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Category Archives: Carleton assignments
Noise By-Law complaints
This a map that shows the noise bylaw complaints broken down by ward from Jan. 1, 2013 to Sept. 2015.
Source: The city of Ottawa’s open data site
Search and Rescue
This is a map of search-and-rescue operations in which the person who was lost had a unregistered beacon.
Source: National Defence
Parking officials cracked down on misuse of disability parking spots in 2014, municipal data shows
The number of drivers the City of Ottawa ticketed for using an accessible parking spot without displaying a permit increased 38 per cent from 2013 to 2014, with the majority of those violations taking place at big shopping centres like Walmart.
Parking control officials wrote up 1,678 tickets in 2014 up from 1,231 tickets in 2013, according to an analysis of data that tracks parking violations obtained from the City of Ottawa through a municipal freedom of information request.
That is the highest number of tickets for this parking violation issued in a single year since 2009.
The City of Ottawa did not provide comment, despite repeated requests for an interview.
Drivers are caught for illegally using accessible parking spaces most often in parking lots at shopping malls or plazas, according to the city’s dataset. In 2014 the city issued 82 tickets — the highest number of any location in the city — in front of the Walmart at 450 Terminal Avenue.
Priya Hecktus, general manager of the Walmart Trainyards Supercentre, said some store customers have brought the issue to her attention but not enough to make the problem “alarming.”
“We do get complaints once in a while from customers,” she said. “It’s not a lot but it’s on our radar.”
When asked whether Walmart has considered any action given the number of people who misuse the accessible spots in the store’s parking lot, Hecktus said it’s not on the store’s agenda at the moment.
“We don’t see enough of it to be a problem,” she said. “I know that we recently got our parking lots redone just to make sure that they were clear… the designated spots.”
The city’s traffic and parking bylaw requires all parking lots in the city with 20 to 99 public parking spaces to reserve at least one spot for drivers with accessible parking permits. Another accessible parking space must be added for every additional 100 parking spots.
Hecktus said there’s been no communication between her store and the City of Ottawa about the matter.
Other top five hotspots for this parking violation include the Place d’Orléans shopping mall in Ottawa’s east end, a plaza near Heron Road and Bank Street, and the St. Laurent Shopping Centre.
Curtis Fortowsky, general manager of Place d’Orléans Shopping Centre, said the number of tickets issued in the mall’s parking lot isn’t entirely surprising. He said police tend to patrol the mall’s property “quite often” and a few of the mall’s security officers are in fact licensed by the City of Ottawa to write parking tickets, although it’s not what they do full-time.
“They’ll periodically go out and check but it’s certainly not something they do on a targeting basis,” he said said.
Fortowsky said the issue is a hard one to tackle but not everyone does it with bad intentions.
“Sometimes it’s as simple as someone forgetting to put down their permit sign and sometimes it’s blatant misuse,” he said.
In order to park in a disability parking spot, the permit holder needs to be a driver or a passenger in the vehicle, and the accessible parking pass must be displayed on the dashboard or sun visor, according to the city’s parking bylaw.
The fine for failing to comply with the regulations is $350 if paid within 15 days, as noted on the City of Ottawa’s website. After 15 days the fine increases to $450.
The parking bylaw specifies that if a person who is ticketed for parking in an accessible spot without displaying a permit obtains or presents a valid permit within 30 days of the ticket’s issue date, they will be exempt from the fine.
This a test from Alexandra Whyte
This is a test from Spencer Gallichan-Lowe
This is a test.
More complaints might mean less graffiti in Edmonton
Forest Terrace Heights may have a lot of graffiti complaints – but they don’t have a lot of graffiti.
Last year the community filed 53 complaints about graffiti and vandalism through Edmonton’s 311 service, compared to just 11 the previous year, according to 311 data released last month.
“We have been encouraging people to make complaints when they see stuff,” said Rae Hall, president of the Forest Terrace Heights Community League.
She said there’s very little vandalism in the community, despite the jump in complaints.
Hall knows firsthand how reporting graffiti – and reporting it quickly – can make a long-term difference in a neighbourhood.
“When I first moved to the neighbourhood, constantly I was seeing graffiti in this one spot,” said Hall. “First you got one spray of graffiti, then you got another, and it just kind of started to spiral out of control.”
Hall finally reported the vandalism, and the graffiti was cleaned up. But the problem persisted.
“A couple weeks later, there was some more graffiti,” said Hall. “I called it in immediately, it was cleaned up immediately, and we actually haven’t had anything on that building since.”
