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Rideau-Vanier holds the city’s highest rate of unemployment

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This map displays the rate of unemployment of each ward by colour. The higher the rate of unemployment is, the darker the colour will be. The data was collected from the 2011 National Household Survey and from the City of Ottawa’s Open Data website. The Map was created using ArchGIS.
This map displays the rate of unemployment of each ward by colour. The higher the rate of unemployment is, the darker the colour will be. The data was collected from the 2011 National Household Survey and from the City of Ottawa’s Open Data website. The Map was created using ArchGIS.

By: Zack Bradley
Mobility By City Ward
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If you’re unemployed, there is a good chance you live around Vanier, according to the 2011 National Household Survey data.

The municipal ward of Rideau-Vanier, which consists of the neighbourhoods of Sandy Hill, the Byward Market, Lowertown, and Vanier, holds 7 per cent of the city’s unemployed workers and has the highest rate of unemployment, with 10 per cent of its residents not having a job.

City Councillor Mathieu Fleury, says the high rate is mainly caused by the large number of low-income families that reside in the ward. However, he also notes that this data is just a snapshot and does not reflect the ward today.

“Rideau-Vanier has such a quick turnover of residents and this makes it difficult to examine,” says Fleury. “You could back track or go forward 6 months and get completely different results. This is just too small of snapshot.”

Fleury is correct by noting the mobility. According the National Household Survey, in the past five year, 57 per cent of residents in Vanier changed homes, giving the ward the second highest amount of mobile residents. Whether these residents moved outside the ward or stayed within is unknown, but it is apparent many residents are not staying still for long, which can be a problem for comparing data.

Suzanne Valiquet, the former executive director of the Vanier Business Improvement Area, actually says a high rate of mobility can cause high unemployment rates, but it is not the big issue at hand. Valiquet says the issue of unemployment is result of a lack of action between the city and local business developers in gentrifying the area.

“Vanier is very much like any intercity neighbourhood that has not yet been white-painted or gentrified,” says Valiquet. “There is a redevelopment process occurring all over North America right now and in our city, this is where it hasn’t happened.”

Valiquet, who claims she felt as if Vanier had been forgotten during her time at the BIA, questions why the city has not begun to start redeveloping Vanier as it has with other neighbourhoods.

“Vanier is the closest in proximity to the downtown core. It should have been developed by now,” says Valiquet. “Why isn’t this part being developed like the rest of Ottawa? Westboro was not much different from Vanier before, but you wouldn’t know it now.”

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Page 1 of Rideau-Vanier-Ward-Limits

Contributed to DocumentCloud by Zachary Bradley of David McKie’s Research Methods • View page as text

However, while frustrated with the lack development, Valiquet does agree there are other factors responsible for this high rate of unemployment in Rideau-Vanier. Valiquet points to a lack of education, a high amount of immigration, and a bursting number of low-income families as reasons for so many jobless residents.

She also notes, as strange as it sounds, that Vanier has simply become a hot bed for the unemployed.

“Vanier is like a little city inside a big city. It has all your amenities within walking distance and you’re close to everything,” says Valiquet. “If you’re going to be unemployed somewhere in the city, it’s the place to be. You got everything you need.”

Yet, as Valiquet notes, pinning redevelopment against unemployment does not always result in the friendliest results. .

“While gentrifying is great, it still leaves the question of where are these people going to go? Because they’re not going up with the houses,” says Valiquet about the currently unemployed in Vanier. “The properties will take value, but it will result in the unemployed being pushed out and there is nowhere for them to go. That’s the sad part to all this.”

Coloured restaurant inspection ratings to be unveiled in Ottawa this Monday

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Photo outside of Yang Sheng Restaurant in Ottawa. Yang Sheng Restaurant was one of the top food safety violators in 2013 and 2014.
Photo outside of Yang Sheng Restaurant in Ottawa. Yang Sheng Restaurant was one of the top food safety violators in 2013 and 2014.

By: Zack Bradley

Inspecting your favourite restaurant is about to get a lot easier in Ottawa.

Ottawa Public Health is launching a new website on November 16 called Ottawa Safe, which will highlight a restaurant’s food safety rating with easy to see colours. The project is similar to the system used in Toronto, which requires all food premises in the city to place their colour-categorized results near their front doors, but Ottawa’s ratings will be solely online.

The trial project will see restaurants labelled as green, yellow, or red, with each colour matching their level of compliance with city food safety laws.




While Ottawa Public Health already has a website detailing food inspection violations, Ottawa Safe will be an improvement on the system, says Kathryn Downey, Manager for Food Safety at Ottawa Public Health.

“We want to enhance the disclosure of what exactly we are doing and make our inspections public knowledge,” says Downey. “By having yellow ratings, this gives an incentive for businesses to stay compliant and keeps the public more aware of what is actually happening inside of restaurants.”

Keeping restaurants in Ottawa compliant can be a difficult task as some food premises have tallied up high numbers of violations over the past few years and continue to operate without the public ever knowing.

According to data recovered from the City of Ottawa’s open data website, a handful of restaurants have received more than 20 violations in past years and did not do anything about it the next year. Business such as Sushi Kan, Ben-Ben Restaurant, Yang Sheng Restaurant, and Delta Ottawa City Centre all fit this picture. Receiving more than 25 violations in both 2013 and 2014.

