‘A human sacrifice’: Manotick truck traffic leads to Charter challenge

A group of Manotick residents has launched a Charter challenge against the City of Ottawa arguing that a designated truck route that passes through the centre of the village “exposes children, older persons and persons with disabilities to the risk of death and serious injury.”

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The notice of application, filed in October at the Ottawa courthouse by Manotick Concerned Citizens Against Truck Traffic, or MCCATT, follows years of effort by the group to persuade the City to remove the designation allowing the trucks in favour of another route north of Manotick.

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According to the group, the rear wheels of westbound trucks turning right at the intersection of Bridge and Manotick Main streets frequently mount the curb and cut across the sidewalk there.

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MCCATT has presented photo evidence of the problem to the City. The Ottawa Citizen has also captured drone images of trucks mounting the curb with their rear wheels while executing turns.

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The situation, MCCATT says, often requires pedestrians and cyclists to dodge the passing trucks, putting children, older persons and people with disabilities at greater risk than others.

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The notice of application argues that this infringes upon the Charter rights to equality and to life, liberty and security and asks that the designation allowing the trucks be removed.

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The allegations contained in the notice of application have not been tested in court.

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Jim Sproule, chair of MCCATT, said that during a site visit Mayor Mark Sutcliffe “was almost hit by a truck while we were standing there … he’s almost violently aware of this problem.”

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Sproule became involved in the issue shortly after retiring to Manotick several years ago, after a flatbed truck nearly struck him while he was cycling across the Rideau River.

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A former emergency physician, Sproule ended his medical career as the deputy chief coroner of Ontario.

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In that role he oversaw teams probing Ontario’s opioid crisis and a deadly spate of house fires on First Nations in the province, among other things.

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Now he’s determined to prevent trucks from using Manotick as a throughway to the 416.

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The City has responded to the application by hiring an outside legal firm to handle the case.

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City solicitor Stuart Huxley declined to comment on the matter, saying it was before the courts.

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The Mayor’s office also declined comment, citing the solicitor’s statement. His office also did not respond to invitations to confirm or deny the anecdote about his visit to the intersection in Manotick.

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Some Manotick residents are perplexed by how the municipality has reacted to their complaints.

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“It’s as if the City needs a human sacrifice in order to make a decision,” said Sproule.

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Although the nitty-gritty issue of truck route designations may appear to fall outside the normal scope of Canada’s lofty Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Manotick group’s gambit is just one in a series of similar challenges that in recent years has helped broaden the Charter’s application to include issues as diverse as bike lanes and climate change.

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But Natalia Rodriguez, a lawyer representing MCCATT, said she was not aware of other truck-related Charter challenges in Ontario.

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“It’s not surprising that there’s not another case like this because I would think that most municipalities hearing complaints from the public would simply just do it.

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“But for some reason, it refuses to do so,” she added. “So this is really a last-ditch effort to get the City to wake up and do something for the citizens of Manotick.”

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The Manotick challenge focuses on a busy intersection just steps away from the picturesque stone millworks and charming commercial main street that have helped make the Village of Manotick an important Ottawa sightseeing draw and the backdrop to several Hallmark Channel holiday films.

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Those movies tend to leave out the high volume of heavy trucks passing through the village’s heart.

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According to a City of Ottawa accounting from 2023, around 1,000 trucks use the designated truck route along Bridge Street over the Rideau River each day.

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Most of the westbound trucks turn right at Bridge and Manotick Main Street on their way to Highway 416.

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The two-lane route and the Bridge Street and Manotick Main Street intersection aren’t suitable for large trucks, says an independent engineering report commissioned by MCCATT, which describes that intersection as “effectively designed to optimize the likelihood of pedestrian deaths.”

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During periods of light traffic, many trucks on Bridge Street making a right turn use the middle through-lane meant to accommodate westbound traffic.

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But during periods of congestion they use the correct right-hand lane to execute a tight turn that often leads the rear wheels to mount the curb. This manoeuvre in particular poses a danger to pedestrians and cyclists, MCCATT says.

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The notice of application points out that Manotick Public School and two residences for older people are located along Bridge Street a short walk east of the intersection.

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“I think it’s an obvious public health concern,” said Charles Cullen, part-owner of 692 Coffee and Bar on Manotick Main Street, who has forbidden his younger child from walking in the area.

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“The amount of truck traffic that comes through is pretty wild,” he said. “It’s a dangerous road to cross.”

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Residents say the number of trucks passing through Manotick has increased in recent years due to new developments in Ottawa’s far south end. Many of the trucks stop at construction-related commercial facilities in the Bank Street and Mitch Owens Road area east of the village.

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The Manotick intersection is so tight that those driving trucks can sometimes have trouble seeing smaller vehicles around them or even registering accidents.

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Dashcam video of a collision last year, provided to the Citizen by MCCATT, shows a large truck tearing into the rear of a sedan beside it during a right turn and driving off, apparently oblivious. Photos show a rear door peeled away as though by a can opener. No one was injured in the accident.

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The Ontario Trucking Association did not respond to emails seeking comment for this story.

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MCCATT and the independent engineering report say an alternative route that relies on the six-lane Vimy Memorial Bridge north of Manotick adds just a few minutes to an average trip.

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“Is five minutes not worth a human life?” asks some of MCCATT’s social media campaign posts.

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David Brown, city councillor for Rideau-Jock Ward, which includes Manotick, said in a statement that “ultimately removing heavy truck traffic from the centre of Manotick is a priority for me.”

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“These are tangible steps toward our shared objective,” Brown said in the statement.

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“I believe we will achieve the best outcome by working together as a community, rather than allowing differences over the approach to distract from our shared goal,” the statement added.

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Sproule, however, said Manotick Main Street was never the real issue and that the truck study is not likely to be heard at committee before 2027, at which point the City is not required to act.

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He also pointed out that similar worries led the City to remove the section of Gladstone Avenue between Preston Street and Bronson Avenue from its designated truck route network earlier this fall.

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He asked: “So they’re willing to do it in other areas — why are they not here?”

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MCCATT has written a formal letter to the City managers asking for an interim truck ban. Rodriguez, the MCCATT lawyer, said that request has been rejected pending the Charter case.

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The Charter of Rights and Freedoms was for many years invoked almost exclusively in criminal matters, especially as related to such things as medically assisted death or abortion.

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But Martha Jackman, a constitutional law expert and professor emerita at the University of Ottawa, said that Section 7 of the Charter, which guarantees the life, liberty and personal security of all Canadians, has more recently come up in a much broader range of contexts.

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Today, Charter challenges are raising more and more questions about the obligations Section 7 imposes on governments.

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It is the central debate in a current lawsuit filed by 15 youth applicants in B.C. who argue that government inaction on climate change violates their rights.

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The Cycle Toronto case that briefly halted Doug Ford’s campaign to pull up some of Toronto’s bike lanes also turned on this issue. Ontario’s court of appeal later upended the trial judge’s decision but Cycle Toronto, along with its co-applicants, is currently seeking leave to appeal that ruling to the Supreme Court.

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Jackman sees a straight line between these cases and the Manotick challenge.

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“That decision to allow truck traffic on a road that really isn’t suited for it could be argued, based on the Cycle Toronto precedent, as a Section 7 violation,” she said. “But with this court of appeal decision, everything becomes a lot more grey.”

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For his part, Sproule, the MCCATT chair, remains perplexed by the City’s willingness to wait for this court process to play out before deciding whether to remove the truck route designation in the village.

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“That is the real question — why won’t they make this decision?” he said. “What is it about this situation?”

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