The lack of public washrooms in Ottawa’s ByWard Market may be putting the area’s workers at risk as they deal with violence and drug use in their stores’ washrooms.

The ByWard Market has one public washroom on ­­­55 ByWard Market Square, but it is not owned by the City of Ottawa and it has limited access depending on retail hours.

As a result, Nicole Johnston, an employee at Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt in the ByWard Market, sees many people coming into the store only to use their washroom. She says not all of these people are using the washroom for its intended purpose.

“They don’t come in here because they want ice cream, they come in here because they want to smoke crack in our bathroom,” says Johnston.

Johnston says there have been cases of people smoking cigarettes and other drugs, drinking alcohol and using needles in the store’s washroom.  She has had cleaned up crack pipes, discarded needles and blood out of their facilities.

“We have to be constantly wiping down the baby-change table because there’s drugs on it,” says Johnston.

Below, Johnston describes what happens when they tried to refuse access to a homeless woman who previously used drugs in their washroom.  After months of incidents, Ottawa Police gave the woman a no-trespassing order.

Johnston often arrives hours early for her shifts because she doesn’t want to leave her coworkers alone in the store. She says a public washroom in the ByWard Market would make her feel safer at work because it would reduce the amount of incidents in their store’s washroom.

Currently, all the washrooms in the area are owned by the retail establishments, according to Katherine Solomon, the marketing director for the ByWard Market BIA. She says it is the retail owner’s choice  to allow public access to their washroom.

Business Improvement Areas like the ByWard Market are not legally allowed to own property so they are unable to put in a public washroom.

“It’s a challenge, but hopefully things will change over time,” says Solomon.

In 2015 the City of Ottawa made public washroom data available to the public and developed a washroom-location app this year. However, there has been no mention by Council within the past year about building more public washrooms.

The map below shows the locations of these washrooms per ward from analysis of the public washroom and ward data via City of Ottawa Open Data. Click the arrow on the left-hand side to view the legend.

Other major cities are starting to make the push for more public washrooms. Edmonton councillor, Scott McKeen addressed the issue in a committee meeting on Oct. 17. He says public washrooms would help Edmonton’s “vulnerable population”  who are “often forced to endure the indignity of relieving themselves outside.”

In 2012 the City of Edmonton placed a public washroom on Whyte Avenue, a high traffic shopping district, which featured glass walls to increase the safety of its users. McKeen says in the meeting he is hoping to place washrooms like this in other areas of Edmonton.

As for Johnston, she has not approached the City of Ottawa about building a public washroom in the ByWard Market. She says it’s unlikely for washrooms to be put in the area because they would need constant monitoring and have the same issues their store’s washrooms have.

“It isn’t fair to us, but it’s what we have to deal with,” says Johnston.

Statistics Canada released this month that the national unemployment rate increased to seven per cent in August, however increased unemployment rates in August are nothing new for Ontario women.

Unemployment rates for Ontario women between ages 15 to 64 increased in August to 8.2 per cent. This is 1.1 points higher than July’s unemployment rate of 7.1 per cent for the same group, according to Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey for August 2016.

Previous years’ seasonally unadjusted data from the Labour Force Survey for Ontario women shows a similar trend in unemployment rates. Since 2006 women’s unemployment rates in Ontario have risen or stayed the same from July to August and then decreased in September, with the exception of 2014 where the rate moved from 9 to 8.9 per cent from July to August but then dropped down to 6.9 in September.

August tends to have the highest unemployment rates of the summer for Ontario women, averaging at 8.75 per cent and then dropping to an average of 7.04 per cent in September over the past decade.

“Everything is kind of sleepy in August and things seem to wake up a little bit more in September,” says Cynthia Meshorer, an employment counsellor at Times Change Women’s Employment Service, a non-profit organization providing services to women to aid their job search.

Meshorer says the use of their services tends to see an increase in September. In August, 66 women signed up for their orientation session but they anticipate 99 participants in September, a “significant increase,” according to Meshorer.

“I think overall, industry—everything sort of ramps up in the fall. The summer is vacation, it’s schools out. Everything tends to dip a bit.”

With school returning in September, the organization also sees mothers returning to work.

“We do tend to see a little group of women whose children who have left high school and they are real empty-nesters,” says Meshorer. “They have settled their kids in university and now they are looking to come back to the labour force.”

Women who have not been working for a number of years face many challenges, says Meshorer. She says these challenges include whether or not they have the proper skills, have kept old connections, gaps in their resume and their confidence levels.

“It takes people a while to make the decision [to return to work],” says Meshorer. “So by the end of summer they are ready to go and want to return to the labour force, but by time they hook up with a place or find a job, it takes some time.”

However, mothers joining the job search as is only one possible explanation unemployment is higher for women at the end of summer, according to Gilles Grenier, a University of Ottawa economics professor who specializes in labour economics and unemployment research.

“There are a lot of seasonal variations in unemployment due to climate and people’s habits,” says Grenier. “For example, September is the time when people go back to school, so there is more jobs in education.”

However this same trend is not seen for Ontario men. From the most recent Labour Force Survey data, Statistics Canada reported men’s unemployment in Ontario move from 7.1 per cent in July to 7.3 per cent in August. From 2006 to now, average unemployment rates for Ontario men moves from 8.22 per cent to 7.3 per cent between July and August and then down to 7.24 per cent in September.

Comparatively, Ontario women’s unemployment rates between 2006 and 2016 on average are 0.9 points higher in August than Ontario men’s rates and 0.2 points lower in September.