By Aishu Ravishankar

“Hole in the wall restaurants often have the most delicious food,” a diner said to his companion in reference to Yang Sheng Restaurant at the junction of Bronson Avenue and Somerset Street West.

As yummy as its food might be, the Chinatown restaurant has been a repeat offender in Ottawa Public Health’s restaurant inspections.

Yang Sheng had 23 food safety violations in the past year alone after going through six inspections.

According to Amanda Muise, a supervisor for food inspections at OPH, Yang Sheng fall under the “high risk” category of restaurants, based on a risk assessment tool they use to calculate how at risk an establishment may be in terms of food safety. Muise said high risk restaurants are inspected thrice a year, while medium and low risk establishments are inspections twice and once a year respectively.

Two critical food safety violations by Yang Sheng since 2009 have been related to food storage. The restaurant has incurred 13 violations of the ‘FPB’ code (food protected from potential contamination and adulteration) and nine violations of the ‘FCD’ code (food held at 4°C or less).

Yang Sheng is also in the top five establishments with the highest number of violations of the FPB code.

Yang Sheng’s owner, who did not provide his name or allow audio recording for an interview (citing the damage that bad publicity may cause to business), said that OPH can sometimes be too harsh and subjective in their ‘judgement’ of restaurants.

He said that smaller restaurants like his cannot be subject to the same rules as five-star dining establishments, as the owners often cannot afford to regularly update equipment or pay for other kinds of maintenance work. As well, he said the rules and fines are too severe.

“Our problems have only been very minor,” he said. “We do not get complaints from customers that they have been sick from our food. Why should we pay big fines for small things?”

He added that OPH’s 100 or 0 scoring system for restaurant inspections is too severe.

Echoing this sentiment is James Rilett, Ontario vice-president for Restaurants Canada. Rilett said a binary system systems are too simplistic, and that restaurants with failures for minor reasons may unnecessarily be deemed unsafe and lose customers.

“Any restaurants that are dangerous, don’t follow best practices … should be subject to the penalties, but if they’re minor things that can simply be curbed by minor changes, it doesn’t make sense to fail a restaurant for something minor,” Rilett said.

“I think It also gives the public a wrong impression of a restaurant. Almost all restaurants want to serve their customers in a healthy way, and that’s what they do for the most part.”

He added that customers should not look too deeply into small issues and completely write off a restaurant altogether.

Muise added that issues that can be fixed on the spot are done so by the inspectors, and that potentially unsafe food is immediately disposed of while the inspector is still around.

Under the details of inspections listed for restaurants online, OPH notes whether certain issues have been “corrected during inspection.”

Yang Sheng passed its latest inspection, which was this September – its first successful inspection since last September.

Sarah Peterson was visiting her dad at the Ottawa Hospital last fall when she was slapped with a $40 parking ticket on Ruskin Street. She was over her paid parking time by 15 minutes.

“I was chatting with my dad and all of a sudden I realized that about an hour had passed, I came outside and I had a parking ticket,” Peterson said. “I don’t think it’s very compassionate to the people who are visiting someone who is sick or dying.”

Ruskin Street — which runs in front of Ottawa’s Civic Hospital and the University of Ottawa Heart Institute — ranks among the most heavily ticketed streets in the city. Over 3,333 parking tickets were issued in 2014 alone, according to City of Ottawa data.

“Nine o’clock comes and I see the Green Hornet go by my window. It’s like they’re on a schedule,” said Karen Wright, president of the Civic Hospital Neighbourhood Association.

While the hospital has four parking lots, those spots come at a high price. The hospital charges $6 an hour, with a daily maximum of $13.

But at just $3 an hour, parking on Ruskin Street is more appealing for hospital patients, visitors and staff. Cars can park for up to two hours — and those spots are limited. Instead, many visitors will end up parking in a no-parking zone to avoid paying.

However, Wright said she thinks many visitors don’t know they are parking illegally.

“People see cars parked on the street and think there must be free parking. They are lured in and don’t look at the signs,” Wright said. ”They walk away thinking they scored great parking, but don’t realize they parked behind cars that have street or accessible parking permits.”

Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper said parking in the Civic Hospital neighbourhood has been a “persistent problem” and being “consistent in enforcement” is how by-law officers respond.

“Parking enforcement tends to be driven by first: where by-law know there is a problem, and second: by complaints,” Leiper said. “There have been very restrictive parking rules around the Civic Hospital for as long as I can remember.”

