All posts by Fangliang Xu

Students from China Should Broaden Their Choice of Graduate Study

Database assignment three
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It’s been half a year and none of the eight Chinese graduates from the class of 2014 Master of Economics program at Carleton University has found a job related to their education, according to one of them, Xiaohu Li.

However, all of them were nominated by Ontario Province as candidates for citizenship, thanks to the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP).

Half of the eight Chinese graduates thought they would be counting the accounts of the nation, not their cashier’s till at the end of the night.

Xiaohu Li, along with his classmates Rui Xiao, Shuhan Yang and Kun Zhang are currently working as cashiers after they graduated.

Li says a few of his Canadian classmates got job offers from government agencies and banks, such as Statistics Canada or the Bank of Canada, but he failed to find any job that is related to his field. Instead, he had to change his strategy and looked for any job that would let him stay in Canada. He now works part-time at a Tim Horton’s in Ottawa.

“I just take this job as a way to practice my English,” Li says.

Rui Xiao, Li’s classmate, began working for the Starbucks in Carleton’s library since July. She says she is the only one who holds a Master’s degree, and all her co-workers are undergraduate students.

“Many of them study in food science,” Xiao says. “At least they are working on something somehow related to what they learn, but me? This job has nothing to do with what I have learned.”

Li says there is a big difference in opportunities for local students and international students. He says, “Of course my goal is to work as a financial policy maker in the government, but the very first thing the government agencies asked me at a job fair is my citizenship, and when they learned that I am not Canadian they said ‘no’ to me very quickly.”

The latest Ontario University Graduate Survey shows the difference.

The survey shows that six months after their graduation, 18 per cent of master’s degree graduates think their work is not related to the skills they acquired through their program of study.



“Although the survey doesn’t exactly show the entire picture, it still tells you something about the reality,” says Tesia Lara Bojorquez, a data analyzer from Carleton University’s Office of Institutional Research and Planning.

Bojorquez says, “If you look at the number for the average in Ontario, it also decreased by four per cent after two years of graduation as well.” That means, more people found a job related to what they’ve learned as time goes.

Li also says it may be a matter of time. He says that he will eventually find a job in some bank or a company’s financial department, just like two graduates did a year after their graduation in 2012.

In 2012, Chinese students accounted for 12 per cent of the economic graduate class. That number climbed to nearly 20 per cent in 2013, and remained at 15 per cent this year, revealed by the data obtained through a request to Carleton University’s Office of Institutional Research and Planning.

The same trend is more exaggerated in the business program. This year more than half of the new students are from China, nearly ten per cent more than last year.

In 2008, the percentage of Chinese students in the two programs was less than ten per cent (7% in business, and only 2% in economics.)

Select the year to show the percentage of Chinese students for each program in Carleton University. 

 

Gregory Aulenback, the international recruitment officer in the Carleton’s Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs, says the number of international applicants has been increasing steadily since 2009. That is when Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) in Ontario eased its policy for international master graduates in February of that year.

Under the policy, also known as the International Student Category’s Masters Graduate Stream, Ontario’s masters graduate students can apply for their permanent residency even without a job offer.

“That means, we already semi become a Canadian once we got our offer from Carleton,” Li says that’s how he reads the policy.

According to CIC, it takes no more than two months for a master’s graduate to get his or her provincial nomination. Then it will take around one year for the person to get a permanent resident status from the federal government.

So far, 100 per cent of Li’s Chinese classmates have already got their nomination from the province, and all of them are waiting for the federal government’s final decision.

Xiaohu Li, Rui Xiao, and Shuhan Yang all think it’s promising.

“Although it’s easier for Chinese student to get a permanent residency in Canada, it doesn’t mean they can work in the field they learned or simply they want.” Yu Zhang, the manager of a Chinese Education Agency, Yu Agency, says, “there is an imbalance between the supply and demand in the Canadian job market.”

Zhang says her clients’ top three choices of graduate programs in Canada are economics, mathematics and business. However, the Labour Force Survey from Statistic Canada shows the picture of its labour force is different from students’ choices.

Select the year to show the percentage of labour force in different fields in Canada.

In the past decade, finance ranks eighth, with only about six per cent of the labour force. Business ranks even lower, with an average of about four per cent of the labour force working in this field.

After being shown the data, Zhang says, “I think even local Canadians have the same problem in terms of finding a study-related job. Having so many Chinese competitors is like adding frost to the snow – making the situation even worse.”

“What makes the competition fiercer is the fact that most Chinese people tend to move into the same places,” Zhang says.

Data extracted from the Canada Census Analyzer shows that the top two destinations for Chinese immigrants are B.C and Ontario. In Ontario, Toronto and Ottawa are the most popular cities.

big map
Where do Chinese Immigrants Live in Canada?
Ontario map
Where do Chinese Immigrants Live in Ontario?

Zhang says, “The big Chinese community in some of the Canadian provinces will only attract an even bigger Chinese community. Therefore if Chinese students don’t want to change the provinces they want to stay, then at least they should seriously think about the programs they choose to study.”

Bail Violation in Somerset Ten Times the Average

Database assignment two
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The bail violation rate in the Somerset ward is nearly ten times as much as the city’s average. Local lawyer says bail violation is an offence that alarms police because it could be an “early warning signal” for future problems.

Police caught 578 bail condition breaches in Somerset ward last year, according Ottawa Police crime statistics. This translates into a least one bail violation case every day while most of the other wards had one incident a month.

A heat map shows the bail violations across the city. 

Conway says one of the main reasons that explains the high rate is the cheap housing in Somerset ward. He says there are many shelters, low-income housing and single unit housing that are designed for people who are under bail conditions.

“Somerset contains a large segment of the housing and services that this population uses. That is why quite a large percentage end up hanging around Somerset,” Conway says.

“There are also more police patrolling in Somerset ward,” Conway says. “I see them all the time.” He says that he thinks the fact that police keep catching people while they are breaching their conditions contributes to the large number of bail violations.

Cst. Marc Soucy, an Ottawa Police spokesman, says the greater number of bars and restaurants in Somerset ward should be blamed for the high bail violation rate. He says they often catch people consuming alcohol when they were prohibited by the courts from doing so.

Dundonald Park, located at Lyon and Somerset Street, is a typical place that well illustrates all these reasons.

David Lelacheur, who walks his dog Pete in the park at least once a day, says the police almost come here as often as he does. He thinks it’s because of the beer store across the park.

“I have seen many times that things were left behind, beer cans especially,” Lelacheur says.

Conway says he has seen repeated examples of low-income and homeless people pulling huge garbage bags full of beers cans and beer bottles right across the park from the shelters on McLaran Street to the beer store on Somerset Street. He says the park can be a very good example where police catch some people who breach their conditions by simply drinking beer from a nearby beer store.

The number of bail violations has dropped nearly one third from three years ago. However, Somerset has historicallyhad the most violations.

Ottawa Police says decreasing the bail violations isn’t their ultimate goal, making people not commit crimes is. Soucy says “people who are under bails are those who got something criminal, so our main target is the original crime.”

Conway says, “To some extent it is not possible to ‘lower’ the number of breaches and it is not always desirable to lower the number of breaches.” (Click to listen how Conway explains.)

He explains that it is because the breach of bail is the early-warning signal to the criminal justice system that the offender is likely to increase the criminality of their behavior. This is a trigger to grab the offender before the increase in offending becomes too serious.

 

Chinese seniors in Ottawa demand more interpreters in health care system

Database assignment one
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An ordinary afternoon for Cao Midi, 69, is playing a board game with three of her friends at the Yet Keen Seniors’ Day Centre in Ottawa’s Chinatown. All of them are originally from Southern China, where Cantonese is their first language.

Cao doesn’t speak English at all. Despite this, daily tasks are no problem for her. However, from the time she moved to Ottawa in 1993, she had tried hard to avoid hospitals.

“I just don’t feel comfortable when I don’t speak their language,” Cao says.

Because of this she has not had a regular checkup in nearly 20 years.

The first time Cao saw a Canadian doctor did not happen until 2011 when she had an unbearable drumming noise in her ears. After having gone in to the hospital, she insisted on seeing a Chinese physician. However, the experience of waiting for hours to see the only Chinese-speaking doctor in that hospital encouraged nothing but her fear toward hospitals.

Cao says after that happened, she convinced herself that maybe the best thing to do would be to see a Canadian doctor the next time she went to the hospital. She wanted to be seen faster, but it didn’t exactly work out.

“The nurse is local. I got very nervous when she was measuring my blood pressure,” Cao said. “I was shocked when I saw the result – the upper number was 190.”

Cao says the hospital then prescribed her high blood pressure medicine. “But it wasn’t the real problem,” Cao says. “I measure my blood pressure every day. It’s usually 120, and that scary number never happened to me before. I know I was just too nervous.”

Cao is not the only one to get nervous. Huang Xiufang, 76, Cao’s friend in the seniors’ centre, says the reason she gets nervous is because all she can count on is her luck.

