The Government of Canada refers to this project as the Regulatory and Security Science (RSS) Main project. It says the project’s eventual facilities will accommodate 275 scientists and researchers working in 25 science programs. Work done there will benefit the Canada Border Services Agency, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada.

The site in question sits on 2,000 acres of land on Fallowfield Road in Nepean and has three functional laboratories right now. The government built the existing facility in 1972, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has had jurisdiction there since its own creation in 1997.

‘Support high-quality-jobs’

The campus is in Ward 9 and local city councillor Sean Devine welcomes the announcement.

“This is a major investment in our community will support high-quality jobs, cutting-edge research, public health, food safety, emergency preparedness, and border security for decades to come,” Councillor Devine said on social media.

The government did not explain the exact functions of the new facilities, but said that they will “strengthen Canada’s food supply, enhance emergency preparedness and secure our borders…”

The project should contribute roughly $900 million to Canada’s NATO-related defence spending over the next 10 years. Canada reached its promised rate of 2 per cent of total GDP devoted to NATO-related spending earlier this year. NATO members are under an additional commitment to spend 5 per cent of total GDP on defence by 2035.

Ottawa launched what would become Laboratories Canada in the 2018 federal budget, in which it pledged $2.8 billion over five years to update our country’s ageing laboratory infrastructure. The 2024 budget added $900 million more to the initiative, which had since been stretched into a 25-year timeline.

The government says this phase of the RSS project will be operational by 2031.

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“Ottawa is a world-class capital city. We deserve a transit system that reflects that, and we can build it,” Leiper wrote in a media release.

An audit from the Auditor General of Ottawa published in June found that the city’s “New Ways to Bus” plan led to reduced services for transit in the capital region, due to prioritizing cost-saving, as well as the use of outdated data. Leiper repeated the AG’s finding that the changes in the bus plan reduced transit service by 70,000 hours.

A May survey commissioned by The Ottawa Compass and iPolitics through Liaison Strategies found that 64 per cent of respondents disapprove of the City of Ottawa’s transit system.

Councillor Leiper argues that the broad shift back to working in office will only make the city’s congestion crunch worse.

“Ottawa families are already paying for transit,” Leiper said. “They shouldn’t have to budget an extra hour for their commute or call an Uber because Mark Sutcliffe’s cuts mean their bus is late again.”

The five-point transit plan would include:

• Restoring a citizen seat on the Transit Commission. City Council voted away citizen seats in 2022.
• Publishing information about on-time performance numbers for transit so that riders can plan ahead.
• Reversing changes made in the “New Ways to Bus” plan.
• Building dedicated bus lanes across the city.
• Creating a long-term fleet replacement and vehicle maintenance plan for OC Transpo.

Mayor Sutcliffe has defended his record on transit in the past few months, saying that Ottawa has spent more than usual on transit during the years of his tenure and that any savings council manages to find can be reinvested to reduce the transit system’s deficit.

Interested in who is running to be Ottawa’s mayor in the fall, and what they’re each promising? Follow along with iPolitics’ candidate profile panoply, starting with an exclusive interview of Councillor Jeff Leiper here.

The post Leiper promises transparency, bus lanes in new transit plan appeared first on CompassNews.