Ruskin Street has inched up the city’s most ticketed list by four spots in the past three years. In 2014, the parking ticket fees tallied almost $191,000.

Melrose Avenue, adjacent to Ruskin Street, is also a parking ticket haven for by-law officers with 2,250 handed out in 2014.

“I think the by-law officers target that area because they know people are going to go over their time. Maybe it’s so they can reach their quota of parking tickets,” said Peterson. “But they aren’t treating that space like they would treat any other residential area. They are picking on the people who are the most vulnerable.”

But Troy Leeson, the city’s by-law manager of parking enforcement, said residential streets near the Civic are monitored the same as other streets in the city.

“There has been no focused parking enforcement effort on Ruskin Street or Melrose Avenue,” wrote Leeson in an emailed reply.

In the past few years, the Civic Hospital has added off-site parking and shuttles for staff to alleviate some of the hospital’s parking pressures.

Now, the Ontario government might be stepping in. They want to make visiting loved ones in the hospital more affordable by introducing a program to cap hospital parking rates for frequent visitors, an initiative that Wright supports.

“There needs to be a discussion about fees,” Wright said. “If you are going [to the hospital] for weeks or months on end, it becomes very expensive for families.”

When Carly Hawke pulled up and parked in the tiny street next to the Jack Purcell dog park, she did not expect to get a parking ticket.

It was already dark outside on a Monday night. No way a bylaw officer will be doing his run now.

Mere minutes after she let her dog out of the car to run in the busy playground, a city vehicle pulled up on the other side of the street and an officer came out. He worked his way down the 22 parking spots lined up against the park, checking every dashboard on the way for a permit to park on city property.

When he got to Hawke’s car, he called out to the dog owners, trying to find the culprit. Hawke came out and explained the situation.

She was lucky that night, but many residents of the busy Centretown neighbourhood aren’t.

The parking spots near the Jack Purcell Park have raked in over $162,000 in fines and fees since 2010 according to an analysis of city parking data. Over 2,000 tickets have been issued for parking on city property at the address associated to those spots, 320 Jack Purcell Lane.

A quarter of all tickets issued for this violation is given out on the 100-metre long lane.

Drivers have to frequent the Jack Purcell Community Centre to obtain a permit to park on those spots. They must display the written approval on their dashboard or they will receive a ticket, according to section 113D (3) of the Ottawa Traffic Parking bylaw.

“We absolutely need those spots for our clients,” said Cody, who works at the community centre and declined to give his full name.

“Half of our clients are disabled,” he said. “We doubled our programs recently so attendance is way up.”

Cody estimates a few hundred people come through the doors of the community centre every day.

“Not only people from the neighbourhood,” he said. “We got people coming in from Orléans, Vanier, who need a spot to park their cars.”

Jack Purcell Lane lies parallel to the busy Elgin street artery, where many restaurants and pubs liven up Ottawa’s nightlife. Many patrons turn onto the short street looking for a free parking spot.

Another staff member at the community centre says she sees bylaw officers roll down the Jack Purcell Lane five to six times a day, and they almost always give out tickets.

The parking spots did not always have the money-making reputation they have now. In 2011, the city only issued two tickets. That number skyrocketed to 1,139 tickets two years later.

The City of Ottawa evoked multiple possible factors for the sudden increase in parking tickets, including weather, but denies those spots are being targeted.

“Historic weather data, for instance, indicates that 2013 saw particularly heavy snowfall in Ottawa,” wrote Scott Campbell, acting chief of By-law and Regulatory Services, in an email. “There has been no focused parking enforcement effort at this location.”

Bylaw officers get assigned a beat, or neighbourhood, and rotate every few months with another officer. The officer who almost fined Hawke had just got assigned to a new beat on the day of the incident.
He says officers are encouraged to seek out the violators before actually handing out the tickets.

Hawke, on her part, is thankful for the officers’ mercy, but thinks the signs posted in front of each parking spot ought to be clearer.

“I think we should be allowed to be parked there. I mean, [the community centre] has the same name as the park. It’s a bit confusing,” she said.

By Nicole Rutherford

Ottawa Tim Hortons food inspection infractions dropped by over 1,000 failures since 2009.

Each time a food inspector goes into a restaurant, he or she can fail the restaurant in several different categories; from poorly-sanitized surfaces to noting incorrect food temperatures.

For Tim Hortons, both the number of inspections and category failures have decreased significantly since 2009.