76-year-old He Huixian (L), 76-year-old Huang Xiufang , 69-year-old Cao Midi and 70 years old He Lichang all come from Southern China. They come to this Yet Keen Seniors’ Day Centre on Somerset Street every day during the weekdays.

“The first thing I do when I am in a hospital is to look around and spot a Chinese face to help me. Usually my luck works, but it is not ensured,” Huang says. “When I have to depend on myself, I use all my body parts to explain.”

Huang says once she was hospitalized due to a stroke. No matter how inconvenient it was for her to move, she still had to communicate with doctors and nurses by pointing at a board with translations on it.

Both Cao and Huang say it’s not that they don’t have family to help them, but their son and daughter are busy at work most of the time.

They also say although hospitals in Ottawa have interpreters, booking the service is impossible for them when they don’t even know how to call the hospital.

What is worse is that they often go to local clinics where there are no interpreters.

That’s the reason they have to ask for help from volunteers at the seniors’ centre.

Joe Woo, the volunteer coordinator at the centre, says the volunteer’s job sometimes include picking the senior up from their home, visiting the hospital, and send them back home. He says sometimes an entire trip can take a volunteer four hours.

“You can tell that elderly people very much cherish the help,” Woo says. “They are like children. If you tell them that you will pick them up at 7am, usually they are ready and waiting for you one hour in advance.”

Volunteers can solve the problems most of the time, but they can cause troubles, too.

“Once our senior had to go to the hospital because of taking the wrong pill due to a mistranslation,” says Anna Yip, the program coordinator at Yet Keen Seniors’ Day Centre.

That’s why the centre is being very selective when picking volunteers. It’s now required that volunteers have some knowledge of medical vocabulary. “It can be really serious,” Yip says.

The centre now has about 200 seniors coming from the entire city, but only 50 of them speak English. “There is always a need of volunteers for us,” Woo says.

But according to the 2011 census from Statistics Canada, there could be a bigger need in the city for translators.

The data shows that nearly 12,000 people in Ottawa do not speak English or French, and more than 12 per cent of them are older than 65.

For Somerset Ward where most Chinese people live, the percentage for seniors is even higher – more than 20 percent.

“It is a real and urgent problem. It’s time for our province to fix it.” Woo says.

Street newspaper boxes are someone’s eyesores in Ottawa, document reveals

Access-to-information story
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When you open the green one for a Metro, or grab an Ottawa Sun from the red, you might not know that the newspaper boxes  you count on every morning are sometimes others’ eyesores.

The latest complaint, revealed in a document obtained through access to information, was made by the former executive director of Glebe BIA last summer.

In an email to the City of Ottawa, Christine Leadman wanted seven newspaper boxes in front of a patio to be removed because they “negatively impact the aesthetics of the exterior perimeter of these businesses.”

The boxes were located on northeastern corner of Bank Street and the Fifth Avenue, right against the patio fence of a café named Roast N Brew.

After leaving the Glebe BIA for nearly one year, Leadman still remembers how much the boxes affected the café. “That nice patio has black fence with tables and chairs, but the newspaper boxes took away the value the place would have,” Leadman says.

Jihad Harb, the former owner of Roast’n Brew, was the one who initially approached  Leadman. He started running the café since 2010. He says the boxes didn’t matter too much in the beginning due to the renovation of Bank Street, because “everything was a mess”.

However, he then wanted to make things better. Harb says he tried to put on some trees between the boxes and the fence so that his customers wouldn’t notice the ugly boxes, but he failed.

“Those newspaper boxes were 100 per cent in my way,” Harb says.

The city soon followed up on the complaint. Two weeks later, four of the paper boxes were gone, and the remaining three were relocated on Fifth Avenue at the same street corner.

Jihad and the 3 relocated newspaper boxes in front of Roast N Brew
Jihad and the 3 relocated newspaper boxes in front of Roast N Brew

Although they are no longer in Harb’s way, Leadman says she still thinks they are unnecessary, because too many nearby corner stores sell newspapers.

Leadman says, “It’s just a marketing tool. They are not the main source where people can get newspapers any more.”

However, after paying a visit to each location where newspapers are available in Glebe – from the Glebe Avenue to the Fifth Avenue, Leadman’s opinion is not wholly correct, because not everything is available in the convenience stores.

Shoppers, Metro or even Starbucks, only provide paid newspapers, such as Ottawa Citizen, Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail.

Although Ottawa Sun is a paid one and has its boxes on the street, the other boxes standing beside it are all free, such as Metro, Xtra, as well as other home magazines and business journals.

Please click the red dots to check the locations for newspaper boxes on the street;                    click the green dots to check the locations convenience stores which sell newspapers.

[Click here for the details of the by-law for newspaper boxes/services boxes.]

Don Muran, one of Metro‘s 18 newspaper guy  in the city, has to send out 500 Metro a day.

He says he has tried several times to put his newspaper into Starbucks, but he was finally kicked out because he was told that Starbucks’ other newspaper clients were complaining.

“It’s like an eight-year old is selling lemonade, and another eight-year old is standing beside her and sending lemonade for free. Of course it doesn’t work,” Don says.

However, what Leadman says about the newspaper boxes  are “no longer the assets to street” might be true.

A woman is finding newspaper in Britten.
A woman is finding newspaper in Britten.

Bruce McDonald, who works for the Glebe’s Britten, says he doesn’t consider free newspapers as his competitor for his 15-square-metre store that sells more than 100 magazines and 40 newspapers, he does think the boxes as eyesores.

“Covered with snow, filled with scrapped papers and coffee cups, they are just eyesores in the winter.” McDonald says.

That’s the same reason why Leadman might soon make more complaints about these boxes to the city.

She says right now her job is to clean up the snow on the street, but newspaper boxes could be her next target “depends on their maintenance and location”.

 

I: EXPLANATION FOR THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENT FROM CITY OF OTTAWA.

This following page is the only useful page in the four pages of records I got from City of Ottawa.

(*) What is the information?

This is a document with two emails regarding to the complaint about the newspaper boxes. The information provides me the name of the original complainant about newspaper boxes in this case, who is Christine Leadman; the location of the original complaint, which is a restaurant with a patio located in Fifth/Bank; as well as the “fixer” from the government, Ermis Durofil, who is the Program Manager of the Right Of Way, Permits & Applications in the City of Ottawa.

(*) From which department and level of government did you obtain these pages?

The City of Ottawa.

(*) Why was this information helpful?

All these information helped me track down the people, their story and a bigger picture of the problems regarding to the city’s newspaper boxes. If I don’t have this document, I wouldn’t have my story.

II: DOCUMENTATION FOR ATIP ASSIGNMENT

Please click the document names to check my records.

Category Level Department Original Request Correspondence 
My Original Request Federal Canadian Heritage Document-CH-R-01 Document-CH-C-01
Federal Citizenship and Immigration Canada Document-CIC-R-01 Document-CIC-C-01
Federal Foreign Affair Document-FA-R-01 Document-FA-C-01
Provincial Education Department Document-ED-R-01 Document-ED-C-01
City City of Ottawa Document-CO-R-01 Document-CO-C-01
Previously Released Request Federal Citizenship and Immigration Canada Document-CIC’-R-01 Document-CIC’-C-01
Federal Citizenship and Immigration Canada Document-CIC’-R-02 Document-CIC’-C-02
Federal Citizenship and Immigration Canada Document-CIC’-R-03 Document-CIC’-C-03
Federal Environment Canada Document-CIC’-R-04 Document-CIC’-C-04

 

Ottawa’s community rinks lack basic facility

Database Assignment
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Ottawa University student Jessie Hargreaves is a regular visitor of the Rideau Canal. Living near the Byward Market, the Canal and the Rink of Dreams in front of Ottawa City Hall is her first choice almost every weekend.

Lacing up her skates in the trailer outside City Hall, Hargreaves says, “It’s nice to sit somewhere warm, especially when it gets really cold. It’s more enjoyable when you are not frozen all the time.”

Jessie Hargreaves is lacing up her skates in the trailer in front of City Hall.

When asked whether she had any experience going skating without using a change room, Hargreaves says “Never”.

But not everyone is as lucky as her.

In the same public change room, Bill Winogron was packing all his family’s equipment into a over-sized bag , Winogron says he used to carry the bag when he skates because of the lack of change room at other rinks in Ottawa.

Bill
Bill Winogron and his over-sized bag full of equipments.

“It was a lot more dangerous and inconvenience. Instead of focusing on the skating part, you are distracted by what you are carrying,” Winogron says, “I think having a change facility is the first priority, it’s very important.”

Winogron and his family live in Alta Vista. The rink in their neighborhood has no change room, but thanks to a school nearby, they still have a place to go and change.

Official data show that Winogron’s neighborhood is not unique. More than half of Ottawa’s outdoor rinks have no public change rooms.

Among the 252 outdoor rinks that Ottawa has, nearly 150 of them have no place for people to get changed. The areas, which barely have any change rooms for all their outdoor rinks, are at the east and west edges of the city – Kitchissippi and Kanata.

Heat map: The percentage of rinks without a change room in each wards in Ottawa. 

Along with change rooms, another missing facility for nearly two-thirds of outdoor rinks in Ottawa are washrooms.

Chart: The percentage of outdoor rinks that have no washroom in each wards in Ottawa.

However, compared to change rooms, fewer people are concerned about toilets.

Tu Nguyen, who has a 12-year-old and a nine-year-old, (photo) lives in Barrhaven – near the south-end of the city.

Tu
Tu Nguyen and his daughter Vivian Nguyen at the Rink of Dreams.

He says there is a rink that is only 300-metres away from his home, and there is neither a change room nor a washroom for the rink.

“For me it doesn’t make any difference, because it is pretty close to my house. Kids would probably just come back to the house whenever they need to go.” Nguyen doesn’t complain about the lack of a washroom.

Ward Cosman, the Portfolio Manager for Seasonal Recreation of Ottawa, says although there is a lack of washrooms for outdoor rinks, the city rarely get any complaints.

He says Ottawa has the most outdoor rinks in Canada. Instead of meeting the national standard of making every 10,000 people have one outdoor rink, Ottawa makes sure there is one for every 4,000 people.

“We make sure it doesn’t take people too long to walk to the rink near where they live. Because children usually only spend half an hour or an hour outside in the winter, they can always go back home to use their own washroom.” Cosman says.

Cosman says another reason is that the investment for a washroom can be very expensive.

To build a washroom facility, the city has to introduce a waterline to the park, which could cost at least $35,000. “Even introducing a portable toilet, heat still has to be considered. It’s not that easy,” Cosman says.

He says the city’s yearly budget on outdoor ice rinks is $800,000, and constructing washrooms are not included in the budget.

But for public change rooms, Cosman says the city gives each neighborhood nearly $5,000 every year as long as they request a change room trailer, just like the one found at the Rink of Dream in front of City Hall.

“The neighborhood has to hire volunteers to make sure the trailer keep working 30 hours a week,” Cosman says, “that could be a reason many communities reluctant to have a change room, even though making a request to the city is not difficult at all.”

World’s biggest gold producer to have key to China

Business Assignment
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The co-chairperson of the world’s biggest gold mining corporation earned more than four times the compensation of its chairperson, reveal public documents.

Peter Munk, 86, who will step down as chairperson of the Barrick Gold Corporation before this year’s upcoming shareholder’s meeting, earned little more than $4-million in 2012. For the same year, the corporation’s co-chairperson John Thornton, 60, earned $17-million in his one year on the board.

Thornton’s compensation for 2012 is also more than Munk’s amount for the last four years.

Munk founded the Toronto-based corporation in 1983. The gold mining company met trouble in 2012 when its stock price fell dramatically on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The stock has fallen 60 per cent from January 2011 to January 2012.

Shareholders have put pressure on the board to make changes, such as appointing more independent directors. It is because of this pressure that the gold corporation announced in July that Munk would step down and be replaced by Thornton.



Heavy with debt, Barrick Gold stock has not done well with falling gold prices over the last few years. It has also spent more than expected on a South American mine. In November, the corporation had a difficult time selling off $3-billion in stock meant to pay off its $1,848-billion of debt to be paid in the next year.

While the corporation’s revenue over the last five years has grown year-to-year, its growth declined sharply in 2012. The high was 35 per cent growth from 2009 to 2010. Revenue growth for 2012 stands at two per cent.

Thornton spent 23 years at Goldman Sachs and was seen as a top contender there to succeed Henry Paulson as CEO in the early 2000’s. But he left the firm in 2003 and turned his attention to Chinese economic policy.

Thornton said to Chinese media that China learns about the United States more than the U.S. learns about China. He said he wants to be a bridge of understanding between the two countries.

He became a professor teaching business leadership courses at Tsinghua University, in Beijing. His annual salary from the university was a dollar, a detail the Chinese media characterize as proof of his sincerity.

In 2008, the Chinese government gave Thornton the Friendship Award. However, after more than 20 years of rubbing shoulders with China’s policy makers, the greater reward for him and Barrick Gold may be the social connections he cultivated, which include China’s premier and central bank chief.

Zhu Guangming, an economist in Wuxi, China, says selecting Thornton is “a smart move” for Barrick Gold, because of the increasing demand for gold from a more urbanized population.

“It is believed by many Chinese people that gold is likely to be devalued, so a large number of people buy it as another form of saving,” Zhu said. “The increasing variety of gold investment products also encourages more people to buy gold.”

According to the World Gold Council, demand for gold in China has grown more than five times in the decade. In 2003, demand for gold in China was more than $30-billion. In 2012, demand grew to $170-billion.