Canada’s capital has seen over a 17% increase in visible minorities residing in various areas all over the city according to a according to an analysis of census data resleased by Statistics Canada this year, however this growth isn’t apparent everywhere.

The data revealed that of the neighborhoods sprawled across the city, the areas that appeared to have gained most of this influx were the West and South-West suburbs of Ottawa including Gloucester, Barrhaven, South-Nepean and Kanata.

The map shows which areas of the city visible minority growth is concentrated in. The darker spaces on the map represent the areas in which there were the most increases seen in visible minorities and the lighter areas show no increase or a decrease in those identifying as a visible minority.

It is quite obvious to see this increase according to 23 year-old Emma Brennen, who’s family has lived in a small-division of the Ottawa suburb Kanata for her entire.

This area of Ottawa’s west-end encompasses many amenities making it a good place for a family home says Brennen, she and her younger sister went to the public school that is walking distance from their home.

“There are new developments and condos going up almost everyday it seems like,” says Brennen. “There are always new people and houses flipping on every block, our most recent neighbours are from Kuwait.”

According to Statistics Canada, of the over 30,000 immigrants that chose to call Ottawa home from 2011-2016, most of them, approximately 7,000 came from West Central Asia and the Middle East.

Although it is apparent that Ottawa has seen an increase in visible minorities overall, this is not the case for all neighbourhoods. Areas like the Glebe appearing to see a decrease in the number of individuals identifying as visible minorities according to the census data.

Anna Pearson and her family immigrated to Canada from England in March 1998 to their 3-story home on Powell Street. Since then they have seen very few new faces on their block.

“The couple that lives to the right of us are both in their mid 70s and have been here their entire life, the family across the street inherited their house from family, it’s been in the family for years,” Pearson says.

“The house for sale at the end of the street been up for sale for over a year now,” she says, “It’s appraised at over 1 million dollars and it’s beautiful but no one comes to the open houses.”

The colossal price tag may be a factor as to why see less visible minorities in neighbourhoods of Ottawa like the Glebe according to Dan Moloughey, broker of record at Ottawa Urban Reality Inc. He says that for most first-time buyers or people just moving into the country, Glebe home prices may seem incredibly high and unattainable.

According to an analysis by the Ottawa Real Estate Board, the average sale price of a residential non-condo home in Ottawa in January 2015 was $370,442 and for the same month and property type in the Glebe, the average home went for $617,000 on the real estate market.

Why would one choose to pay almost double for a home in the Glebe?

“The fact is that some people make more money than others and another financial factor is that not every Glebe homeowner paid the prices we’ve seen in the last 15 years” says Moloughey, “It wasn’t that long ago there was less of a discrepancy between the prices of homes in the core of Ottawa and those further out…those who bought in the 1990s or earlier have surely done well!”

Ottawa Public Health data reveals the Quality Inn has committed more than triple the number of healthy and safety violations than any other hotel in the city.

The Quality Inn, an establishment located in an Ottawa suburb, has been identified as the hotel in the capital that has failed the most Public Health inspections in the city from 2016 onward according to analysis published by the City of Ottawa.

The franchise location at 3363 St. Joseph Boulevard in Orleans offers a variety of amenities including a continental breakfast and access to a heated indoor pool and spa and of the many health code violations the hotel committed most pertained to food safety and the province wide regulations on public pools.

The data revealed that the hotel failed 52 inspections, ranging from issues with safe food temperatures to cleanliness of the pool deck, between the beginning of 2016 to the present day. During the inspections, Ottawa Public Health ranks the establishment a number between 0 and 99 if they are not in compliance and 99 or 100 if they are in compliance with the Health Protection and Promotion Act, a provincial law intended to deliver public health programs and services and prevent the spread of disease in Ontario.

Although the Ottawa Public Health food safety inspection says the hotel kitchen is approved for operation, it is noted that the establishment was not in compliance with all general food safety expectations outlined by the province. Critical violations include improper sanitation and many of the semi-critical violations involved “improper maintenance of mechanical equipment” and inadequate “use of thermometers to verify food preparation and storage temperatures”.  Enforcement action has been taken since.

It is noted that the hotel committed multiple violations since 2016 pertaining to kitchen operations, however, establishments like hotels which provide amenities like pool access are subject to Recreational Water Inspections by Ottawa Public Health as well. Once again, the Quality Inn was deemed in compliance, but not without a series of critical and non-critical water safety violations. The most concerning of the violations having to do with adequate chemical levels in both the pool and the spa.

