Acclaimed to another term, Brockington eyes transit, Confederation Heights and Greenbelt battles

For the first time in more than two decades, voters in River Ward will not be electing a city councillor on election day.

Coun. Riley Brockington has been acclaimed to a fourth term after no challengers registered against him before nominations closed Aug. 21. Rideau-Jock Coun. David Brown was also acclaimed, making them the only two members of Ottawa city council returned without a vote this election. 

It marks the first time since the 2003 municipal election that an Ottawa city councillor has been acclaimed; that year, Baseline Coun. Rick Chiarelli, Alta Vista Coun. Peter Hume and Osgoode Coun. Doug Thompson were all elected without opposition. 

Brockington, who was first elected in 2014, said the lack of an opponent has not diminished his desire to serve or engage with residents. He said he still plans to spend the campaign period speaking with residents, even without his name appearing in a contested race.

Brockington said he believes a contested race is healthier for public debate and acknowledged broader forces may be discouraging some people from seeking municipal office.

“I certainly encourage the democratic process, the exchange of ideas, and the debate about priorities. I think that’s very healthy,” Brockington told the Lookout. “And I don’t think acclamations bring us to the same level of public discourse just because there are no debates, and people aren’t motivated to get as involved, I believe, when you have a contested field.”

He pointed to political polarization, online abuse, workload, and compensation — particularly for elected officials in smaller municipalities — as possible deterrents.

“The workload, the toxic exchange online has turned a lot of good people off of politics, and has really restricted people from entering because they don’t want to deal with that,” Brockington said.

Brockington will begin his fourth term at city hall while simultaneously taking on one of the most prominent municipal advocacy positions in Ontario.

At the Association of Municipalities of Ontario’s annual conference in Ottawa last month, Brockington was elected president of the organization for the 2026–2028 term. AMO represents municipal interests across Ontario and advocates to Queen’s Park on issues ranging from infrastructure and housing to homelessness, health care and municipal finances. 

Brockington is a longtime member of AMO’s executive. In his new role, he said his responsibility is to represent municipalities across Ontario rather than use the organization primarily to advance Ottawa’s agenda. But Brockington said his position will inevitably create opportunities for Ottawa.

“If there’s a top priority that Ottawa needs addressed, and I happen to be in the corridors at Queen’s Park and I see that minister coming, I will absolutely use opportunities to address issues,” he said.

Infrastructure funding is expected to be among his priorities. At this year’s AMO conference, Brockington warned that municipalities were facing mounting pressures from aging infrastructure, housing growth, homelessness, emergency services and climate resilience while relying on a funding system that has not kept pace. 

“The state of our infrastructure, public infrastructure, is going to be an issue for many years, and we need to have a conversation with the province about a sustainable, permanent funding stream that municipalities can rely on and budget for, exclusively for infrastructure purposes,” Brockington said.

When the next group of councillors are sworn in after this fall's municipal election, one of the biggest files — not surprisingly — will be transit. 

Brockington said when he joined the transit commission in 2019, he expected the opening of the Confederation Line to usher in a more optimistic period for OC Transpo. Instead, derailments, reliability problems, the pandemic, and declining ridership have consumed much of his time at city hall.

For Brockington, one issue stands above the rest: buses arriving when they are supposed to.

“If you can’t get people from their local communities to the Transitway or the LRT line, to the main corridors, and you’re constantly showing up late and they’re being late for work or school, you erode confidence and trust, which is what has happened,” he said.

OC Transpo has spent much of 2026 trying to rebuild that confidence. Line 1 returned to full double-car weekday service in June, while the transit agency has also been adjusting bus schedules through its Customer-First Action Plan in an effort to better reflect real-world travel times and available staffing. 

Brockington said River Ward residents are particularly frustrated with reductions to neighbourhood bus service.

He pointed to Route 92 as one example. What was once a broader weekday service connecting communities, including Hunt Club and Riverside Park, has been reduced, Brockington said, leaving residents with fewer options outside peak periods.

Brockington also wants the city to reconsider how the O-Train serves the Ottawa International Airport, arguing that the current system requires too many transfers for what should be a relatively straightforward trip.

Although Line 4 provides a direct rail connection between South Keys and the airport in about eight minutes, it does not continue downtown. A passenger leaving Rideau Station must first take Line 1 west to Bayview, transfer to Line 2 south to South Keys, and then transfer a second time to Line 4 for the final stretch to the airport. 

OC Transpo has previously estimated the complete trip from Rideau Station to the airport at about 57 minutes, which includes the transfer, walking and waiting times.

“I am likely going to file an inquiry soon to talk about how we can get trains at least to Bayview Station all at one shot,” said Brockington. 

If it is possible, it won’t be an easy task. Line 2 is largely single-tracked, and airport trains would have to be incorporated into the existing schedule without reducing service for passengers travelling between Bayview and Limebank.

OC Transpo has already supplemented the rail connection with another option. Route 105 provides direct bus service to the airport from St-Laurent and Hurdman stations, generally operating approximately every 30 minutes and continuing overnight when the O-Train is not running. 

Confederation Heights, the sprawling federal employment district surrounding Heron Road, Bronson Avenue and Riverside Drive, is being planned for a decades-long transformation into a mixed-use community.

The 112-hectare secondary-plan area is expected to change over approximately 25 years from an automobile-oriented government employment campus to a community containing housing, employment, amenities and new streets and public spaces. 

Brockington said the eventual build-out could bring roughly 22,000 residents to Confederation Heights. But questions remain over whether its existing transit infrastructure is designed to handle the kind of community now being envisioned.

There was discussion roughly a decade ago about relocating Mooney’s Bay Station to the north side of Heron Road, which could better position it within the future neighbourhood. But that work never happened. 

