As we inch closer to the 2014 municipal election, local politicians are on double duty – fulfilling their roles as city councillors and mayor, while positioning themselves to start campaigning as early as January 2, provided they immediately register as candidates. As with any election, getting voters to the polls is essential.

But voter turnout in Ottawa’s last three municipal elections has been mediocre at best. In 2003, only 33 per cent of Ottawans voted in the municipal election. 2006 was a good year, with 54 per cent of eligible voters casting a ballot. Numbers slid by nearly 20 per cent, though, in the 2010 election, when just 44 per cent of eligible voters showed up to vote. This information was gleaned from analysis done using municipal elections data available on the City of Ottawa website.

Overall, Ottawa compares fairly well to other major cities in Canada. In the recent Montreal mayoral election, around whose candidates there was particularly heated debate, only 43 per cent of voters had their say. Fifty-three per cent of Torontonians cast ballots in the 2010 municipal election, electing Rob Ford in what was also a controversial election. Even the 2010 Ottawa elections were intense, when there was a mayoral showdown between ex-Ottawa-mayors Jim Watson and Larry O’Brien. Yet, the voter turnout still slipped.

This goes to show controversy doesn’t necessarily mean more voters hitting the polls, making it difficult to predict voter turnout in municipal elections. Ottawa’s extreme fluctuation in voter turnout between 2003 and 2010 leaves some experts scratching their heads to come up with innovative ways to engage voters.

Professor Alan Walks, who teaches political geography and urban voting behaviours at the University of Toronto, said instituting mandatory voting, like in Australia, is the way to go.

But political science professor Neil Wiseman, also from the University of Toronto, disagrees. He says he would rather have fewer people voting than force people who have not educated themselves about the issues to vote.

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson said that “during, but more importantly between, elections, it’s very important to speak to residents in their communities about what they want to see for our city.” He also pointed to using social media as a way to “take part in discussions where they are already taking place.”

While that is a unique suggestion and one that is not often heard from academics on the subject, the debate over how and if we should try to engage new voters isn’t a new one. But all of this still begs the questions: Why do, at best, only 50-odd per cent of eligible voters actually vote? What motivates someone – or dissuades them – to vote?

Municipal elections expert from Carleton University, Katherine Graham, says she believes candidates’ lack of party affiliations plays a major role in why people don’t feel the same need to vote in municipal elections as they do in provincial or federal elections.

Voter turnout in the 2011 federal election was still weak, with 61 per cent of eligible voters turning up to vote. This is still marginally better than Ottawa’s municipal turnout. Provincially, the 2011 Ontario election brought the worst voter turnout in the province’s history, with only 49 per cent turnout. Still, the province’s lowest is much higher -16 percentage points higher – than that of Ottawa.

In federal and provincial politics, there can also be a tendency to vote for a party in order to keep an opposing party out of office. Without parties to, effectively, vote against in municipal elections, voters may see themselves voting in favour of someone. Voters may feel less passionate about a candidate than they do about not seeing another candidate take office. This could be another reason for voter apathy at the municipal level.

But if higher voter turnout comes at the cost of implementing political parties at the local level, Mayor Watson says he’s not on board.

“As we’ve seen in other jurisdictions, along with those systems comes serious ethical issues when it comes to fundraising,” he said.

Issues around fundraising and party affiliations took place in Montreal recently, contributing to the city going through a handful of mayors in the past year and several local politicians facing accusations of taking kickbacks.

But the biggest factors in what persuades or dissuades someone to vote tend to be education and income. In the 2010 Ottawa municipal elections, Bay and Kitchissippi wards tied for the highest turnout rates, at 51 per cent. Respectively, the average household income in those wards is $67,000 and $84,000. On the other hand, Rideau-Vanier ward, which had the lowest turnout at just 39 per cent, has an average household income of $55,000, according to ward profiles available on the City of Ottawa website.

