The above map shows the locations of every registered AEDs in Alberta. Mapped using data from Alberta Health Services PAD program

Albertans prone to cardiac arrests might want to stay close to the big cities.

According to data published by Alberta Health Services, most of the province’s publicly accessible defibrillators are concentrated in urban centres.

Paramedic John Hein said this trend is very problematic.

“Rural locations are the most void of devices, which is the opposite of what we would want to do,” he said. “The more rural you are, the longer it’s going to take an ambulance or a fire response to get to you.”

Automated External Defibrillators, or AEDs are used on patients who have had cardiac arrests. The device checks if the person’s heart has stopped and if so, restarts the heart by delivering an electric shock through the chest.

Alberta Health Services runs the Public Access to Defibrillation program, which keeps track of all devices purchased in the province. The health authority publishes the location and status of the AEDs on their online database, but its up to the owner of the device to volunteer that information.

Hein said there have been 8,000 defibrillators sold in the province, but few of those are registered with the PAD program, let alone regularly maintained.

Hein said even if all the devices in the province were in active use, this would be nowhere near enough.

“I would say that’s a very small number of devices for a population of 5 million people.”

  Most of the devices in the province are located in cities. Hein said Health Services has been trying to get more AED coverage in the rest of the province, but convincing people to make the investment has been a challenging at times. “There’s a bit of pushback. The communities are saying, ‘This is a health device, shouldn’t health care pay for this?’ ” Hein is also concerned how many of the devices that have been bought and go unused. “People put them into locked cabinets or behind closed doors. We’re concerned about those because if a device is needed and you don’t have the key to get into that cabinet, then the device is useless.” In other provinces, the situation is a bit different. In Manitoba, all AEDs must be registered and maintained thanks to provincial leglislation. The Defibrillator Public Access Act of 2012 required AEDs to be placed in a number of  public areas, including gyms, schools, golf courses and community centres. Tammy Witko with the Manitoba Office of the Heart and Stroke Foundation said prior to the legislation, there were less than 100 defibrillators registered throughout the province. Now there are 2,800 publicly active devices and counting. Witko said the new law didn’t just enforce certain groups to invest in AEDs, it also encouraged other businesses not covered in the legislation to get involved. “People are so aware of it they are going to purchase and register them on their own,” Witko said. “We have people calling us up, like restaurants, saying ‘Why weren’t we in your legislation?’ ” Witko said even rural communities that don’t have large public areas have put in the effort to make sure they have AEDs where people need them. “They are really quite inventive in the cottage country. If they have a facility or building that everyone uses, they would choose that as the place to put their own.” Hein said Alberta has not considered any similar legislation. For now, he said health authority is focused on getting their message out about the importance of having AEDs readily available for those in need. “I think we’ve got a long ways to go as a province and as a country to get these devices as popular as fire extinguishers or smoke detectors.”

The Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation’s guide to AED use and safety.

It’s a small portable device that can save lives.  Automated external defibrillators (AEDs) detect cardiac rhythms and deliver shocks to those under cardiac arrest, one of the leading killers of Canadians. But despite the high success rate of AEDs, public places in Ottawa are not required to have one on site.

While many public places in Ottawa are equipped with AEDs, they are not legally obligated in to do so.  This leaves them with little to no responsibility if a person’s heart stops and there is no defibrillator around to save them.

As of April 2013, the City of Ottawa had a total of 370 public access defibrillators in  public buildings.  According to the data, which listed location, number and location on site, Rideau -Vanier had 28 publicly accessible defibrillators-more than any other ward in Ottawa.

Councillor of Rideau-Vanier Mathieu Fleury says he understands the importance of AEDs in public places.  Before serving as councillor he worked for the City of Ottawa as a lifeguard supervisor and taught a defibrillator course.

“As a lifeguard I saw how crucial it was to not only have an AED on site but to have strong communication within the facility so everyone knew where it was,” Fleury says.

Of the 370 publicly accessible AEDs in Ottawa 70 per cent were located somewhere within the main entrance of the public building.

