A community located between Walkley Road and Heron Road have the highest number of overcrowded homes, according to an analysis of data obtained from Statistics Canada.
The National Household Survey, conducted in 2011 showed 575 households in the Heron Gate area were deemed “not suitable” according to National Occupancy Standards.
A home is considered suitable if it has enough bedrooms for the number of people living there. Age, sex and relationship between occupants also play a role.
The homes in this area account for just under 30 per cent of the total number of overcrowded homes in Ottawa recorded in the survey.
An area near Bayshore Park contained the second highest number of overcrowded homes, 560 of them not meeting the suitability standard.
Jean Cloutier, the councillor for Alta Vista ward said he’s aware of the issue.
“It is a community that has a bit of a vulnerable population. It has a lot of immigrants and new Canadians that live there,” he said.
“Some of the new arrivals to Canada are so large that I’m sure that translates into a statistic that would be called ‘not suitable’ in terms of the number of bedrooms for the number of people living there.”
Last year, Timbercreek Asset Management, delivered eviction notices to some residents in the area to build new rental units.
A member of Ottawa ACORN, a group that advocated to delay the evictions, said half of their members were evicted in the area.
“Now it’s just a blob of vacant land being developed for high end rentals,” they said in an email.
But residents in the Heron Gate community aren’t the only ones affected by overcrowding.
A map showing the census tracts with the highest number of overcrowded homes. Made using data from the 2011 National Household Survey. Dark blue areas indicate communities with a higher number of overcrowded homes.
Osgoode residents may have had a noisier past two years than other Ottawans.
Ward 20 saw a 54 per cent increase in noise complaints between 2013 and 2015, according to an analysis of City of Ottawa 311 data.
Fred Fenn, who lives in Osgoode, said he’s noticed. This summer he called 311 to complain about a neighbour playing loud music outside past midnight.
“My daughter was saying she could hear the music like it was being played in her bedroom clear as day,” he said.
Fenn said he thinks Osgoode is noisier than other parts of the city.
“We’ve been out here in Osgoode since 1994. Before that I grew up in Orleans. My wife grew up in Kanata, so they were pretty quiet areas. It was never as noisy as out here.”
Fred Fenn said motorized toys are common in Osgoode, making it noisier than other wards
Photo provided by Fred Fenn
Kanata North and Rideau-Goulbourn noise complaints increased by around 40 per cent during the same time period. Most other wards saw a decrease in the number of complaints received.
The Community and Protective Services Committee oversees bylaw enforcement.
Rick Chiarelli, a councillor for the City of Ottawa’s college ward and a member of the committee said residents should talk to their neighbours before contacting bylaw.
“The happiest outcomes, come from neighbours talking to each other. And Osgoode used to always do that,” he said.
Noise complaints are one of the top three most common service requests, according to the City of Ottawa website.
“I think that’s bad for community development but it’s also expensive because it costs us hundreds of dollars to deal with each noise complaint,” Chiarelli said.
Fenn said he didn’t want to approach his neighbors because they were drinking.
“They were all drinking so I didn’t bother going over there and saying anything to them because usually that doesn’t end well,” he said.
Bylaw officers only respond to calls until 2 a.m. during the week and 4 a.m. on weekends.
Chiarelli said the City should look at providing 24/7 bylaw services on weekends.
“There are parties that go until four or five in the morning and if you close up at four, basically complaints after three are not dealt with,” he said.
Fenn said partiers are not the only problem. ATVs, dirt bikes and other loud vehicles are more common in Osgoode than in others areas of Ottawa, he said.
“It’s traditional out in the country people have more motorized toys than in the city, because there’s no place really to run them,” he said.
“This year there seems to be a lot more, I’m not sure if people are getting more money and buying more dirt bikes or what it is this year but it seems to be a little bit noisier this year.”
The number of child pornography cases nationwide has increased by over 140% since 2010, according to an analysis of Statistic Canada data.
But probably not because there’s more of it, says the RCMP’s Const. Vicki Colford.
Better access to resources, training for law enforcement and increased public awareness have all contributed to the rising number of reports made to police, the Nova Scotia RCMP officer said.
“More and more children have access to computerized devices now than ever before so that could play a part in it too,” she said in an email.
“Children can be too trusting and have been victimized by predators online who have convinced the children to send pornographic images of themselves – these images can then be shared.”
Blair Crew, a University of Ottawa professor who specializes in sexual assault law said we’re just catching more people who access child pornography.
“The previous government did make various changes to the law to allow easier detection,” Crew said.
“The net result is that police may have been able to detect this conduct better.”
Bill C-22, introduced in 2011 by the federal government, requires Internet Service Providers to notify police of incidents involving child pornography.
Agreeing or arranging to commit a sexual offence against a child through the Internet and other means of telecommunication was added to the Criminal Code in 2012.
British Columbia saw the largest increase growing by a whopping 692% since 2010, largely due to a law enforcement project to record Internet Protocol (IP) addresses between 2014 and 2015.
Child pornography is any sexual content involving children distributed online. This can include anything from drawings, audio or written material to videos or photos of actual children, according to a definition from The Canadian Centre for Child Protection.
In May 2004, The Canadian Centre for Child Protection joined the federal government’s national strategy to protect the online exploitation of children.
The organization runs cybertip.ca, a tipline where the public can report cases of exploitation over the Internet.
In a 2016 report including data collected by the centre from 2008 to 2015, 95% of all reports involved cases concerning child sexual abuse imagery – videos or photos of actual children being abused.
Sexual assault lawyer Blair Crew says a spike in child pornography rates are probably due to changes in government legislation
Source: Photo taken from Twitter page
Reports to cybertip.ca have increased significantly within the last 8 years. Over 37,000 reports were submitted to the tipline last year, compared to just under 8,000 in 2008.
Once the tips are received, content is assessed by an analyst at The Canadian Centre for Child Protection.
Reports containing URLs with password protected content are forwarded to law enforcement.
Colford said they receive many of their tips from the website.
She said it’s important for parents to talk to their kids about what can happen online.
“Several of the victims that we’ve dealt with on our files have a whole other life online that we’re certain their parents don’t know about,” Colford said.
“They have online friends and are in different online chat forums and different social media platforms that are way above and beyond the parent’s knowledge or idea that they’d even be on those sites.”
Most tips submitted to cybertip.ca included children younger than 12, the report showed.
Colford said she deals with cases involving children 12 to 15 years old most often, but has seen cases with kids as young as eight.
“Eventually we see … that relationship quickly turning to an exploitative sort of relationship where generally, teenage girls are taken advantage of by much older males, typically.”
“They never see that coming. They assume that they’re talking to a teenager when sometimes they’re not.”
If you suspect a child is being exploited over the Internet or in need of protection submit a tip on cybertip.ca or call 1-866-658-9022.
