Sheguiandah First Nation Community Court, ERA Architects and Emily Kewageshing

Resources for Connecting with Elected Officials

What we want elected officials to know:

what landscape architecture is;
its contributions to the health, safety and well-being of the public;
that the profession is a fast-growing sector; and
that landscape architects are employed in the private, academic, and public realms across the province;

We also want to ensure elected officials and the public at large know the contributions we can make and the issues that are impacted by the work of landscape architects, including:

pedestrian street safety;
flood protection;
improved universal accessibility outdoors; and
protection of natural areas to mitigate the effects of climate change

Key Documents and Messaging

Please see below key documents that may be helpful if you attend a meeting with any officials

How the Ontario Government Can Better Protect our Province (Updated August 2024). This document outlines the request for a Landscape Architects Practice Act and provides clear examples of the value of the updated legislation for Ontarians.
Why Ontario Needs a Practice Act for Landscape Architects - OALA prepared this two-page document for Attorney General Doug Downey, MPP (Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte) in December 2020 to answer the question “what problem are you trying to solve?”
What Landscape Architects Can Do for Municipalities. Updated July 2022
Ground58 – Impact issue (Summer 2022) has several stories about the impact and opportunities of landscape architects working in and with municipalities.
Parks as Health and Wellness Infrastructure - Prepared by OALA Municipal Outreach Committee, Summer 2022
Landscape architects are already in the public eye. Municipal World is a well-respected national magazine. OALA has been published in the magazine every year for the last four years. See below a list of published articles:
- March 2019 – Transforming the landscape. Five ways landscape architects are enhancing communities across Canada by Jane Welsh and Robert Norman
- March 2020 – Keeping Canada’s shorelines safe by Cynthia Graham
- March 2021 – Parks are the new medicine. How COVID-19 made parks essential to healthy cities by Cynthia Graham
- May 2022 – Designing Safer Streets - Putting People First by Glenn A. O’Connor and Lawrence Stasiuk

Resources for Connecting with Elected Officials

Key Documents and Messaging

Links