The culture of reporting vandalism in Forest Terrace Heights is indicative of a larger trend in the City of Edmonton. Graffiti and vandalism complaints across the city were up 35 per cent in 2014 compared to the previous year, according to 311 call data released last month.
Rate of graffiti and vandalism complaints in Edmonton in 2013 by ward, according to 311 call data.
Rate of graffiti and vandalism complaints in Edmonton in 2014 by ward, according to 311 call data.
Those complaints might be leading to less graffiti and vandalism in Edmonton. The City of Edmonton’s most recent graffiti audit says incidents of graffiti and vandalism have been declining steadily since 2010.
“We really encourage awareness in the community of recording, reporting and removing graffiti,” said Katie Hayes, graffiti project manager for Edmonton’s Capital City Clean Up program. “The faster we can get citizens to report it, the faster we can get it removed from properties.”
Since the launch of the graffiti management program in the spring of 2008, Edmonton has implemented services to support residents and private property owners affected by graffiti and vandalism, said Hayes. The graffiti wipe out program brings together volunteer groups who paint over graffiti at no cost to the property owner.
Residents can also apply for a free graffiti clean up kit, which includes painting supplies and discount coupons to Rona. The number of kits ordered by residents more than doubled between 2014 and the previous year, according to Hayes.
Ward 6 Coun. Scott McKeen says these programs, in addition to the launch of the City’s 311 app last summer, have encouraged Edmonton residents to report problems in their community.
“We have programs in place like the 311 app and like Capital City Clean Up that are really raising awareness,” said McKeen, who serves Downtown Edmonton. The rate of graffiti and vandalism complaints in McKeen’s ward more than doubled between 2013 and 2014, according to 311 call data.
“The ward is really starting to come alive, revitalize, and people’s standards are going up. There’s a reason Edmonton was called Deadmonton in 2001,” said McKeen.
He says addressing concerns in the community is just part of a new engaged citizenry.
“It’s a good sign, people are reporting things. With the amount of new residential buildings downtown with young families moving into the area,” said McKeen. “Things that people passed by years ago without making any noise, maybe people are reporting it now. Whether it’s graffiti or some other form of vandalism.”
“I suspect rather than us having a spree of vandalism, we just have a community that’s more sensitive to it and more likely to report it.”
German Economy Reigns 25 Years After Unification
By: Laurene Jardin
A corrupt empire, high inflation rates, and the general devastation of war slapped the German economy in the 20th century. Today the country is not only known for its cold beer, fast cars and lively festivities, but for being a keynote player in the capitalist world.
This was not the case 25 years ago before the annexation of the Communist German Democratic Republic located in East Germany and the Federal Republic in the West.
“You walked into a store and there would be a toaster. And then about a foot away on the same shelf you would see an old book. And beside that you’d have one pair of women’s shoes in a single size,” Grace Byrne said speaking of her experience in East Germany in the late 80s.
Byrne, an assistant reporter at NBC in Frankfurt and was sent to Berlin to cover the reunification story. She revisited Berlin a few weeks after the dust settled.
Byrne compared the merchant filled streets of post-unification Berlin to Disneyland.
“Everything was for sale. People were breaking up parts of the sidewalk and trying to sell it to us. I mean, geez, to think that Easterners had known nothing about the capitalist world and were thrown into it like this was fascinating,” she said.
Germany not only embraced capitalism; they honed it.
According to the World Bank, Germany currently has the fourth largest Gross Domestic Product, GDP, in the world. Its economy has grown steadily since the 1970s.
source: tradingeconomics.com
Germany also have the largest economy in Europe and hold seats on prominent committees such as the European Union, the G8 and the United Nations’ Security Council.
Axel Huelsemeyer, an expert of international economy and a political science professor at Concordia University, was one of the first Westerners in the social science program at Potsdam University, in Eastern Germany.
He has witnessed and studied Germany’s growth over the years.
This year the country implemented a minimum wage of €8.50 euros per hour, which works out to be about $11.70 Canadian dollars.
Huelsemeyer said that the country is doing well on an international scale both economically and politically. It has been able to lend money to indebted countries like Greece and is involved in organizing peace negotiations between nations like Ukraine and Russia.
Domestically Germany has a few weaknesses.
A recent report by Germany’s Equal Welfare Organization said poverty and wage disparity has not been this high since reunification.
According to the study 12.5 million people live in poverty. Most affected are the cities of Bremen, Berlin and Mecklenburg –Vorpommern.
Peter Finger, Legal and Cultural Counsellor of the German embassy to Canada from 2008 to 2014, was a diplomat for Western Germany in the late 80s and early 90s. Finger helped house refugees who had made it across the Eastern soldiers, negotiated with the German Democratic Republic to free Western prisoners.