Fleury says one of the reasons his ward has the most public access defibrillators is because it is filled with government and recreation buildings.

“There are a lot of places in Rideau -Vanier like the Rideau Centre which on any given day have hundreds of people inside.  Not having an AED would be extremely irresponsible,” he says.

About 40,000 Canadians experience sudden cardiac arrest each year- one every 12 minutes, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

Public Information Officer of Ottawa Paramedics Jean-Pierre Trottier says since 85 per cent of cardiac arrests happen outside of hospitals, having an AED close by can make all the difference.

But despite these claims, there are currently no national guidelines as to how or where the devices should be kept.  While many comply with Heart and Stroke regulations, others place the devices in less readily available places.   For the city of Ottawa, this included the custodian hallways and basements of several public schools.

“The time between an onset of cardiac arrest and the use of an AED is the major determinant for how successful resuscitation attempts will be,” Trottier says.  “That’s why we encourage facilities to place their defibrillators in an easily accessible place.”

The survival rate of a cardiac arrest victim decreases by up to 10 percent for every minute delay in defibrillation.  After 12 minutes, the survival rate plummets to less than five per cent.

Councillor of Barrhaven Jan Harder says that although there is currently no legal requirement for public buildings to have an AED, the City of Ottawa has taken a proactive role.

“Ottawa has taken a leadership position and has funded the placement of defibrillators in many of their public buildings including all recreation facilities, arenas and pools,” she says.

Harder says that public access defibrillators have been used twice in Barrhaven this year.  She says that the Heart Safe City program introduced in 2001 has saved 74 lives.

According to the data, Barrhaven (Ward 3) had one of the lowest numbers of total AEDs in 2013 with only eight in public buildings.  Harder says they have added six more since April and that the number does not include the AEDs located with the Ottawa Fire Services, the Ottawa Police and the OC Transpo Special Constables in each ward.

The Ontario government has assigned almost $10 billion to placing the devices in publicly funded sports and recreation facilities as well as schools with extensive sports programs.

But like many others, Fleury thinks there is still more to be done.

“As much as we have training, the more people that are informed or educated for first aid response the better,” he says.

locations of public access defibrillators in Ottawa

Getting Started (Text)

Enrolment at an alternative learning school in British Columbia increased fivefold from 2007 to 2013, according to an analysis of data published by the B.C. Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development.

The population of the South Island Distance Education School in Victoria grew from about 600 to 3000 students in six years, due to an increase in the number of learners using part-time distance classes to complete their high school education.

The Vancouver Island public school experienced a sharp spike in its population of part-time grade 10 to 12 students and adult learners specifically, said Karen Flello, the school’s vice-principal.

Flello said this trend is the result of two changes in provincial education policy in 2006 and 2008, respectively. In 2006, the government allowed grade 10, 11 and 12 students to register at more than one school.

This gave senior students the option to use distance learning as a way of meeting the required credits for graduation and shaping their high school education the way they want to, said Laura Barker, treasurer for South Island’s parent advisory council.

Many students register for a distance course if their local school doesn’t offer it, if they have timetable conflicts, or if they want to take an extra class on top of a full course load.

In 2008, the government also expanded access to free basic adult education courses in public elementary and secondary schools to all B.C. residents.

According to Flello, who is also president of the B.C. Distributed Learning Administrators’ Association, her school immediately felt the impact of these two policy changes.

“We all of a sudden had an enormous jump in head count,” Flello said. “I mean, we skyrocketed. We took right off.”

As of now, grade 10, 11 and 12 students account for about half of the school’s population and adult learners account for about 25 to 30 per cent, according to Flello.

South Island had to make several changes to accommodate its growing numbers. Flello said the school hired more than 20 new teachers between 2007 and 2013,  and also prioritized improving course efficiency.

“We’re still very paper-based and correspondence-heavy, so we’ve found ways to make courses a bit more elegant,” Flello said. “We write a lot of our own online courses, and we do them with the view in mind of making them streamline for students and teachers.”

