Primary stakeholders have been neglected
I have sent the following letter to the NCC Board of Directors and to the City Councillors:
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RE: Interprovincial Crossings Project
Dear Elected Representatives and Decision Makers:
I’d like to begin by making one point very clear. The consultants have recommended Kettle Island as their technically preferred corridor. They have not recommended it as the corridor that best meets the overall needs of the National Capital Region.
When considering what’s best for the overall region, the citizens of the region must be considered as primary stakeholders. Their perspectives and concerns warrant the utmost consideration.
The consultants have gone through the motions of public consultation, but these have had little impact on the study. As part of the process, a quantitative survey was conducted across the National Capital Region on both sides of the river, in order to solicit public input on the relative importance of the major factors included in the analysis.
However, when the technical experts determined the weightings that would be applied, they virtually ignored the voice of the citizens. Here are the final rankings assigned by the technical experts in order of importance, with citizens’ ranking in brackets:
1. Traffic and Transportation (6)
2. Cost (7)
3. Natural Environment (1)
4. Cultural Environment (3)
5. Land Use and Property (4)
6. Socio Economic Environment (5)
7. Water Use and Resources (2)
The clear shift that the technical experts made was in the relative priority of Traffic and Cost factors. These factors shifted from the bottom of the list defined by the citizens to the top of the list. To emphasize this shift, the technical experts assigned a total weight of 54% to these two factors alone.
As a result of the assigned weightings, Kettle Island ranks first. But this is primarily due to its relatively high Traffic and Cost scores. Kettle Island ranks last of the twelve options considered for both Cultural Environment and Water Use – two of the top three factors identified by the citizens of the region.
Running the consultants’ decision-making model with the relative weights reflecting the ranking determined by citizens of the region places Kettle Island 9th.
The people have spoken, through the survey and throughout the public consultation process. The trouble is that the technical experts have not listened.
This is where you, the elected representatives and decision makers, must acknowledge the valid concerns of the primary stakeholders in this project. These primary stakeholders – the citizens of the National Capital Region – have been neglected.
You must balance the current technical recommendation with your greater obligation to these citizens.
I urge you to align with the position taken by the Ontario Government, and to further assess the top three options taking into greater account the impact on existing communities, encouragement of public transit usage, and stimulation of economic development.
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