Ottawa city council passes watered down anti-idling bylaw

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City council has approved a watered-down anti-idling bylaw, but one that, unlike the old regulations it replaces, is enforceable year round and targets the “most egregious” offenders.

Last month, the city’s environment and climate change committee and the emergency preparedness and protective services committee approved a bylaw limiting idling to one minute in any 60-minute period, and to five minutes on very cold and very hot days when drivers might need to warm or cool their vehicles before driving. At Wednesday’s council meeting, however, Coun. Steve Desroches introduced an amendment to increase those limits to three minutes and 10 minutes respectively.

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And that’s what passed by a 15-8 vote, although there were a number of dissents on the 10-minute allowance in cold and hot weather.

Mayor Mark Sutcliffe called the new idling bylaw a success, even as he acknowledged that enforcement of the new rules will likely be patchy.

“I think we can look at all of that as a big step forward even if the exact amount of time that some people wanted wasn’t the final outcome,” Sutcliffe told reporters after the meeting. “The signal that we have sent is that we don’t want people to idle in their cars. Even on cold and hot days, there should be a limit on what they’re doing.

“We know there’s not going to be a huge amount of enforcement of this bylaw as there wasn’t much in the past either. The important thing is we’re setting a tone and we’re sending a signal to the community and we’re reminding people of the importance of shutting off their cars if they’re not in motion.”

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The city’s original bylaw dates back to 2007 and has fallen off the pace of idling bylaws now in place in many other Canadian cities. Under the old bylaw, Idling was limited to three minutes, but the rules didn’t apply when the temperature was below 5 C or above 27 C, something that occurs more than 200 days a year in Ottawa’s climate. The new law changes the temperature range to above 27 C or below 0 C and caps idling in those temperatures to 10 minutes.

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The bylaw includes some exemptions, for example, emergency vehicles at an emergency scene, people with medical notes or medical appointments, or “mobile workshops.”

Coun. Shawn Menard, who chairs the environment and climate change committee, said he was satisfied with the new bylaw, even in its watered-down form.

“I think what we did was very reasonable given the air pollution it creates, and given the cost savings we can have from a better idling bylaw and the education is going to come with the update,” Menard said after the meeting.

“No one’s trying to crack down on people’s freedom to warm up their car or to idle occasionally. That’s not going to happen. It’s the egregious example we’ve seen like diesel fumes for 30 minutes and this new bylaw is going to cover that,” he said.

The standard fine is $500 although that can escalate for repeated or egregious cases to $100,000.

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