Barker said the school is also significantly improving its variety of sessional one-on-one programs.

“They are offering more programs where kids go in, depending upon the age group, and have lessons with the teachers and they focus on either science or art or music,” said Barker, whose three children are registered at the school.

Listen to Flello talk about more of the school’s new services here:

Simultaneous increases in the school’s budget helped offset growing expenditures. The 2006 policy change also allowed distance schools to claim $731 from the provincial government per student registered in a course.

But South Island’s gains meant losses for other distance schools in the province, who saw their enrolment rise and subsequently drop between 2007 and 2013. Flello said her school was also attracting students from multiple districts across the province.

“It’s like gravity… the bigger schools have had greater drawing power,” Flello said. “We’ve also had a greater commitment to expanding program offerings and to expanding the online part.”

Flello said her school expects enrolment numbers to plateau now that the shock of the cross-enrolment policy has worn off. However, she said the school still has an incentive to keep numbers up.

“If we don’t have a large enrolment class it’s pretty hard to say we’re going to close it when neighbourhood schools are closing it all over the place,” Flello said. “We’ve become sort of a last resort.”

Source: The B.C. Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development
Analysis by Beatrice Britneff

The Saskatchewan community of Pelican Narrows is faring little better than they were almost ten years ago, when the federal government gave the reserve a score of 42 out of 100 on their Community Wellbeing Index.

The index used census data to evaluate First Nations, Inuit, and other communities in the areas of housing, income, education and labour force activity and then give an overall score out of 100.

Scores were meant to show how communities compared to each other, but obvious disparities between the groups did little to advance any change, especially in Pelican Narrows.

Paul Mkandawire is a statistician and professor of economics, international development and health geography at Carleton University. He says that despite the fact that such indicators are important when evaluating wellbeing, there is always more to the story.

“The notion of using quantitative indicators to capture qualitative dimensions of life is, in the first place, debatable.”

“For example, what kind of education are they talking about? Within the aboriginal context, it’s not just formal education, but also education in terms of awareness of traditional values, ways of dealing with illnesses, proper feeding practices, that are part and parcel with culture.”

Education scores were calculated using only the proportions of populations that had completed a high school or university education.

Pelican Narrows scored 30, well below the national average of 48.

Peter A. Beatty is the Chief of Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation, of which Pelican Narrows is a part. He says the community can thank the federal government for the low scores.

“The federal government’s budget allocations have a long term effect in terms of the social problems on the reserve and the low score there,” he says.

The band was once funded to keep parity with the province in terms of teacher’s wages, so that communities were able to recruit better teachers on longer contracts. That funding is no longer.

“Now the federal government has cut that funding to support education. It’s beyond me. Why would you cut that funding when nationally, you’re talking about enhancing education and trying to provide better education on reserve?” Beatty says.

“We won’t be on par with the province anymore. We won’t be able to afford it.”

It is for this reason, among others, that Peter Ballantyne and three other bands in Saskatchewan have not yet signed their funding agreements.

Of course, it’s not just teachers that are difficult to keep in school. 2011 Census data shows that of 1,105 students aged 15 and over, 735 do not obtain any kind of certificate, diploma or degree.

One incentive the community tried to keep youth in school was the hot lunch program.

But when the workload for the community’s two social workers exceeded 1,000 cases, the hot lunch program was cut in order to redirect money into social assistance.

Listen to Beatty discuss the importance of the program here:

“What they did was reallocate that money, the money that goes towards lunch programs for kids going to school, and said ‘we’re giving you new money.’”

Beatty says that this practice of repackaging funds has become all too familiar.

“You know the minister’s announcement of new monies for education across Canada? That’s not new money. That is money that has been cut from education programs, from social programs, and been reallocated to make it look like it’s new money.”

Whether new or old, funds remain scarce at Pelican Narrows. The index revealed an income score of 37, and in 2010 the majority of households had an annual income of less than $30,000.

Regardless, Beatty says in terms of income, Pelican Narrows has reason to be optimistic.

