By Maureen Regier
A Centretown resident is proposing a municipal bylaw that would prevent correctional facilities and parole offices from being placed within 200 metres of schools.
Albert Galpin, chair of the Centretown Citizen’s Community Association, is asking the committee for support in bringing the proposal to Ottawa city council.
Galpin would like to see a safe-school zoning bylaw implemented to create a buffer zone around schools and daycares to protect children’s safety throughout the city.
“I would like to see an all encompassing bylaw dealing with doubling fines for traffic violations, federal correctional facilities, medical facilities like methadone clinics,” says Galpin.
He would also like to see the bylaw encompass a public meeting clause which would allow local communities to have a say in facilities entering the neighbourhood which may cause a threat to its citizens.
He says the meetings would also create a forum where such facilities could defend themselves and present their case.
Galpin will present his proposal to the CCCA at the meeting on Nov. 21.
With the support of the committee the proposal will then be brought to city council.
The proposal comes after a two-year fight with Correctional Services Canada to move a parole office located across from Elgin Street Public School. Corrections Canada announced in September that it would move the parole office in 2009, when the building’s lease expires.
Galpin says he would like the bylaw in place before Corrections Canada chooses another location for the parole office so the fight does not have to happen in another community.
Somerset Ward Coun. Diane Holmes says she does not believe Corrections Canada would place the parole office within close proximity of a school a second time.
However she says she does think the new safety bylaw is an interesting proposal.
“I think its worth looking into this idea,”says Holmes. “I would like to talk to the public to see if there are other concerns.”
Holmes says the bylaw can only be passed after much public consultation with school boards and school and community organizations.
She says the first step would be for the council to check if it is within their jurisdiction to exclude uses for buildings under zoning laws.
She says the whole process to put the bylaw in place would take at least a year but could take up to two.
However, since many correctional facilities, especially parole offices are provincially and federally owned they would not necessarily have to follow the spirit of the law.
“It is completely voluntary for federal and provincial facilities to obey local bylaws,” says Katherine Graham, an expert in municipal government at Carleton University.
Though provincial and federal institutions are not bound by municipal bylaws, the federal Public Works and Government Services department does have a policy that new locations for federal buildings should be chosen to create a positive influence.
Joan Spice, school trustee for Somerset and Kitchissippi Wards agrees that it is not likely Corrections Canada will choose another location for the new parole office that is close to an elementary school.
“We’ve made our position clear; the government has responded and said that new standards are being established,” she says.
“I have also received assurances from [Corrections Canada] that every effort will be made to assess the location of Community Correctional Centres and parole offices against the new standards for sight location of such facilities,” said Stockwell Day, the federal minister of public safety, in a letter to Galpin.
Galpin says he has received no information on what these new standards entail.
Even with Corrections Canada establishing new standards for placement of their buildings, both Holmes and Spice say the formation of a new bylaw may act as a preventative measure for school safety in the future.