sk any of the thousands of visitors to our nation's capital what their first impression of our city is and they will more than likely answer "clean". It is a distinction that sets us apart from most major cities and it is important that keeping Ottawa clean remains a priority. Since June 4-10 is Canadian Environment Week, I thought I would focus on the city's environmental initiatives.
To help keep our community tidy, thousands of volunteers donated their time to the annual Spring Cleaning the Capital Campaign in April and May. This year's campaign built on the success of previous years, with a record 18,000 participants taking part. Since the program's inception seven years ago, nearly 80,000 volunteers have registered clean-up projects and over 70,000 kg of litter has been collected.
Thank you to the organizers, our partners and sponsors, and especially to the volunteers for their hours of work in maintaining the tidiness of our nation's capital! If you see litter why not help out? For major problems, please call our 24 hour city hotline at 244-5444.
Work is also being done to ensure that our community's green spaces are well looked after. Recently, I had the pleasure of announcing over $800,000 in funding for city trees. The City of Ottawa received $609,000 in support of the city's Tree Replacement and Management Strategy from the provincial government. This amount was supplemented by the city's contribution of $203,000. The strategy is designed to maintain the city's woodlots hit by the ice storm in 1998 that destroyed or damaged over 50,000 trees.
I started this task force after the ice storm as a means to establish strategies for replacing and maintaining Ottawa's trees. Since then, over $130,000 has been contributed to this initiative, with a recent $10,000 donation from the Royal Bank Financial Group Foundation.
Thanks to the generosity of companies like the Royal Bank, many of the trees that were destroyed have been replaced, ensuring the health of community trees for future generations.
On June 8, winners from this first-ever art contest for students in the Ottawa-Carleton area, their classmates and principals will attend a special ceremony and reception at Parliament Hill where their framed works will be presented to the Prime Minister, the Minister of the Environment and the Speaker of the House of Commons.
Over 1,500 participants forwarded artworks which will be judged by a distinguished arts panel. Students submitting art will receive a limited edition "Mayor's Environmental Award" medallion, donated and minted for this initiative by Inco.
Contact me:
Tel: 244-5380 Fax: 244-5379
Mail: 111 Sussex Drive,
Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 5A1
E-mail: watsonj@city.ottawa.on.ca