He says that the impending diamond mine at Deschambault Lake is promising, and Peter Ballantyne is taking steps to arrange impact benefit and labour force agreements on their own.

“The stereotype of an Indian is that they don’t want to work. Well, that’s hogwash,” Beatty says.

“You’ve got enough people here, develop that resource. That human resource is there. But if you keep those people under your thumb, on social assistance, they’re going to remain that way for the rest of their lives.”

Average Education Score, Organized by Province and Community Type

Source: Statistics Canada Analysis by Mara Selanders

Average Wellbeing Score, Organized by Province and Community Type

Source: Statistics Canada Analysis by Mara Selanders

Pelican Narrows 2011 Census Information: Education

Pelican Narrows Education 2011 Census (Text)
Pelican Narrows 2011 Census Information: Household Income

Pelican Narrows Household Income 2011 (Text)

Ottawa University student Jessie Hargreaves is a regular visitor of the Rideau Canal. Living near the Byward Market, the Canal and the Rink of Dreams in front of Ottawa City Hall is her first choice almost every weekend.

Lacing up her skates in the trailer outside City Hall, Hargreaves says, “It’s nice to sit somewhere warm, especially when it gets really cold. It’s more enjoyable when you are not frozen all the time.”

When asked whether she had any experience going skating without using a change room, Hargreaves says “Never”.

But not everyone is as lucky as her.

In the same public change room, Bill Winogron was packing all his family’s equipment into a over-sized bag , Winogron says he used to carry the bag when he skates because of the lack of change room at other rinks in Ottawa.

“It was a lot more dangerous and inconvenience. Instead of focusing on the skating part, you are distracted by what you are carrying,” Winogron says, “I think having a change facility is the first priority, it’s very important.”

Winogron and his family live in Alta Vista. The rink in their neighborhood has no change room, but thanks to a school nearby, they still have a place to go and change.

Official data show that Winogron’s neighborhood is not unique. More than half of Ottawa’s outdoor rinks have no public change rooms.

Among the 252 outdoor rinks that Ottawa has, nearly 150 of them have no place for people to get changed. The areas, which barely have any change rooms for all their outdoor rinks, are at the east and west edges of the city – Kitchissippi and Kanata.

Heat map: The percentage of rinks without a change room in each wards in Ottawa. 

Along with change rooms, another missing facility for nearly two-thirds of outdoor rinks in Ottawa are washrooms.

Chart: The percentage of outdoor rinks that have no washroom in each wards in Ottawa.

However, compared to change rooms, fewer people are concerned about toilets.

Tu Nguyen, who has a 12-year-old and a nine-year-old, (photo) lives in Barrhaven – near the south-end of the city.

He says there is a rink that is only 300-metres away from his home, and there is neither a change room nor a washroom for the rink.

“For me it doesn’t make any difference, because it is pretty close to my house. Kids would probably just come back to the house whenever they need to go.” Nguyen doesn’t complain about the lack of a washroom.

Ward Cosman, the Portfolio Manager for Seasonal Recreation of Ottawa, says although there is a lack of washrooms for outdoor rinks, the city rarely get any complaints.

He says Ottawa has the most outdoor rinks in Canada. Instead of meeting the national standard of making every 10,000 people have one outdoor rink, Ottawa makes sure there is one for every 4,000 people.

“We make sure it doesn’t take people too long to walk to the rink near where they live. Because children usually only spend half an hour or an hour outside in the winter, they can always go back home to use their own washroom.” Cosman says.

Cosman says another reason is that the investment for a washroom can be very expensive.

To build a washroom facility, the city has to introduce a waterline to the park, which could cost at least $35,000. “Even introducing a portable toilet, heat still has to be considered. It’s not that easy,” Cosman says.

He says the city’s yearly budget on outdoor ice rinks is $800,000, and constructing washrooms are not included in the budget.

But for public change rooms, Cosman says the city gives each neighborhood nearly $5,000 every year as long as they request a change room trailer, just like the one found at the Rink of Dream in front of City Hall.