Melissa Jackiewicz from Pembroke stayed at the Quality Inn last May during her son’s hockey tournament. She said the team chose the hotel because it was budget friendly and provided amenities like a pool to entertain the boys when they weren’t on the ice. Jackiewicz describes her experience at the hotel as “atrocious”, claiming that the “entire hotel is beyond filthy”, hotel staff and management “lacked customer service abilities”, the pool was “cloudy, over chlorinated with a deck covered in ants”. She also mentioned the hot tub blocked off with caution tape and continental breakfast contained “moldy muffins and curdled cream”. “I wouldn’t recommend staying here even if there weren’t other hotels!” Jackiewicz said.

Ottawa Public Health staff visit public pools on a routine and complaint related basis to make sure the pool is in compliance with the regulations and that any infractions are corrected in a timely manner, according to Michelle Goulet, a health inspector at OPH. “During an inspection we [health inspectors] also determine if the infraction is actually a health hazard, which means that it is considered an immediate threat to the public, for example a potential drowning or risk of exposure to water-borne illness” she said, “If we come to the conclusion that a health hazard exists we may decide to close the pool.”

Jackiewicz says that when she voiced her concerns to management of the Quality Inn via email, she received a “very general” and “impersonal” apology from the hotels general manager Farzana Reza, stating that if she decided to visit the hotel at a later date they would provide her with a “superior experience”. Reza gave no further comments.

 

An alarming number of Canadian women have landed themselves in the hospital for cases of self harm last year, approximately 30% more hospitalizations were recorded than that of their male counterpart according to an analysis by The Canadian Institute of Health Information.

The data indicated that of the 19, 476 reported cases of self injury in Canada from 2015-2016, hospitals saw and treated 11,730 women and 7,746 men.

https://infogram.com/self-harm-hospitalizations-by-gender-in-canada-2015-2016-1g43mnq7wv16mzy

The Canadian Institute of Health Information defines “self harm” as any act of purposely self-inflicted poisoning, injury and suicide both attempted and completed however they note that in this particular analysis “this indicator cannot distinguish whether or not the self-injury was intended to result in death (self-harming or suicidal behaviour)”.

This isn’t the first time that number of women hospitalized for self-harm has outweighed the number of men.

A study in 2008 by the Victoria Healthy Youth survey had similar findings, claiming that “sex was the only significant predictor of non-suicidal self harm with females being at a higher risk than males” and cases of self harm “tend to be most prevalent in those between the ages of 14 and 24”.

According to a study by the CIHI in 2014 on intentional self harm among youth in Canada, 5% of the general adult population and 15% of youth have self harmed with girls aged 14-17 being hospitalized 4x more than boys for cases of self-inflicted injury.

Dr. Elisabeth Melsom, a psychologist from Saterra psycholopgical and counselling services agrees, stating that self harm behaviours tend to develop from unhealthy methods of coping with particularly difficult or unpleasant situations and that boys and girls use different methods to cope.

“Those who self harm often attack their bodies as a cry for help and as a sign of psychological disturbance,” she says. “They may cut themselves, burn themselves, bruise themselves and often times girls are more likely to carry out these behaviors than boys who are more private about these feelings.”

Catherine Horvath, founder and executive director at the Ottawa Centre for Resilience, says that there are many factors that could contribute to this conclusion.

According to Horvath, while the report by the CIHI does not account for age, age itself plays a major factor in the outcome of the data and depending on the age group in question and that with youth in particular “primary reason for hospitalization period is accidents”, and included in “self-harm” is both accidents and intentionally inflicted self harm.

The CIHI clarifies that in this particular report “capturing intention is difficult” and that the indicator (self-harm) “might provide biased estimates of the true number of hospitalizations for self-injury, due to the manner in which intent is captured in the data sources available, poisoning can be coded as “unintentional”—an overdose—or “undetermined”—reflecting an uncertainty between unintentional and intentional motives”.

She says that it is important to note that while there is no way of determining whether or not the hospitalizations recorded in the CIHI study for “self injury” were accidents or not but its “safe to assume that at least a percentage of them were for intentional self-inflicted harm or a suicide attempt.”

“We know that males are more likely to make successful attempts in suicide or self harm,” she says. “Another piece is think has to be take into consideration is that females are more likely to present themselves to the hospital and men are not, these are all important factors that could potentially contribute to the higher number of women’s than men’s cases recorded.”