That year, inspectors gave Ottawa Tim Hortons restaurants 1,301 category failures. In 2015 they received 260. That’s what you call a double-double decrease.

This can largely be attributed to a change of policy in Ottawa Provincial Health’s (OPH) inspection tools. These outlines were once individual to the city, but in 2014 the City of Ottawa changed their policies to one that is consistent throughout Ontario.

“Internally we were more stringent,” said Franco Pagani, a supervisor in OPH’s Environmental Health Protection Branch. “It was more subjective to the health unit going in. Now there’s one consistent tool used throughout the province.”

Pagani insists, however, that there is no loss of safety when it comes to the declining numbers.

“It is still safe, but now we are on par with the rest of the province,” Pagani said. “We are still meeting our accountability agreements. We still go in regularly and if there are complaints we go in.”

He also noted that if a restaurant consistently performed well, it would typically see fewer inspections in the coming years.

One example of this is the Tim Hortons at number six Edgewater Street, which had had the highest number of food inspection infractions for Ottawa Tim Hortons since 2009—504 in total. However, for 2014 and 2015 the restaurant passed beautifully, with only two infractions in total.

When asked if it was the change in policy that had affected her restaurant, Edgewater Tim Hortons Assistant Manager Renee Pelletier was adamant.

“I can say with great confidence that we have not seen one single change,” Pelletier said. “We even have the same inspection guy come in.”

She noted that the inspector might come in less often, but she attributed this to a change in management, internal training and company policy.

“We are doing a lot more in-depth training and cross-training—that is, taking people who work at the storefront and training them in the back so they better understand how the business runs,” Pelletier said.

Additionally, the company has upgraded its tracking system to a digital version, switching from paper notes to iPad logging systems.

Maintenance logs, equipment logs, bathroom checks, manager walk-throughs and eye-flush and sanitization stations have alarms that go off and are noted digitally.

“It’s better than having people stare at a piece of paper,” Pelletier said. “At first it is pretty in-depth, but soon you start to notice a big difference.”

Despite this clock-work accuracy, Pagani noted that at the end of the day, all Tim Hortons restaurants are considered low-risk restaurants for food inspection—that is they are less likely to have problems that would make people ill.

Inspectors assess the restaurants and the minimum number of visits they require per year based on their risk level: high risk restaurants such as a full-menu restaurant that serve raw food, such as a sushi restaurant, would require a minimum of three visits per year. Medium risk requires two, and low risk, one.

This would also explain Pelletier’s elusive inspector.

“Bottom line, we are meeting the accountability agreement with the restaurants that need inspecting,” Said Pagani. “Now we have a consistency with all other cities and health units in Ontario.”

In either case, it looks like your Canadian coffee experience is still safe.

OTTAWA—With its colourful parasols hanging from the ceiling, porcelain trinkets lined up along the walls and bright red lanterns perfectly perched above every customer’s table– it’s almost difficult to believe that Sushi Kan on Innes Road violated 936 food inspection requirements in 2014 alone.

An analysis of the city’s Public Health Inspections data showed that the all-you-can-eat-sushi restaurant received a score of zero—a failing grade—for over 20 of the health and safety requirements.

The most common infractions were general housekeeping, separating raw foods from ready-to-eat foods during storage and handling, and temperature control issues.

Qi Guo is the manager of Sushi Kan’s Innes location.

When asked why the restaurant had failed so many inspections, Guo said it was difficult to keep the restaurant and food at the right temperature, because of the raw fish and meat. She also said it was hard to stay consistent because the restaurant also cooked “special Chinese foods”.

But the biggest infraction Guo explained was something that she remembers to this day as “the incident.”

“Well there was a customer and she saw it run by her,” said Guo, with a nervous laugh. She lowered her head in her hands.

By “it,” Guo meant a mouse and by “her” she meant a customer who was furious and immediately called the city.

Serial offender.

The restaurant’s number of violations was seven times higher in 2014 than it was in 2009, when it had 130 infractions.

But it’s not just Sushi Kan on Innes that is having trouble. According to the analysis of data all of Sushi Kan’s locations have failed several food inspections in the last five years.

Further examination of the city’s data showed that three of Sushi Kan’s Ottawa locations have all seen a progressive increase in violations.The other two restaurants are located on Baseline Road and Kanata Avenue. Restaurant owner Frank Ling was unavailable for comment.

“Our manager went away to China, so we had no manager for a while. And it got very complicated” said Andy Wan, co-owner of Sushi Kan on Innes.

Qi Guo was not the manager at the time.