“The neighborhood has to hire volunteers to make sure the trailer keep working 30 hours a week,” Cosman says, “that could be a reason many communities reluctant to have a change room, even though making a request to the city is not difficult at all.”

Respondents to an online survey see nuclear power as the best option for the future of Ontario’s electricity system. “Green” energy sources like solar and wind power—a major plank of the Ontario government’s new Long Term Energy Plan—were rated as the worst options.

The survey, conducted over summer 2013, offers a glimpse into the public consultations the ministry of energy used to come up with the plan, released last December.  Almost 8000 completed the online survey.

“You have to take this with a very large, not a grain of salt, maybe a large shaker of salt,” said David Butters, president of the Association of Power Producers of Ontario, a non-profit organization that represents over 100 companies in the electricity sector. “It’s an online survey, so we don’t know whether these people are representative of the population.”

But the point was not to gauge public opinion, ministry of energy spokesperson Andrea Arbuthnot said in an email. Survey respondents were self-selected and no attempt was made to attain a representative sample of the population.

“The survey was open to all Ontarians so that anyone with an interest in Ontario’s energy future, regardless of where they were from, could share their views,” Arbuthnot said. Ministry staff also met with industry representatives, local distribution companies and members of the public as part of its consultations.

“Throughout this process, we heard that Ontario needs to take a balanced approach,” Arbuthnot said.

That “balanced approach” includes plans to up the amount of wind, solar and “bioenergy” to a total of 10,700 megawatts by 2021. Renewable energy sources, including hydro, are expected to meet half of the province’s electricity needs by 2025.

“Renewable energy projects help clean up our air and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels – helping us to attain the goal of closing all coal-fired generating stations in Ontario by the end of 2014,” Arbuthnot said.

Christian Holz, executive director of the environmental group Climate Action Network Canada, said the low support for renewable energy may have to do with the strong resistance to wind turbines in some areas of the provinces.

“Ontario has suffered from quite a strong campaign against renewable energy, which made quite liberal use of lies and exaggeration and misinformation, so I’m sure that had an impact on a lot of people,” Holz said.

Holz would like to see more money put into conservation and renewable energy and less into nuclear.

Nuclear power’s share in the province’s energy mix will decrease from 56 per cent to 39 per cent by 2032. But the government is still committed to nuclear energy, Arbuthnot said.  “It will continue as the backbone of our electricity system.”

Conservation is another major focus of the government’s energy plan that also had low support among survey respondents. However, there was strong support for reducing emissions from electricity generation.

Butters said public opinion, gathered in surveys like this, should not be the sole driver of energy policy. Most people don’t understand the complexities of Ontario’s energy system and so expert opinion needs to play a strong role in planning.

“A lot of people still think that most of the power still comes from Niagara Falls,” he said.

It’s “partly the job of governments to reflect the needs and wants of the population but to do that in a responsible way,” Butters said. “You could not build a power system for today that is based on ‘let’s do what popular opinion suggests we do.’”

SOURCE: Statistics Canada
ANALYSIS: Paige Parsons

When cancer strikes, it doesn’t discriminate by race, region or creed. But when it kills? For Inuit people living in Nunavut, the disease is more deadly than it is for Canadians in any other part of the country.

A December 2013 Statistics Canada report shows cancer death rates in Nunavut are 380.5 per 100,000—that’s more than twice as much as the Canadian average of 166.4 cancer deaths per 100,000. Rates of cancer incidence in Nunavut are also higher than the national average, but not enough to account for the staggering difference in deaths caused by the disease. The vast majority of Nunavut’s population identify as being Inuit.

For an Inuit person like Beatrice Bernhardt, a cancer diagnosis is often viewed as a death sentence.

“My knees buckled because I was not expecting such news over the phone. I had to grab my desk and make myself stand up and try to be strong because I had to rush back to my staff meeting,” Bernhardt said, describing her diagnosis of breast cancer five years ago.

