According to an analysis of data by the City of Ottawa, the number of complaints about discarded needles has increased by nearly 50 per cent from 2015 to 2016.

A total of 144 complaints were filed with Ottawa’s 3-1-1 Contact Centre in 2016 – the centre then makes arrangements for discarded needle pickup. According to the City’s website, workers “make an effort to respond to all needle retrieval requests within one hour.”

Current data shows that the first eight months of 2017 is recording an even higher volume of complaints than 2016 did.

Total Number of Complaints by Year

This graph shows the number of complaints about discarded needles per each year since 2013, according to City of Ottawa 3-1-1 data.

Total Number of Complaints per Month (2016 vs. 2017)

This graph is a comparison between the first eight recorded months of 2017 with the same months in 2016 in terms of the number of complaints about discarded needles filed monthly, according to City of Ottawa 3-1-1 data.

Councillor Mathieu Fleury, whose ward, Rideau-Vanier, has the highest number of complaints, says that the increase of complaints over the years show a “shift” in drug use.

He says the rise of Canada’s opioid crisis has signified a change in the types of drugs being used. Opioids, like heroin, are usually administered intravenously. Fleury says the increased usage of injection as the preferred drug intake method has naturally led to more needles being found in the streets.

Discarded needles present a danger to residents, especially children and pets like dogs, as they are sharp and may be contaminated.

Julia Paulson has worked for the past two summers as a City of Ottawa parks maintenance worker. She says that a portion of her duties were to safely retrieve needles from parks when complaints were called in to 3-1-1.

She says she noticed more needle retrieval requests this past summer than last. “We get in our truck and usually go immediately to the area, as the City takes these complaints seriously and want someone to get the needles as soon as the complaint is filed.”

Even for a trained worker with safety equipment, she says that the pickup process can be uncomfortable and nerve-wracking. As she mimes the proper way to pick a used needle up off the floor, she says she can understand the fear the complainants have when they spot one.

“You can’t help but think, ‘There could be infectious diseases on this,’ she says, with a note of tension in her voice. “I’ve heard horror stories from other city workers.”

During training sessions for the job, Paulson says a story was told where one employee wasn’t holding the end of the needle away from his body and accidentally stabbed himself when he stumbled.

Hannah Walt is a Masters of Social Work student at Carleton University who has worked in several harm reduction programs over the past few years.

Walt says that discarded needles do present a danger to residents – but that’s why supervised injection sites are so important. Drug users need a place to safely administer drugs under supervision, where they can be watched for danger of overdosing but also to make sure these used needles are safely disposed of properly.

She says many people who are critical of the injection sites don’t understand that it actually makes everyone safer – the users and the community residents, by keeping discarded needles off of streets.

Fleury says that he’s filed two inquiries to Ottawa Public Health, one about treatment options and the other about needle hunters, since the opening of the new supervised injection site in his ward at 179 Clarence Street.

He wants to know what kinds of treatment services Public Health is providing at the injection site, and if there are plans to expand needle hunters’ contracts in his ward. Needle hunters are those who specifically patrol areas to find needles and dispose of them – before they are complained about. Currently, he says hunters don’t work weekends but he is interested in seeing if that needs to be changed to meet demand.

Fleury wonders, “Are we flexible enough to respond to these new needs of both the drug users and the community?”

By Jasmine Law

According to an analysis of housing data released on Oct. 25 by Statistics Canada, 40 per cent of home owners in a community more than 20km southwest of Ottawa spend more than a third of their income on property costs. This South Barrhaven neighbourhood, called Chapman Mills, has attracted young individuals and families to move there for its amenities despite its costs of living, leading one real estate agent to call it the “ideal place to live.”

These property costs can include mortgage payments, property taxes, condominium fees, as well as costs for electricity, heat, water and other municipal services.

Silvana Sicoli, an Ottawa-based real estate agent, says that the southern Barrhaven area is appealing because of its quick development and numerous amenities, whereas northern Barrhaven is much older and without newer features.

From 2011 to 2016: Which area spends more of their income on housing? View larger map
Source: Statistics Canada.

Steven Bui and his family can attest – they are more than happy to pay the costs of living in the area. The family has lived in Chapman Mills for 11 years in two different houses. As he walks down his street lined with polished houses and manicured lawns, he says him and his family fall into the category of those who spend at least a third of their earnings on their house, but that it’s worth the costs.

“The area is really attractive for a number of reasons,” he says, as he gestures to the park and school nearby, which is full of parents with their kids. “It’s clean and safe. It’s super family friendly and has everything you could need.”

More people are spending a larger fraction of their paycheques to live in Chapman Mills. Five years ago, the percentage of people in Chapman Mills who spent more than a third of their income on their property was just at 17 per cent. That’s a 130% increase since 2011, one of the highest differences in all of the greater Ottawa area, according to the analysis of Statistics Canada data.

“I think people who move here know what they’re looking for, and that is the high quality of life that you can get in this area,” says Bui.

Sicoli says that this increase may also be a result of the area attracting singles and couples who want to own property but can’t afford the high prices in Ottawa’s bustling downtown neighbourhoods. It can average about $450,000 for a single-family home there versus about $350,000 in southern Barrhaven, she says. They see Chapman Mills as a place that’s ideal to invest and buy property in.

“Since they’re young their incomes may not be significant, so they end up spending a larger portion of their paycheques towards their home,” she says. Many people also move to places ideal for children if they’re looking to start a family. This is one of Chapman Mill’s most attractive features.

Bui says he’s witnessed a lot of young families move to the area over the past few years, which he credits to the development of new parks and schools.

Michael Qaqish, the city councillor for the ward, says the City has worked hard to implement these amenities as southern Barrhaven is one of Ottawa’s fastest growing neighbourhoods. In 2014, the city invested $60 million to bring residents the Minto Recreation Complex, and construction began just this year on a “Bus Rapid Transit” corridor.

“The Complex has proven to be very popular with the young families moving into the area,” says Qaqish. “We’ve also added new features like tennis courts, splash pads and children’s play areas to existing local parks.”

As Sicoli notes, people don’t mind spending more of their income on their property if the area has a lot to offer.

Some of the most common violations committed by Ottawa food establishments during public health and food safety inspections included failure to protect food from contamination and failing to use thermometers to check cooking temperatures, according to an analysis of the City of Ottawa’s inspection data.

Food establishments most frequently violated a maintenance bylaw, meaning the food premises weren’t kept in clean and good condition. Second on the list was failing to keep equipment in the right condition, while the third was not holding foods at the right temperatures, whether it was reheating or freezing food items.

The fourth most common violation though was not being able to protect food from contamination. City inspectors found that a total of 757 food establishments from 2015 to 2017 were found to be “not in compliance” with the bylaw set out in Ontario’s Health Protection and Promotions Act. Each violation is considered either critical, semi-critical, or non-critical. According to the OPH website, failure to protect food from contamination is considered a critical violation, along with other infractions like not storing food at the right temperatures, or not ensuring the hand wash station is used only for hand washing.

Number of Businesses in Violation of Each Bylaw

Namaste India, a restaurant located in Old Ottawa South, topped the list of highest number of violations for 2016 with eight violations on eight separate occasions, and even requiring enforcement action to be taken on their Dec. 21, 2016, inspection. Inspectors picked up on a range of infractions, like not sanitizing the surfaces of equipment often enough and not using special washing solutions to clean large utensils.

Barbara Smith, a public health inspector with OPH, says that when action is taken, it usually means an inspector has issued a ticket to the restaurant. She says at first, inspectors will give a warning and provide the restaurant the chance to correct the error, but if the problem occurs repeatedly, a fine could be issued.

Meanwhile, Silver Spoon Thai Cuisine in the Carlingwood area has the most infractions for 2017 for food not protected from contamination, with four violations recorded during inspections done this past January, April, May, and the most recent on August 24. During their August inspection, inspectors found that food items were stored too close to the floor and that certain foods weren’t stored at the right temperature.

Both restaurants declined to comment.

Irena Knezevic, a professor at Carleton University who specializes in food and health regulations, says that concern over food safety in restaurants is valid, but that for the most part Ottawans are safe. She says that it is not necessarily hard to meet the rule of protecting food from contamination, but that the criterion is broad.

“I think that individuals often run a greater risk of eating contaminated food at their own homes than in restaurants. We don’t exactly have a torrent of food poisoning incidents in Ottawa, and these violations indicate that establishments are being scrutinized, or else they would not be ‘caught.’”

Generally, Knezevic considers eating out to be safe in Ottawa and that a violation may not be as critical as it sounds.

Smith agrees that the bylaw is written broadly, as it is meant to protect food from a variety of potential contamination causes because there are so many factors to consider in restaurants.

Emily Reed, a Carleton University student, is wary of the food safety in some Ottawa restaurants after suffering from a food poisoning incident several years ago while eating out. She is glad to hear that restaurants are being inspected often by the City and that they are catching errors.

“As a customer,” she says, “I’m definitely reassured.”

Nunavut has the country’s highest rate of avoidable deaths due to a variety of causes such as being given the wrong medication, leading some experts to call it a health care crisis.

According to an analysis of data provided by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), the rate of avoidable deaths for residents of Nunavut is double that of all the other provinces and territories. Avoidable deaths are characterized by CIHI as deaths that could have been avoided through better treatment or prevention efforts. The avoidable death rate tells a lot about the effectiveness of health policies, health promotion, and health care in a given area. This means the lower the rate, the higher the quality of health care being given.

This graph compares the total number of people who died an avoidable death in Nunavut versus the national median during different time periods over the course of eight years.

The high rate is alarming and serves as evidence of the larger health care emergency that’s been facing Nunavut for some time now. The territory has been dealing with systemic problems for years.

Hannah Uniuqsaraq, a communications officer at Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI), an Inuit land claims organization, describes how there hasn’t been any visible improvement in terms of fixing the territory’s health care problems.

“People have blamed the government for inadequate action,” said Uniuqsaraq. “Problems are everywhere. Many people end up overdue for care.”

In March of this year, the auditor general of Canada also released a report which pointed to a number of causes for this health care crisis. While people were directly affected by inappropriate prescriptions, wrong vaccine doses and inaccurate diagnoses, the report also pointed to systemic issues. Nunavut’s Department of Health was failing to support staff at health centres across the territory, procedures were being disregarded by staff, and major deficits in staff recruitment and training bogged down the system. Existing staff received inadequate cultural and technical training.

“The territory’s health institutions are constantly finding themselves with vacant positions and the high use of temporary staff affect continuity and quality of care,” the report stated.

The department also failed to track incidents relating to patient care, therefore rendering them unable to identify any trends. All of these factors and more are said to have contributed to the premature deaths befalling the people of Nunavut. The report ended up giving 17 recommendations to improve care in the territory.

Connie Siedule, the executive director of Ottawa’s Akausivik Inuit Family Health Team, a clinic that specializes in the care and treatment of Inuit persons, said that the need for proper care for the Inuit is particularly great.

“The problems facing the Inuit in Nunavut are especially complicated. Besides Nunavut’s own health care woes, Inuit deal with additional problems due to their language and culture being at odds with today’s systems,” said Siedule. “I’ve also seen so many of them being referred to clinics outside of Nunavut.”

An annual survey on Nunavut’s Inuit culture and society in 2008 by NTI also found that the Inuit are particularly susceptible to Nunavut’s health care pitfalls. The language barrier was an issue faced in many health centres, where some physicians are unable to speak Inuktitut and are without any interpreters.

Stories about preventable deaths of Inuit people have populated the news over the years. In 2015, the government of Nunavut apologized for the death of a three-month-old Inuit baby, whose health issues were left undiagnosed by the health center the family sought care from.

It doesn’t look like the territory’s deeply flawed health care system is going to rectify its problems any time soon, as its avoidable death rates have stayed consistent over the past decade. Meanwhile, reports are surfacing every couple of years recommending measures to combat the system’s many ills, but the people of Nunavut have yet to see any real change.