“Also we had a lot of construction last year, and things, you know with the door open, things could get in,” Wan said.

Turning over a new leaf?

“We covered all the holes so the mice can’t get in anymore,” said Guo.

Guo said one of the reasons the restaurant kept failing inspections was due to a lack of education among staff members. “None of us really knew what [the city] wanted us to do, or how they wanted us to clean” said Guo.

After numerous attempts to contact city officials, Ottawa Public Health could not provide a comment in time for publication.

Guo has now completed her food handler certificate this year—a feat she is proud of. The certificate attests that a person has taken the required training to run a restaurant considering the different sanitary elements.

“We didn’t try to hide anything. We told our customers right away, “ said Guo about the incident.

“We love them you know. They are like our family. So we want to be honest with them.” The restaurant has been in operation since 2009. Prior to 2009, the location was a Denny’s restaurant. The last inspection that has been openly published states that the restaurant is was compliance with the law as of August 2015.

Musie Wailn runs a tight ship. As Franchise Chef of the Burrito Shack, he has to.

“Every employee says this is the cleanest kitchen they worked,” he says. “I keep things organized.” 

The Ottawa franchise opened two restaurants over the last year, first on Sunnyside Avenue and Seneca Street in the summer of 2014. The second location opened on Bank Street and Second Avenue at the beginning of 2015.

Even with Wailn’s confidence, both restaurants failed their initial health inspections.

Combined, the two Burrito Shack locations failed 10 portions of the inspection. This accounted for 15 per cent of the failures from all Mexican restaurants in Ottawa in 2014 and 2015.

Toni-Marie D’Ettorre, a Supervisor with Ottawa Public Heath, says that the inspections focus on sanitation, maintenance, food handling, storage and preparation.

“They take temperatures of food products. They take those temperatures and if they’re not at the right temperature they get written up,” says D’Ettore, “That’s one of the things we take very seriously.”

The portion is code FCD, failing to keep food held at 4°C (40°F) or less, a part both locations failed during initial inspection, which is considered a critical deficiency. In total, there were 625 failures of code FCD in 2014 and 2015, accounting for 7.5 per cent of all failures throughout the period.

Both Burrito Shack location’s passed their recent 2015 health inspections; Nov. 6 for the Bank location and Nov. 15 for the Sunnyside location, including the previous FCD failure.

“You don’t want to clean things up the day of the health inspection. You want to keep it going to get it in your employees head,” says Wailn.

Still, there were portions of the inspection Burrito Shack received warnings for that felt unfair to Wailn. On the latest inspection, he says there was disconnect between what previous health inspectors told him, including guidelines for employees washing hands, which can be considered critical.

A previous inspector told Wailn that as long as they wore gloves, employees would not need to wash their hands after making each burrito, whereas the most recent inspector said they had to wash.

“Our employees wear gloves. If you wear gloves and your hands are wet, good luck getting those gloves in, they’ll never go inside, “ says Wailn. “All of them are different, so it’s hard to know what to expect sometimes…the main thing they wanted is for our employees to wear hats moving forward.”

But according to D’Ettorre, the test is a constant and it’s the restaurant managers that are all different.

“It all depends on who owns that establishment and the management that establishment has, because in general there is a policy that everyone is supposed to adhere to” says D’Ettorre. “That’ll largely decide the outcome of the inspection.”

As far as experience, Wailn claims to have never gone to any Mexican restaurant besides his own. Even though Wailn previously worked as a manager at Ottawa pizza chain Milano’s, it didn’t prepare him for these inspections.

“There was definitely a learning curve we had to adjust to,” says Wailn, “Milano’s Pizza was all frozen food, whereas everything here is freshly cooked. Now I think we have it down pat.”

Yet Wailn suggests there may be factors outside of management’s control.

“The worst thing for a health inspector to do, is come in at a Thursday or Friday during lunch rush and expect everything to be neat,” says Wailn.

“If you want to come in at 9 a.m. or after the lunch rush, you’ll give us some time to clean things up. I think they made that mistake when they came into our Sunnyside location, they came at a lunch rush.”

The Horn of Africa sits at the top of the restaurant review site Zomato as Ottawa’s best place for African cuisine. It also has a seat close to the top of another list — restaurants with the most health violations.

The Horn of Africa had 13 food safety violations this year so far.

The small Ethiopian restaurant is located on Rideau Street, only a few storefronts down from the popular Rideau Bakery. As this Friday evening came around, the Horn of Africa stayed dark and silent, its doors shut and the neon ‘open’ sign turned off.

Several unsuccessful attempts were made to get in contact with the owners of the restaurant for comment about its food safety inspections and whether the poor results have any ties to its recent closure.

Only two weeks ago, 19-year-old Jeanvieve Massicotte went to the restaurant with her friend.

“It was not the greatest experience,” said Massicotte. “I found it to be very unkempt, not very welcoming, and kind of dirty.”

A food safety inspector visited the Horn of Africa on November 10th. One of the restaurant’s most recent infractions was for failure to keep things clean and in good maintenance. An infraction like that could mean something as simple as sanitizing kitchen counters and equipment.

This category of violations is pretty broad, according to Franco Pagani, the acting supervisor for Ottawa’s Public Health Food Safety program.

“We’re talking about general cleanliness and the whole physical location,” said Pagani. “It could be grease under the fryer, it could be dust under the cooler. Is there a hole in the dry wall, is there a loose tile? Is it dirty, in need of painting?”

It’s usually nothing that that can’t be resolved with a little spring cleaning or basic renovations.

The food safety inspection report also stated that the restaurant failed to “maintain carpeting in food service room in clean and sanitary condition”. One of the regulations laid out in Ontario’s Health Protection and Promotion Act requires restaurants to keep floor coverings “tight, smooth and non-absorbent” in order to maintain a clean space.

“When we sat down, I saw something behind my friend’s head move on the wall,” said Massicotte. “I’m not sure whether it was a cockroach but it was definitely some kind of bug.”

Massicotte felt sick after eating at the Horn of Africa and said that she definitely won’t be returning to the restaurant.

The Horn of Africa has an unfortunate long history of food safety violations. In 2011, they racked up more than 60 infractions. The latest warnings, about keeping things clean and guarding against pests, are nothing new.

Most of these infractions have been non-critical so far, allowing for the owners to come into compliance with the rules.

“It’s really preventative at this point,” said Pagani. “Make sure you are doing everything in your power not to get an infestation. We want to make sure every food premise has a good integrated pest management program. Some of the things could be as simple as having a screen on the back door.”

As the violations build up these issues are more likely to become critical and a serious threat to public health safety. If there is an imminent health hazard, Public Health Ottawa could take legal action or even close down the restaurant.

“We see ourselves as educators as well as enforcers,” said Pagani. “We’re there to work with them and develop plans.”

By Spencer Gallichan-Lowe

Private security and parking lot firms are issuing record numbers of parking tickets a recent analysis of City of Ottawa parking data reveals.

Data obtained from an access to information request shows that Security Response Canada, Inc. issued the most tickets, with over 21,000 in 2014 alone.

When reached for comment, a Security Response staff member said the owner is on holiday and won’t comment on this story.

Only authorized private parking lot companies and security firms can issue parking tickets according to a City of Ottawa bylaw passed in 2012.  This means parking lot companies and security firms can legally ticket a vehicle for parking past their allotted time or in the case of automated lots, parking without putting money in a meter.  Firms can also ticket for unauthorized parking, parking in an accessible parking spot or parking in a fire zone on private property.

“Part of the reason the bylaw was enacted was because companies were creating tickets in-house,” says Troy Leeson, deputy chief of bylaw and regulatory services for the city. “It was void of a legal process.”

Leeson says prior to the 2012 bylaw the rules weren’t very clear. Private parking lot users who were issued tickets were often confused about what to do.  The tickets include a fine but do not have the legal force City of Ottawa tickets do.  Often people would simply not pay them and forget about it, he says.

“We saw this bylaw as a consumer protection piece,” says Mr. Leeson.

Some companies would hire collection agencies or pursue offenders in small claims court.  However, it was often not economical to do so due to court and collection agency fees.

“If it costs $50 to pursue a $30 fine, it’s not a sustainable business model,” he says.

As for the fines themselves, Mr. Leeson says the city collects and retains 50 per cent of the revenues.  The remainder is reimbursed to the companies.

Mr. Leeson adds the fine collection rate is about 70 per cent, but says the city does not keep formal statistics.

As for Security Response’s high ticket rate, Mr. Leeson speculates it may be due to the number of properties the company patrols.

The tickets issued by the private companies are on the same blue and white paper tickets city bylaw officers use.  If the fines go unpaid, drivers may have trouble renewing their plates.