“Older, higher-income, full-time employed, working in white collar occupations and particularly those with a university or college education” are the people most likely to vote, says Walks.

Still, it may ultimately come around to a simple sense of civic responsibility.

“Most research has found that those who vote consistently feel they have a duty and responsibility to vote. Those that do not – particularly young people – report not feeling that sense of duty,” added Walks.

So do municipal politics even matter?

To that, Mayor Watson says that “as soon as you turn on a tap, walk on a sidewalk, or take a bus, you are using municipal services. It is in your best interest to engage with the municipal government to ensure your tax dollars are being well spent and you are being well represented.

Of course, it’s clear why the Mayor of Ottawa would say that. Still, municipal politics are where people can truly begin to engage and hold their elected officials to account. Councillors tend to be more accessible than, say, the local MP. Their decisions affect citizens most directly and most quickly. In that sense, despite a plethora of well-researched theories, the reason for low voter turnout at the municipal level remains puzzling.

-30-

OTTAWA-Caresse Ley

Canadian dairy farmers have jumped the gun on railroading the new Canada-European Union trade agreement.

An analysis of import and export data for the dairy industry as a whole and the smaller cheese industry shows that, at worst, dairy farmers would lose control of about four per cent of the Canadian cheese market.

As it stands, Canada produces about 400,000 metric tonnes of cheese per year on average, according to data from the Canadian Dairy Information Centre (CDIC), run by the Government of Canada. About 120,000 metric tonnes is produced in the speciality cheese market. This accounts for a little over a quarter of Canada’s cheese market, and it is in this sector where dairy farmers have feared the most competition.

Under the new Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the E.U. would be allowed to import into Canada an additional 16,000 metric tonnes of cheese per year. If Canadian dairy farmers lost business, tonne for tonne, this would only represent about four per cent of the total cheese market being closed off to them.

Below: Metric tonnes of cheese imported to Canada by country in 2012. Source: Industry Canada

If the dairy farmers’ predictions come true and the E.U. farmers use their new market share to penetrate the speciality cheese market only, this would represent about a 13 per cent loss of market share for those products. These are the worst case scenarios possible, said Aamir Asgarali, a sector specialist for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, who focuses on developments in the dairy industry. In other words, the domestic market would remain significant.

The Canadian dairy market was worth about $13.5 billion in 2012. Cheese exports accounted for about $207 million of that, according to Industry Canada.

The problem in Canada is that most farmers are, effectively, small business owners; 13 per cent of market share is not a small number to them. But four per cent needn’t frighten them just yet. Farmers are assuming that for every tonne of cheese that is imported, “a tonne of Canadian-made cheese will be displaced. This does not account for (annual) market growth,” said Asgarali.

What’s unique is that this isn’t a classic case of local entrepreneur versus big business; Beaulieu explained that the farm sizes are relatively the same in Canada and the E.U.. Yet, the E.U. farmers stand to gain more from CETA.

Export data for cheese from Canada to other countries in 2012 can be found by clicking here.

Countries including Italy, France, Switzerland and several others already count themselves as part of Canada’s top 10 trading partners – Canada imported about 13,600 metric tonnes of cheese last year from the E.U., according to the CDIC. This accounts for about half of Canada’s total cheese imports in 2012. E.U. dairy farmers have a clearly-established grip on part of the cheese market here in Canada, or at least a substantial part of what is imported, which should allow them to transition more easily into exporting more cheese to Canada.

Canadian dairy farmers have no such presence in the E.U..

“We don’t have an established place in that market,” said Asgarali. “But that’s not because we can’t. It’s just because no effort has been put into developing a market there.”

“It’s an uphill battle,” said Therese Beaulieu of Dairy Farmers of Canada on establishing a demand for Canadian cheese in Europe. Currently, the United States is the biggest receiver of Canadian cheese exports, followed by Saudi Arabia and several countries in Asia.

