With the latest escalation in trade conflicts between US President Donald Trump and Canadian leaders, an Ottawa councillor is looking at a Central Park residential street currently named after an “embarrassment”. Coun. Riley Brockington vowed during Wednesday’s council meeting to lead a community-driven renaming process for Trump Avenue after saying that it was something “past the point of debating”, especially in light of recent trade war-related happenings. The latest attempt to rename the residential street of 62 homes was in 2021, when street residents were split on the decision causing the motion to fail. Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, in response to the planned initiative, stood by the importance of consultation with current Trump Ave. residents, although he personally preferred to have “nothing named after Trump in Ottawa”.
A 72 year-old Ottawa man was arrested last week for suspicious behaviour as a result of repeatedly circling the streets of a Barrhaven neighbourhood and possibly stalking victims. Ottawa Police said on Wednesday that the man hovered around the neighbourhood during mostly overnight hours, whether in a car or on foot, and he was finally charged after an encounter with a targeted individual. The charges include criminal harassment by way of watching and besetting, as well as mischief, and the Police Service is not releasing his identity in order to protect that of the targeted victim who sought for privacy.
In the latest session on Wednesday, City Council carried a motion to have a framework established for assessing proposals for new data centres in Ottawa based on size and operational impact, with other Ontario municipalities acting on mixed reactions ranging from a one-year moratorium to enforcing no limits at all. Coun. Stéphanie Plante, who put forward the motion, called it an important opportunity to regulate data centre development as opposed to being “anti-data centre”, something that Council agreed to have city staff work on towards a target of early 2027. The most concerning application types would be for “hyper scale” centres, which would require significant energy resources to operate – something observed by Hydro Ottawa CEO Bryce Conrad as a likely challenge given the Ottawa power grid already being at capacity.