“The conclusion was, this build-out is going to take 25 years, and they think that this line will be twinned at that point,” Brockington said. “And at that point, you would relocate the station.”

Transit advocate David Jeanes believes that creates a planning problem.

The retired professional engineer and longtime public-transit advocate who served for 12 years as president of Transport Action Canada, said the Confederation Heights redevelopment should be looking much more closely at how pedestrians, cyclists and buses will actually connect with Mooney’s Bay Station.

“I’ve attended the Canada Lands public meetings on Confederation Heights, and the design of the transit system is not part of their planning,” Jeanes told the Lookout.

“On their maps, they show, ‘Oh, there’s a transit line passing through here, and there’s a rail line passing that way,’ and so on,” said Jeanes. “But they don’t get into the question of how pedestrians really get into the transit station because it’s right in the middle, but it’s not linked in convenient or useful ways for pedestrians or cyclists or people transferring from buses to get to it.”

That issue could become more significant if the Baseline BRT is eventually built. The city’s long-term proposal calls for a roughly 14-kilometre rapid-transit corridor between Bayshore and Heron, generally featuring dedicated bus lanes, new stations and cycling and pedestrian infrastructure. 

The section from Algonquin Station to Heron Station is fully designed but still awaiting construction funding. The city’s current Transportation Master Plan identifies it as a priority project to be completed before 2046. 

Jeanes said Mooney’s Bay Station would need significant work if it is expected to function as a major transfer point.

“You really need to have good capacity transfers at Mooney’s Bay Station onto the Trillium Line,” he said. “And the Trillium Line station there is a tiny little station that in no way could handle the kind of traffic that would be coming along Baseline on a BRT, but needing to go downtown.”

The National Capital Commission owns a large corridor of land stretching through southern Ottawa, including areas surrounding McCarthy Woods between the Airport Parkway and Rideau River.

The NCC has identified its Southern Corridor among federal properties with housing-development potential. Its broader “Lands for Homes” initiative says 10 NCC properties placed on the Canada Public Land Bank could collectively accommodate close to 7,600 housing units. 

But what should happen around McCarthy Woods has become the subject of an increasingly bitter disagreement.

During Ottawa’s comprehensive zoning bylaw process, the NCC requested that portions of the Southern Corridor be given Development Reserve zoning. Brockington successfully introduced a motion at a joint committee meeting last December that rejected that request. Council ultimately adopted the amended zoning bylaw unanimously in January. 

The NCC has since appealed the city’s decision, Brockington said, meaning the dispute could ultimately be decided by the Ontario Land Tribunal.

Brockington stressed that McCarthy Woods itself was not identified for redevelopment in the zoning request, but surrounding NCC-owned lands are at issue.

“The preservation of green space in the urban area has always been a top priority for my residents, any type of green space that is threatened,” he said.

A petition organized with the Ottawa South Eco-Action Network has gathered more than 1,100 signatures calling for permanent protection of what organizers call the McCarthy Woods Nature Corridor.

The petition describes a more than three-kilometre system of forests, meadows, wetlands and shoreline covering roughly 160 hectares from the Rideau River toward South Keys.

“The value of the McCarthy Woods Nature Corridor comes from being a large, connected natural landscape inside urban Ottawa, where growing communities need access to nature close to home,” the petition states.

Organizers argue the land provides wildlife habitat and natural infrastructure that helps mitigate flooding, urban heat and air pollution. They are asking the federal government and NCC to abandon redevelopment plans and designate the corridor as a permanent natural heritage reserve.

“We, the undersigned, oppose the National Capital Commission’s plan to convert the McCarthy Corridor to mixed-use development,” the petition states. “We ask the NCC to stop its efforts to move these lands toward development and instead work with the community, the City of Ottawa, and the Government of Canada to permanently protect the corridor.”

Brockington is also frustrated by what he views as inadequate consultation from the NCC.

“To date, despite multiple requests by me, by the two federal members of Parliament, McGuinty and Naqvi, and letters from local community and environmental groups, the NCC has not honoured one request yet for a meeting,” he said. “Explain that to me. Can’t meet us for 30 minutes.”

With Ottawa getting set to house a few hundred thousand more residents in the coming decades, dozens of new development applications are being approved — many of which are building up. In the River Ward area, intensification will occur along Merivale Road, Carling Avenue and Baseline Road.

Brockington suspects over 10,000 new units in his ward have been approved but not yet built. 

One of the most visible examples is the former Westgate Shopping Centre property at Carling and Merivale. City council originally approved the redevelopment of the property for five mixed-use highrise towers. One 24-storey residential tower has already been completed, while the old mall closed last year and its next phase includes a new grocery store. Later phases contemplate two additional 36-storey towers. 

Across Carling Avenue, Ambassador Realty has proposed another 28-storey tower and an eight-storey building containing a combined 323 residential units. 

At 780 Baseline Rd., on the former Fisher Heights Plaza property at Fisher Avenue, construction has begun on a project ultimately planned to contain three towers and 1,089 residential units. The redevelopment went through a contentious approval process because of concerns about shadows affecting research fields at the nearby Central Experimental Farm. 

Farther west, a large redevelopment has been proposed for the Scouts Canada headquarters at 1345 Baseline Rd., with plans calling for four highrise towers ranging from 28 to 40 storeys and approximately 1,250 residential units.

Brockington said residents are increasingly asking whether transportation, sewer, water and stormwater systems can keep pace with the number of homes being approved.

Developers are required to submit infrastructure and servicing studies as part of the planning process, Brockington noted, but that has not eliminated the public concern.

“You really should have your infrastructure in place before,” he said. “It’s this chicken and egg, right?”