Even more shocking is the results of Yang Sheng Restaurant and Sushi Kan, as they both actually saw increases in their amount of violations, with their violations rising by 34 per cent and 16 per cent, respectively.

Downey says she hopes this new system will help crack down on this repeat non-compliance.

“The bottom line is we have the authority and we expect compliance,” says Downey. “That’s our intention. We want every restaurant to follow and expect to see ongoing gains.”

Downey says having the coloured inspection ratings only online is much cheaper than having to hand out physical signs after each inspection, as done in other cities such as Toronto. However, she notes Ottawa Safe is only a trial project and window place cards could still be a thing in the future.

For now, Downey says by having it only online the public’s view is actually enhanced, as they can see all of a restaurant’s inspections results at the same time as its coloured rating. This is better than just seeing red, yellow, green in a restaurant’s window, she says.

However, not everyone is on board.

John Macklem, manager at the Lieutenant’s Pump, says the new system could be dangerous for restaurant owners since violations happen more than the public may think they do. He says he thinks people may not simply scroll down to read the actual violations and just judge restaurants by the colour they receive.

“It can be frustrating because there are a lot of small violations you can get and I’m scared that you may get stuck with a yellow rating as a result of some small, trivial technicalities,” says Macklem.

As manager of Lieutenant’s Pump for the last two years, Macklem says restaurants are always catching up and making repairs to meet inspection results, but this does not mean they are unsanitary.

“Maybe your fridge isn’t at the right temperature or your walls are bit dirty, these are just normal things happening in a restaurant,” says Macklem. “These types of violations are much different than an actual restaurant that has bad hygiene. I don’t want to be attached to those places simply by having a yellow card.”

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Canada’s largest native reserve holds the province’s highest arson levels

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From cars to garbage cans, anything has the chance of being lit up in Canada’s largest native reserve.

Six Nations of the Grand River, which lies just outside Brantford, Ontario, holds the province’s highest rate of arson with average rate of 765 incidents per 100,000 people over the past six years

Based on an analysis of Statistics Canada data, residents of Six Nations are 43 times more likely to experience an act of arson than those living anywhere else in the province.

According to the Criminal Code of Canada, arson occurs when a person intentionally or recklessly causes damage by fire or explosion to a property, whether or not that person owns the property. It is an indictable offence and if someone else is harmed, an accused can liable for life imprisonment.

The reserve has been in the news as of late, with its arson problem being far from burnt-out. In just the past week, police and fire crews responded had to respond to two separate fires on the reserve.

These fires occurred on October 1 and 3, with both dealing with cars being lit on fire. Each incident has since been labelled as arson, and is being investigated.

Inspector Dave Wiedrick of the Brantford Police blames boredom and lack of education for the high number of arson in Six Nations and the surrounding areas. With not much to do, says Wiedrick, people turn to fire to pass the time.

“If you compare Brantford to Halton Hills [a similar sized town near by], you’ll see we have lower income, lower education, and lower city interaction,” says Wiedrick about the Brantford area. “This causes petty crimes to be high.”

Wiedrick says most fires lit by arsonists in their area tend to be small  but according to Inspector, the damage can still be huge. Wiedrick says he fears that someone will eventually get hurt by all these little fires.

And the October 1  fire almost did that.

While en route to put out the car fire, a Six Nations fire department truck swerved off the road and crashed into the ditch. While the firefighters in the truck walked away safely, their truck did not do so well. The department’s truck is now out of commission, and for a small, volunteer-based fire department already low on funding, being down a truck can be devastating.

The Brantford Census Metropolitan Area includes the City of Brantford, Brant County, and Six Nations Reserve. The CMA has the highest per capita rate of arson in the entire country. Data retrieved from StatsCan's Incident-based crime statistics, by detailed violations and police services, for Ontario.
The Brantford Census Metropolitan Area includes the City of Brantford, Brant County, and Six Nations Reserve. The CMA has the highest per capita rate of arson in the entire country. Data retrieved from StatsCan’s Incident-based crime statistics, by detailed violations and police services, for Ontario.

 

The October 1 incident shows that although the fires in Six Nations are minuscule and generally victimless, they still pose a threat to those putting them out.

Scared by the incident, Six Nations Fire Chief Matthew Miller raised alarm for his local firefighters.

“It is feared that with the increase in fire activity as well aggressiveness of the incidents which is now occurring that it is only a matter of time before a member of the public or a firefighter is injured,” Miller said in a press release.

Firefighters from neighbouring districts have agreed to send their help when needed.

Chief Fire Prevention Officer Dwayne Armstrong of Brantford Fire Department said over the phone that each of the bordering departments have aid agreements. Brantford Fire Department and other departments will send out help when the fire is near the border or if the main department has been depleted of resources.

While more resources and extra aid helps the fire get put out, it is only a temporary solution since it does not solve the bigger problem, which is the prevention of fire in the first place.

However, as Insp. Wiedrick notes, “How do you prove someone started a fire when the fire ruins all your evidence? ”