About ten agencies participate in the program, but one major parking provider opted out in 2012.  Impark, Inc. is one of the largest operators of surface and underground parking lots in Canada and the United States.  They issue non-city tickets to customers who either run out of time or don’t pay at all for parking.

“There’s a fundamental difference between what we’re doing and what a municipality does,” says Julian Jones, senior vice president of corporate development at Impark. “We have a commercial objective…to serve customers and to build a loyal customer base.”

Mr. Jones says customers who get a ticket have the option of contacting Impark’s call centre and asking for a reduction or even a full waiver.

“Clearly if someone has one notice and they didn’t understand the system or there was extenuating circumstances then we’re going to take a very lenient view on that and convert them into a customer,” he says.  “That’s absolutely our objective.”

Mr. Jones won’t reveal how many tickets they issue on their lots but says the enforcement system “…is purely a supporting system for the primary revenue collection process, which is of course the meters.”

Impark holds a unique legal position in the private-ticket world.  A 2011 Ontario court ruling sided with the company’s right to issue fines. This makes it the only parking lot company in Canada with the authority to do so.

Still, Mr. Jones says they’re more interested in keeping people coming back to their lots rather than chasing them away with threats of fines.

“Our preference would be to not enforce the system at all and have people pay at the meter,” he says.

“I’m not surprised.”

That’s what passes through Catherine Larocque’s mind every time she’s standing there, looking at a dreaded white or yellow slip of paper placed neatly beneath her windshield wiper.

Larocque, a 22 year-old University of Ottawa nursing student, has received four parking tickets at the campus since her first semester in 2013.

She’s in the midst of her third year now, and says she now refuses to drive to school more than once or twice a week.

“It’s insane, the parking situation is brutal. I only drive now whenever it’s absolutely necessary,” she says.

Larocque isn’t alone in her frustrations.

In fact, based on an analysis of  City of Ottawa data on parking violations from 2012 to 2014, obtained through a freedom of information request,  people who park on University of Ottawa grounds are nearly twice as likely to get a parking ticket than those who attend most other post-secondary institutions in the city.

This does not include Carleton University, since it issues private parking tickets. Schools like uOttawa, Algonquin College and La Cité Collegiale all have shared parking enforcement and revenue sharing agreements with the city.

City of Ottawa tickets range from $40 to $450. From 2012 to 2014, uOttawa has issued about 30 thousand parking tickets. That’s a total of nearly $2 million in fines – an average of  $660 thousand per year.

Compared to Carleton and Algonquin, uOttawa also has one of the most expensive ranges of monthly student parking permit options. Its hourly prices are also 50 cents more than Algonquin and La Cité. Carleton’s is a full dollar cheaper, since they don’t have to abide by city standards.

“It’s an ongoing issue,” says Larocque. “Permits are too expensive and if I pay per hour, in most lots, I max out at 16 dollars.”

Claudine Thibault, administrative appeal officer at uOttawa’s parking services, says that each year the university conducts a survery to see what the parking prices are like downtown.

“We try to be like the prices around the area,” she says.

But price isn’t the only issue, says Larocque.

“There’s not enough parking … you can’t have all of your parking lots designated as only for pass holders. We’re always stuck having to look for obscure parking spots.”

Across the university’s Main, Lees and Alta Vista campuses, there are 12 permit holder lots, but only 8 visitor lots.

Declan Webber, a fourth-year biomedical student at uOttawa, agrees with Larocque, but says he often chooses the obscure and less convenient spots, parking in Sandy Hill rather than on campus.

“It’s free there. Many of the streets have signs saying ‘free one hour parking’, but you rarely get tickets for parking longer,” says Webber.

Over the four years of his studies, Webber has gotten two tickets doing this.

“I prefer to take the chance. It’s too expensive otherwise,” he says.

Thibault says that since five years ago, the university has been losing many outdoor lots due to construction, but she says there is no current plan to make more spaces available.

“They just closed another one of the parking lots to make a green space,” says Larocque. “Which is great, green spaces are awesome, but it just makes the parking situation worse.”

The University of Ottawa had just over 42 thousand students enrolled last year. Currently, it has 3,127 parking spots.

Thibault says that these issues come with such a centrally located downtown school.

“Students often want something near their classes, but we cannot accommodate everybody, and people end up getting fined,” she says.

If you’re hoping to cut your chances on getting a ticket next time you park on University of Ottawa property, try to take public transportation in months like March, where the school has, on average from 2012-2014, given the most amount of tickets. Year round, avoiding Lot “K” may be your next best bet. Check out this chart for more details: