All posts by Jean-LoupDoudard

Arabic neighbourhoods a prime location for Syrian refugees

Data Assignment_Three_2015
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Robert Taylor and his team are ready to welcome their Syrian refugee family.

They found a suitable apartment for the family of six, free dental checkups, and even some counselling services if needed.

Taylor is part of the Ottawa South Committee for Refugee Sponsorship, a group of a few dozen citizens rallied together to provide for the newcomers for a year.

They are not alone. Community groups and family members are sponsoring a total of 157 Syrian refugees in Ottawa. Mayor Jim Watson said last month the city will bring in between 800 and 2,000 refugees in total, a staggering addition to the 370 Syrians already living in Ottawa, according to the 2011 National Household Survey.

 

Number of Syrians per ward

Total number of Syrians per ward in 2011
Total number of Syrians per ward in 2011/ Source: National Household Survey. Click here for full map.

 

To be eligible to sponsor a refugee family, a sponsor group must be able to provide shelter and assistance for one year, among others. Interpreting services are also recommended, as not all Syrians can speak English and French.

List of responsibilities for refugee sponsors.


Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada

That’s why Taylor’s group is turning to Arabic-speaking communities to help them welcome the family.

“There isn’t a particularly big Syrian community but there is a large Lebanese community,” he says. “So we’re hoping there may be job opportunities that arise within the Arabic-speaking community.”

Taylor wouldn’t disclose the location of the apartment his committee found out of privacy concerns but he assures there will be linguistic support.

“They will be settled in an area that has a lot of positive Muslim support,” he says.

Laurie Fraser manages the language instruction programs at the Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization (OCISO.) Being resettled in an Arabic-speaking neighbourhood is a must for newcomers who may not fully grasp English or French, she says.

“An Arabic-speaking community is important especially in the beginning to feel at home, to build connections (babysitters, advice, help, friendship),” she said in an email.

However, keeping exclusively to an Arabic-speaking neighbourhood isn’t going to benefit them in the long run, she says.

“English or French are needed in order to integrate, work, make Canadian friends,” she says. “You can’t remain in that ex-pat milieu for long or it will become isolating, insulated, even negative (bitter about all kinds of new and difficult things.)”

Most Arabic-speaking households are located in the eastern and southern wards, an analysis of the 2011 National Household Survey shows. The Gloucester-Southgate ward has the highest number of Arabic speakers per capita with 14,726 arabophones per 100,000 people.

 

Rate of Arabic speakers per ward

Rate of Arabic speakers per 100,000 people in Ottawa/ Source: National Household Survey, 2011.
Rate of Arabic speakers per 100,000 people in Ottawa/ Source: National Household Survey, 2011. Click here for full map.

Living with neighbours that speak the same language would be an undeniable advantage for the Syrian refugees, says Luisa Veronis, a University of Ottawa professor specializing in immigration.

“It’s not like in the United States where immigrants form ‘ghettos’,” she says. “There will be increased job opportunities and they’ll establish a network faster.”

But staying in those communities might be difficult when the sponsorship program ends after a year because they’re typically living in affordable housing neighbourhoods, she says.

Syrian refugees will not get bumped up the waiting list for affordable housing, said Immigration Minister John McCallum during a news conference Wednesday.

“Canadians want to welcome these people coming from the scourge of civil war to our country, make them feel comfortable,” he said. “But at the same time, we don’t want to put them in a privileged position relative to other Canadians who are themselves working hard to find housing, to become citizens and so on.”

The first planes of refugees are set to arrive in Canada this week. Taylor hopes their family will be in that contingent.

“We’re ready! Well, we won’t know until we see them, but we sure hope so!”

 

Community centre parking spots rake in big bucks for the city

Data Assignment_Two_2015
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The parking spots at 320 Jack Purcell Lane, in Centretown.
The parking spots at 320 Jack Purcell Lane.

When Carly Hawke pulled up and parked in the tiny street next to the Jack Purcell dog park, she did not expect to get a parking ticket.

It was already dark outside on a Monday night. No way a bylaw officer will be doing his run now.

Mere minutes after she let her dog out of the car to run in the busy playground, a city vehicle pulled up on the other side of the street and an officer came out. He worked his way down the 22 parking spots lined up against the park, checking every dashboard on the way for a permit to park on city property.

When he got to Hawke’s car, he called out to the dog owners, trying to find the culprit. Hawke came out and explained the situation.

She was lucky that night, but many residents of the busy Centretown neighbourhood aren’t.

The parking spots near the Jack Purcell Park have raked in over $162,000 in fines and fees since 2010 according to an analysis of city parking data. Over 2,000 tickets have been issued for parking on city property at the address associated to those spots, 320 Jack Purcell Lane.

A quarter of all tickets issued for this violation is given out on the 100-metre long lane.

Drivers have to frequent the Jack Purcell Community Centre to obtain a permit to park on those spots. They must display the written approval on their dashboard or they will receive a ticket, according to section 113D (3) of the Ottawa Traffic Parking bylaw.


“We absolutely need those spots for our clients,” said Cody, who works at the community centre and declined to give his full name.

“Half of our clients are disabled,” he said. “We doubled our programs recently so attendance is way up.”

Cody estimates a few hundred people come through the doors of the community centre every day.

“Not only people from the neighbourhood,” he said. “We got people coming in from Orléans, Vanier, who need a spot to park their cars.”

Jack Purcell Lane lies parallel to the busy Elgin street artery, where many restaurants and pubs liven up Ottawa’s nightlife. Many patrons turn onto the short street looking for a free parking spot.

Another staff member at the community centre says she sees bylaw officers roll down the Jack Purcell Lane five to six times a day, and they almost always give out tickets.

The parking spots did not always have the money-making reputation they have now. In 2011, the city only issued two tickets. That number skyrocketed to 1,139 tickets two years later.

The City of Ottawa evoked multiple possible factors for the sudden increase in parking tickets, including weather, but denies those spots are being targeted.

“Historic weather data, for instance, indicates that 2013 saw particularly heavy snowfall in Ottawa,” wrote Scott Campbell, acting chief of By-law and Regulatory Services, in an email. “There has been no focused parking enforcement effort at this location.”

Bylaw officers get assigned a beat, or neighbourhood, and rotate every few months with another officer. The officer who almost fined Hawke had just got assigned to a new beat on the day of the incident.
He says officers are encouraged to seek out the violators before actually handing out the tickets.

Hawke, on her part, is thankful for the officers’ mercy, but thinks the signs posted in front of each parking spot ought to be clearer.

“I think we should be allowed to be parked there. I mean, [the community centre] has the same name as the park. It’s a bit confusing,” she said.

The signs posted in front of every parking spot in the lot.
The signs posted in front of every parking spot in the lot.

Thunder Bay residents 5 times more likely to get kidnapped than Winnipeggers

Data Assignment One_2015
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Residents of Thunder Bay are 5 times more likely to get kidnapped or held against their will than residents of the Canadian ‘violent crime capital’, Winnipeg.

The northern Ontario city’s kidnapping and forcible confinement rate was 26 per 100,000 people last year. That is the highest rate per capita of major cities in Canada according to an analysis of Statistics Canada data. Winnipeg ranks 25th on that same list.

Local resident Linda Douglas works for the Thunder Bay Crime Prevention Council of Thunder Bay. She admits being surprised at the number of kidnappings last year but doesn’t think it’s a huge problem for the city.

“It’s not something you hear about in the 6 o’clock news.” she says.

That is because Thunder Bay’s high kidnapping rate may be a symptom of another underlying violent crime. Most of the kidnapping charges were laid in connection with domestic violence incidents, according to Thunder Bay police.

“We don’t really see any ‘kidnappings’ where someone has been abducted and held,” says Thunder Bay Police spokesperson Chris Adams in an email.

University of Manitoba criminology professor Frank Cormier says the way the Thunder Bay police handles domestic violence echoes a wider trend in the country.

“There’s often another violent crime that’s attached to [the kidnapping/forcible confinement charges],” he says. “Kidnapping acts with a demand for ransom are very rare.”

There is no domestic violence offence under the Criminal Code of Canada. Instead, people arrested in domestic violence incidents are usually charged with uttering threats and assault, among others.

“Kidnappings and forcible confinements are add-on charges,” says Cormier. “Sometimes, the police is going to charge an offender as much as they can. Those charges are typically dropped in exchange for a guilty plea [for the main charge] at the courthouse.”

Domestic violence used to be disregarded by police but all changed in the late 70s, he says. A zero-tolerance policy was brought in so that charges had to be laid by officers responding to a domestic violence call. As a result, the amounts of kidnapping and forcible confinement charges have skyrocketed, says Cormier.

In Thunder Bay, the rate of kidnapping and forcible confinements has been steadily increasing since the late ‘90s, peaking in 2010 with 32 kidnappings per 100,000 people.

chart 1

In 2013, the police launched a domestic violence unit exclusively tasked with dealing with those situations. That same year, the police reported 278 victims of family violence despite laying only 15 kidnappings and forcible confinement charges.

“We also have one of the highest rates of domestic violence incidents in the province and I would think the country,” says Adams. “Typically, domestic violence issues are very emotionally charged incidents and can be very dangerous for the victims.”

But according to Frank Cormier, that doesn’t justify creating a separate charge for domestic violence.

“At what point does it become a domestic relationship?” he asks. “When the guy goes on a date with the girl and later keeps her from leaving the house? Or do they have to be married?”

The Criminal Code needs less adjectives and descriptions to be effective, he says, because personal ties will typically be considered by the judge during sentencing. Instead, the solution may lie in changing societal attitudes.

“College students used to drink and drive for fun and now it’s viewed as a ‘bad’ thing,” he says. “It’s the same for domestic violence. Today, people don’t make jokes about slapping their wives.”

chart 2