“That’s where the growth is,” said Beaulieu of Asia. She explained that those countries do not have the land resources to develop their own farms, so there is demand for Canadian cheese and dairy products to fill that gap.

Penetrating the E.U. market will prove difficult, said Beaulieu, a sentiment that was echoed by Asgarali. Both said the cost of cheese production in Canada is much higher, which will make it difficult to compete with the Europeans in their own backyard.

So while Canadian farmers may not lose as much on Canadian soil as was initially anticipated, it is unlikely they will benefit from the deal internationally, at least in the short term.

ADDITIONAL LINKS

Click here to read a report from 2011 on the Canadian dairy industry.

Click here to read more on why the Dairy Farmers of Canada want to stop CETA.

Click here to search for trade data on your own.

OTTAWA – Like most cities of its size, Ottawa has an active downtown core, filled with unique shops, bars and restaurants. And, like most cities, this also means the downtown becomes a hotspot for drunken brawls after the bars close, harsh words and drug activity. In Ottawa, the area around the Byward Market and east to Vanier is known to attract this kind of criminal behaviour. In fact, the Rideau-Vanier ward has the highest rate of crime in the city for a whole slew of offences, ranging from theft under $5000 to prostitution.

Despite high overall crime rates, Rideau-Vanier doesn’t take the top spot for the number of bail violations. In 2012, Somerset ward beat out Rideau-Vanier, racking up 751 bail violation charges. That translates to a per capita rate (per 10,000 people) of 195.6. This is lower than in 2011, when the per capita rate sat at 251.2. Still, this doesn’t paint a promising picture. The 2012 Somerset ward rate of bail violations tripled the rate in Rideau-Vanier ward, which sat at 64.4, with 309 actual violations. The statistics come from data analysis done by this reporter.

Bail violations in 2012 by ward

But with so many arrests in the downtown core, it hardly seems logical that the bail violations are concentrated elsewhere.

Don Wadel, the executive director of the John Howard Society of Ontario for reasonable responses to crime, was baffled by the statistic.

“It makes no sense at all,” he said. “That is completely a surprise.”

Though taken aback at first, Wadel said he thinks low-income housing and rooming houses in Somerset ward could be cause for the statistic. Many people who violate bail face challenges like drug or alcohol abuse and housing instability. Wadel said both Rideau-Vanier and Somerset wards are home to people with these issues, who, he said, are “the people who have the hardest time abiding by bail conditions.”

Somerset ward also includes a lot of parks, close to LCBOs or Beer Stores, which provides an inviting place for homeless or unstable people to sleep and feed addiction.

Ottawa crime statistics by ward and by offence 

While Wadel said he expected people who use shelters to violate bail more frequently because of unstable living conditions, Ottawa bail lawyer Michael Spratt said many homeless people may never get the chance to violate bail.

“I suspect that there are less people released who may be users of shelters,” he said. “Those people tend to have a less stable plan, less resources, less support, and it’s actually harder for them to be released.”

In other words, while there may be more crime in Rideau-Vanier, there may be fewer people being released, and, therefore, less opportunity for bail violations. He added that those who are released into Somerset ward may face bail conditions that are difficult to abide by given their housing circumstances.

For instance, someone living in a rooming house may live with another person with a criminal record. If a condition of his or her bail is to not associate with anyone with a criminal record, he or she may be violating bail simply by going home. Spratt said those who live in Somerset may be placed under stricter bail conditions, too, based on the reputation of the area as a hub of criminal activity. This, he said, invites more bail violations.

“A lot of the bail violations that we see are a direct result of conditions that are inappropriate,” said Spratt.

Inspector Chris Rheaume of the Ottawa Police Service, who is responsible for Somerset-area crime monitoring, was unable to be reached for comment after several attempts to contact him.

Ottawa Police Service media spokesperson Constable Chuck Benoit hesitated to comment, but said that Somerset ward may simply be “more towards where [those who violate bail] are hanging out.”

-30-