For years, Ottawa volunteer groups doing the unglamorous work of pulling invasive plant species out of the city's parks faced a problem that had nothing to do with plants: they could not get the liability insurance they needed without routing through a community association that often did not want the administrative burden. That problem has now been fixed - and the fix took four months from the moment a city councillor asked the right question.
The City of Ottawa has extended its Community Partnership Insurance Programme (CPIP) to cover groups holding stewardship agreements with the city's forestry department, according to CBC News, which first reported the change. Previously, the CPIP - which provides third-party liability coverage to community associations and gardens - was available only to those organisations. Stewardship groups wanting to remove buckthorn, dog-strangling vine, and garlic mustard from Ottawa's natural areas had to either find their own insurance or persuade an existing association to cover them, a process that could take up to six months from first approach to final city approval, according to Michelle St-Germain, chair of the Alta Vista Community Association's land restoration committee.
Under the new rules, qualifying groups apply once, directly to the city. The association intermediary is gone.
The liability cover requirement for this kind of volunteer work is not bureaucratic excess - it reflects a genuine risk. Wild parsnip, one of the invasive plants found in Ottawa's green spaces, produces a toxic sap containing chemicals that cause severe burns, rashes, and blistering when skin is subsequently exposed to sunlight, according to the Government of Ontario. In Ottawa specifically, the plant has forced the closure of sections of the Rideau Trail and is established in parks across several neighbourhoods, according to Cottage Life's reporting on the species in Eastern Ontario. The CPIP existed precisely to manage that exposure for volunteers working on public land. The structural problem was never the requirement itself - it was the path through which groups had to satisfy it.
"Most associations can't afford to pay that extra money for this type of insurance, so they limit it to activities that are really their core activities," St-Germain told CBC, citing family events and picnics as typical examples. Even where an association was willing to help, St-Germain said she had to return each year to rejustify her group's work - a recurring burden layered on top of the initial months-long approval timeline.
For groups wanting to operate independently of any association entirely, the barrier was higher still. Alta Vista Coun. Marty Carr raised the question formally in February, asking city staff why groups holding stewardship agreements could not access CPIP directly.
"There are groups that want to do this work, but they do not want to have to be part of a community association, for whatever reason," Carr told CBC. "[Some people] want to do this as their sole activity. They don't want to feel that they have to be part of a community association and ... help make decisions on other initiatives."
This month, city staff confirmed to councillors that the exclusion has been removed.
The economic case for making this kind of volunteer work easier is substantial. Invasive species are estimated to cost Canada up to $35 billion annually, according to the Weather Network citing federal data - a figure that reflects losses across agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and ecosystem services. In Ontario alone, combined potential impacts are estimated at approximately $3.6 billion per year, with municipalities and conservation authorities spending an estimated $50.8 million annually on management, according to the Invasive Species Centre.
In Ottawa specifically, the problem is widespread. Garlic mustard, dog-strangling vine, common buckthorn, and glossy buckthorn are common in many of the city's natural areas, crowding out native species, while zebra mussels, Eurasian water-milfoil, and flowering rush are established in its rivers, according to the City of Ottawa's own invasive species guidance. Each of the three plant species volunteers most commonly target causes specific, compounding damage. Buckthorn grows so densely it shades out young native trees, and birds spread its berries widely. Dog-strangling vine creates dense stands that impair reforestation efforts, with wind-dispersed seeds that travel long distances. Garlic mustard releases a chemical that disrupts soil fungi, depriving maple, ash, and other hardwoods of nourishment - and its seeds can remain viable in the ground for up to 30 years, according to the Ontario Invasive Plant Council.
For St-Germain and groups like the Ottawa South Eco Action Network (OSEAN), the practical effect is immediate. OSEAN planted trees near Mooney's Bay in May alongside a high school class and had been looking to remove invasive species from beneath those trees - work that can now proceed without routing through an intermediary association.
"We don't have an issue working with the other community associations," OSEAN volunteer Lynne Patenaude told CBC. "But it's an extra layer of bureaucracy and administration ... We like to stay more grassroots and focus on getting things done."
St-Germain welcomed the reduction in recurring burden.
"It's definitely a huge step in the right direction and it will encourage a lot of people that weren't able to do it before to come forth," she told CBC.
The CPIP change is not the end of the simplification effort. Carr said city staff are developing a broader programme to reduce administrative work further and give community groups more direct stewardship over public land - including training new volunteers and reducing the need to seek city approval before clearing parks and green spaces. An update is expected sometime next year.
The Ottawa model offers a directly replicable template for insurers and risk managers: a municipality identifying a structural barrier in an existing liability programme, removing it through a simple policy extension, and immediately expanding the pool of insured volunteer activity at no additional cost to the city. Other Canadian municipalities running similar community insurance arrangements would find few practical obstacles to adopting the same approach - and, given the national scale of the invasive species problem, considerable reason to do so.
