Queensway Coalition

(Ottawa, 16 June 2003): A sidewalk café breakfast will be served to members of the Sierra Club (Ottawa Group), Citizens for Healthy Communities, The City Centre Coalition, and the Ottawa East Community Association on the Lees Ave. overpass of the Queensway, just up from the Lees Transitway Station, at 8:00 a.m. sharp on Wednesday, June 18^th, 2003.

City Councillor Clive Doucet will be dressed in his finest French waiter apron and bow-tie to serve coffee and croissants with a topping of smog and noise just above a Queensway rush-hour.

The coalition of green growth advocates is breakfasting on the overpass to protest Ontario’s Bill 25 which would exempt the provincial government from environmental assessment requirements on highway corridors and allow them to widen the 417 unilaterally. The coalition wants the Province to back off on plans to widen the Queensway downtown and get behind expansion of light rail as a solution to air quality problems.

“I’m pleased to serve breakfast for community activists but wish to warn all participants that there is very little room on the overpass sidewalk and to exercise appropriate caution when attending the event,” notes Councillor Clive Doucet.

"Why host the smog breakfast here?” asks Pierre Johnson, President of the Ottawa East Community Association and member of Citizens for Healthy Communities. “Because Ottawa East is where the choice between Smart Growth or smog growth will be most visible. It is ground zero for smog growth, where the Alta Vista Corridor and Queensway Expansion road projects would meet."

Carol Brunt from Dow’s Lake Residents Association and the City Centre Coalition notes, “In 2002, the OMA (Ontario Medical Association) estimated that Ottawa's pollution levels from cars and trucks resulted in 32 premature deaths, and a cost of $218 million to the community. Collectively, citizens experienced a total of 147,000 ‘asthma-symptom days’ of which more than 100,000 them were experienced by youth. This is unacceptable.”

Jon Legg from Action Sandy Hill and Citizens for Healthy Communities comments, "I call upon the City to insert strict benchmarks on air quality in its upcoming Transportation Master Plan. Ottawa's residents must not have their health threatened by exhaust from thousands of more cars."

David Gladstone, Chair of the City Centre Coalition, adds, “The recently introduced Bill 25 will give the Minister of Transportation exclusive planning and environmental control over the development of transportation corridors, a highly regressive initiative in our opinion. For its part, the federal government supports greenhouse gas reductions and, yet, has allowed the federally-regulated Prince of Wales railway bridge across the Ottawa River to remain unused. And we still don’t have tax-deductible transit passes.”

David Jeanes, President, Transport 2000, says, ”Bill 25 is the tool of a government that believes that new and wider freeways are ‘smart growth’ and that proponents of rail and transit alternatives don't need to be listened to."

for more information:

Councillor Clive Doucet, Capital Ward

580-2487

www.clivedoucet.com

Pierre Johnson, President, Ottawa East Community Association

234-1151

www.ottawaeast.ca