If Sutcliffe cares about his housing plan, he'll end Clublink fight
The Supreme Court rejection gave Ottawa's mayor an excellent political off-ramp. Instead, he promised the planning version of guerrilla warfare.
By Randall Denley, Ottawa Citizen
Published Sep 24, 2025 | Last updated 10 hours ago
It has always been hard to understand why it’s so important for Ottawa to stop the redevelopment of a suburban golf course in Kanata North, particularly as councillors continue to push for more housing.
The city has been fighting the Kanata Golf and Country Club redevelopment plan, proposed by course owner Clublink and its development partners Minto and Richcraft, since 2019. The city’s efforts to stop the proposal have failed in Ontario Superior Court, at the Ontario Land Tribunal and at the Ontario Court of Appeal.
Last week, unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court of Canada, declined to hear a city appeal of the lower court ruling.
The city had hoped that a court would rule that a 1981 agreement between the original developer and the former city of Kanata to retain the golf course “in perpetuity” would be interpreted in its favour, providing a way to stop a development that’s highly unpopular with its neighbours.
With the city’s legal options now exhausted, Mayor Mark Sutcliffe has promised the planning version of guerrilla warfare. The city will deny access to roads, sewers and water pipes required for development to go ahead. It will also attempt to enlist the National Capital Commission in this noble cause.
It’s easy to understand why Kanata residents who live near the golf course would oppose a plan to put 1,500 homes on the site, even though it would retain 33 per cent of the overall space as publicly accessible parkland. People paid a premium for property that backed on a golf course and were told that it would always be there.
The city certainly put up a fight, spending an undisclosed number of taxpayers’ dollars in the process. The Supreme Court rejection gave Sutcliffe an excellent political off-ramp from a vexatious issue that he inherited from the previous council.
Instead, the normally politically astute mayor vowed to continue the golf course fight. It’s a choice that will please a few people in Kanata, but it undermines Sutcliffe’s own housing plan, just announced. An opponent might easily say, “Sure, the mayor favours more housing, unless it will damage people’s view of a private golf course.”
The mayor and Kanata North councillor Cathy Curry argue that the real reason for rejecting the redevelopment proposal is that the area doesn’t have the stormwater capacity to handle the development and there is no feasible technical solution. The developers obviously disagree.
It’s difficult, if not impossible, to separate any technical concerns from the politics of this issue. If the planning arguments against the development were so strong, why did the city work so hard to stop the plan in court?
If the plan is a slam dunk failure on stormwater grounds, why is the mayor promising to block it by not granting the usual easements that development relies on?
Sutcliffe’s comments create the impression that the city is simply dead set against the development and not at all open to working out a solution. That’s not the kind of argument that does well at the Ontario Land Tribunal, where this matter could end up, again. Once there, it will be easy for the proponents to argue that the city refused to give its plan a fair hearing. They’ll be right, too.
Premier Doug Ford compounded the confusion when he was in Ottawa this week, coming down firmly on both sides of the issue. In the morning, he said the city and the developer should work something out. In the afternoon, he said, “If they don’t want it, they shouldn’t do it and if the mayor wants to put up roadblocks, God bless him. Good for him. He’s protecting his community.”
That’s certainly a noteworthy comment for all Ontario municipalities that are under constant provincial pressure to enable more housing.
It’s time for the rest of council to get involved with this golf course issue and demand some solid answers about why the city has spent so much effort and money to block one development.
Randall Denley is an Ottawa journalist and author. Contact him at [email protected]
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/cl...golf-sutcliffe