Last Thursday, Ottawa’s Emergency Preparedness and Protective Services Committee passed a motion that will see next term of council consider a by-law that would regulate the feeding of wildlife in the Ottawa area.
The motion was presented by Coun. Laura Dudas (Orléans West-Innes), who clarified that Ottawa is an outlier, in that other Ontario jurisdictions already have such a by-law.
“Toronto, Vaughn, Oakville, Montreal… a number of municipalities have regulations regarding feeding of wildlife,” she said. “It is odd to me that as a city we have regulations to cover pretty much everything in the kitchen sink, and yet if I wanted to go out and spoon feed a bear in my backyard, there’s nothing a by-law could do about that.”
Coun. Sean Devine (Knoxdale-Merivale) expressed some hesitation surrounding the idea.
“Interacting with wildlife is not by default a bad thing,” he said. “Yes, there are other jurisdictions that have other such wildlife plans in place, [but] there is measured and mixed success about those by-laws.”
Coun. Isabelle Skalski (Osgoode) noted that there can sometimes be community opposition to this kind of by-law.
“In rural Ottawa there’s always a sensitivity around the regulation of things like this,” she said, and wondered how such a by-law could impact popular activities such as hunting, composting, and caring for chickens.
Coun. Matthew Luloff (Orléans East-Cumberland) clarified his understanding of the motion.
“I don’t think the councillor is looking to stop people from having robins and bluejays and cardinals coming to visit them in their backyard,” he said, pointing, instead, to the knock-on effects of feeding certain wildlife.
“When you feed animals in your yard, or feed animals near your house, it provides food for rats, which has been a problem in most of our wards,” continued Luloff. “In my ward and Councillor Dudas’s ward, we’ve got families that have invested in rat traps and have caught hundreds of rats.”
After councillors clarified with city staff that the motion means that a by-law would only be considered by city staff and require consultation with the next term councillors and community members prior to enactment, the committee passed the motion.