“You could tell the difference between a Westerner and an Easterner by their clothes. The West was Americanized. Their clothes were grey,” Finger said.
While there is still a wealth gap between East and West Germany according to Huelsemeyer this is not more than would be expected.
“There is a transfer of goods from one part of the country to another. It’s like in Canada. The West transfers its goods to the East. It’s not an even split of resources.” Huelsemeyer said.
He also explained that Western companies quickly bought out Eastern companies to avoid competition.
In 1990, the federal government instilled a national solidarity tax of 5.5 per cent to help fund the East. In 2009 the tax was brought to court for being unconstitutional, overridden by a higher court in 2010.
Still, Huelsemeyer says that all things considered, Germany has come a long way.
“Where could they improve? I guess they could be more sensitive to the sensitivities of others,” Huelsemeyer said.
“But in terms of economy they are doing a good job.”
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Documentation:
Press Release by Germany’s Equal Welfare Organization “Armut auf Höchststand: Studie belegt sprunghaften Armutsanstieg in Deutschland Kategorie: Pressemeldung.” Study found on the internet. Recommended by an interviewee. Translated with help of Nicole Rutherford.
Study “Armut auf Höchststand: Studie belegt sprunghaften Armutsanstieg in Deutschland Kategorie: Pressemeldung. ” Found on the internet. Found study name through website that press release was released on. Very useful and up to date information that could be easily attributed to an organization.
25 years after Gorbachev, Russia may be backsliding
Maria Viaznikova is an ocean away from the country of her birth but she can still recall sitting in her family’s kitchen and listening to her father’s stories about how difficult life was under communism.
“My father was very involved politically and he used to argue with my mother, who was a member of the communist party. She always told us, ‘No words beyond these doors’,” said Viaznikova.
Viaznikova’s grandfather had been a political prisoner and her mother worried about anyone overhearing criticism of the party.
“She was really afraid for us — this was our childhood.”
In the 1980s, change came to the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev, who was later on elected as president in 1990. With his policies of “perestroika” and “glasnost” Gorbachev brought more openness and democratization to the country, as well as more open communication with the West.
Viaznikova said that the biggest changes came in the freedom to discuss things and to see how the other side lived.
“The first foreign TV shows appeared in Russia and new music groups — suddenly so many interesting people that weren’t just singing about the USSR. You could also hear foreign radio stations much more easily because before the signal would be blocked.”
Despite the changes, Viaznikova and her family chose to emigrate after she took a trip abroad and saw what life was like outside the Soviet Union. They came to Canada in 1998.
“We moved not because life was difficult but because we saw an opportunity, not only for us but for our daughter.”
Although Gorbachev is well remembered in the world he is remembered more for the Berlin Wall than for “perestroika”. He even received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his work in forging international trust. The changes he made for Russia however didn’t seem to leave a very lasting legacy.
“I think there is a regression from the democratization of the 90s,” said Joan DeBardeleben, political science professor at Carleton University.
Viaznikova talked with her uncle who still lives in Russia and said that he described the situation in Russia as “Stalinism-like”.
“People are going to prison who took part in demonstrations and fought with police,” She said, referring to recent demonstrations against the conflict in Ukraine.
There has also been a clamp down in the Russian media, which today is all state owned.
“The media was relatively free in the 90s. And although it isn’t as bad as communist times, there has been an increase in the level of control,” said DeBardeleben. “It’s about setting boundaries that the state doesn’t want exceeded.”
Viaznikova expressed concern about the direction that Russia is heading in, not only with restrictions on freedom of expression but also with militarization.
“Putin is arming the country. I was in Russia during May two years ago and they were having the military parade. There were all new tanks, weapons and he was showing this with pride.”
Gorbachev’s policies introduced new ideas which created instability and eventually led to the unintentional collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Charles Sharpe, history professor at McGill University, suggested that the amount of state control and militarization today might be Putin’s way of keeping the country stable.
“Russia’s claim to being a great power isn’t from their economy, it’s from military power. If they want to remain that way and exert influence they have to show that off,” said Sharpe.
He also says that the changes in Russia could be due to a division in Russian culture between slavophiles and westernphiles.
“Westernphiles want to take things from the West to make the Russian empire better while slavophiles believe that Russian culture is distinct and has to find its own way,” said Sharpe. “That’s the big difference between Gorbachev and Putin.”
“Russian people are always looking for a Tsar in the end, it’s from our history. Tsar has to be strong, and Putin is strong,” said Viaznikova.
Documentation: