party assessment of the threats to research.

This is where this saga tips into the ludicrous. The firm hired for this study was Miller Engineering of Michigan, USA. You read that right: a firm of engineers, not agronomists, was asked to assess impacts to agricultural research. Miller Engineering concluded the following: that the shading would not be definitively damaging; that AAFC’s research could be done elsewhere; that AAFC should embrace its urban location and switch to studying urban agriculture; that agricultural studies in Indonesia were a reasonable comparison to justify limiting access to sunlight; and that the value of sunlight to plant growth is overrated, among other assertions. I am not making that last bit up. AAFC scientists handily refuted the Miller report in a report of their own, but AAFC did not attend the crucial meeting at which the Planning & Housing Committee made its recommendations, leaving councillors with no one to respond to their further questions.

You may ask why the City’s Housing and Planning Committee didn’t reject the applications for 1081 Carling and 780 Baseline out of hand. Couldn’t they see the bigger picture, and reject development applications that damage our food supply? But councillors are obliged to follow their writ and work with their legislative mandates: their hands are tied by the limitations of the Planning Act and the flawed OP, as noted above. 

If the Farm is rendered useless for scientific research, would the federal government walk away from decades of longitudinal studies on the impact of climate change on agriculture? Would they be willing to spend millions of dollars to recreate this research facility elsewhere? Who knows.

It may seem odd that a heritage organization like Heritage Ottawa would take an interest in the CEF, but curiously enough, the CEF is designated as a National Historic Site in part because of its ongoing use as a scientific research institution. Ongoing use is rarely a factor in national historic site designations, but the other major national historic site whose use is integral to its historic integrity is the Rideau Canal. It is hard to imagine anyone contemplating interfering with the operation of the Canal for any reason. But this is exactly what is contemplated at the CEF. 

Even arguing to protect the CEF because it is a national historic site is thin: there is no legislative protection for federally-owned heritage properties. Bill C23 (The Historic Places of Canada Act) is stalled in Parliament and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere (see Stalled in Parliament, elsewhere in this issue).  

During the fight to relocate the hospital nearly ten years ago, Heritage Ottawa joined with others, including the Greenspace Alliance for Canada’s Capital, the National Trust for Canada, the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, the National Farmers’ Union and others to effect change. Members of this coalition are re-aligning to see what we can do to get a better outcome. We have encouraged AAFC, the City of Ottawa and the National Capital Commission to examine ways to protect the CEF going forward, whether through special zoning or some other regulatory measures. Apparently this working group is now meeting, and we wish them all the best in their undertaking. Some public engagement would be good.

Meanwhile, the coalition members cited above will work on our own to raise public awareness of the value of the research being done at the CEF. More later.

Yes, we are in the midst of a housing crisis, but it only takes a drive down any one of our major transit roads (Baseline, Carling, Merivale, Saint-Laurent, etc), home to low-rise commercial properties, to realize that intensification can readily happen in this city without threats to the Farm. This is not food versus housing: we can have both

During our current climate change crisis, the security of our food supply is under threat. How can we shoot ourselves in the foot like this?

If you are concerned, please contact your Member of Parliament and your City of Ottawa Councillor.

CLICK HERE for a site map of the Central Experimental Farm.

Leslie Maitland has worked in heritage conservation for government, in the private sector, and in the not-for-profit sector for over forty years. She is a past president of Heritage Ottawa, and she is active on the Newsletter, Lecture Series and Advocacy Committees.