Bernhardt is Inuit and is originally from Kugluktuk, a remote community in Nunavut. She now lives in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. She says the fear of cancer she experienced is common among Inuit people, largely because of a lack of knowledge about the disease and limited access to healthcare, which is compounded by misunderstanding between Inuit people and healthcare providers.

Bernhardt’s diagnosis came by phone, which she says was crushing and also infuriating.

“Right after the diagnosis, I phoned the doctor at the health centre. I was very angry with him because he’s right in the community and he did not even have the courtesy and the respect to call me in and tell it to me face to face and I said I would very much like, for you doctor, not to do this to anybody again,” said Bernhardt.

Bernhardt is now cancer free, but she says cultural and geographical challenges make regaining health much more challenging for Inuit living in remote communities than it is for populations that have easier access to healthcare and family and support systems while undergoing treatments.

It seems that work to close that gap in quality of care has finally begun. This week Canadian Partnership Against Cancer launched a $10.2 million initiative to improve cancer control amongst Inuit, First Nation and Metis populations in Canada. The funding will be dispersed amongst nine different jurisdictions across Canada, with the aim of improving the understanding and quality of treatment for Aboriginal Canadians who live in rural and isolated communities. The launch is sandwiched between two other announcements—the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer published an Inuit cancer control baseline health report last week and the Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada organization is expected to release a Inuit Languages Cancer Glossary early next week.

Terry Audla, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami—the elected national body that speaks for Inuit people across Canada—says cancer is the second leading cause of death for Inuit people and that the initiative will help address a population health crisis.

“Inuit who once lived in unity with nature, and were leaders with vibrant health, are now experiencing the adverse effects of rapid lifestyle changes on their physical and mental health,” Audla said.

Audla noted the importance of changing perceptions of cancer by encouraging greater awareness and optimism.

“Early diagnosis is needed in our communities and for people to understand that once they have been diagnosed there is help and they will survive,” Audla said.

As Canada continues to ship out more arms to countries around the world, critics are concerned deadly weapons are going to countries with questionable human rights records — and it’s not clear which organizations in those countries are the ones buying.

An analysis of Industry Canada arms exports data shows a category of explosives covering bombs, torpedoes, grenades, mines and more, increased by 51 per cent to $126.7-million in 2013.

That included a $13.9-million dollar deal with Saudi Arabia, which last bought those kinds of weapons — only one thousand dollars worth — in 2011.

Click here for an interactive map of where Canada sells explosive ammunition.

Another group of weapons including rocket and grenade launchers, flamethrowers and other propellers increased by 11 per cent, with Colombia now on the list of customers.

In total, sales of arms — excluding lesser weapons like swords, bayonets and air gun pellets — went up by 29 per cent, but the Industry Canada dataset doesn’t include more costlier things it exports, like like transport carriers or jet fighters.

A big chunk of both of these sales went to the U.S. and U.K., but over the last few years Canada has also started selling more to countries like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Iraq.

Steven Staples, a policy analyst from the Rideau Institute, an Ottawa-based advocacy group that’s been critical of Canada’s arms trade, said there should be more stringent rules about where arms exports go and the country should close loopholes that fast-track contract reviews.

As Canada starts to sells more to places like Colombia and Saudi Arabia, he said, “it’s hard to imagine having any policy in place that can prevent Canadian arms exports from going to human rights abusers.”

Staples said the Canadian defence industry expanded during 9/11 and Afghanistan, and as it winds down it’s looking to replace orders with arms exports to more countries.

“This kind of cycle is the same thing that happened at the end of the Cold War,” he said. Staples said this is also why the government doesn’t want to sign the UN arms trade treaty.

But Walter Dorn, a professor of Defence Studies at the Royal Military College of Canada, said the government hasn’t signed the treaty largely because it’s concerned how it could affect domestic sports arms sales.

“The U.S. government can overcome the National Rifle Association, why can’t Canada overcome internal opposition?”

Dorn said the answer to the human rights exporting concern is simple: “where there are human rights violations by government, don’t ship them arms.”

“Some of those countries are human rights violators, no doubt Saudi Arabia,” he said.

“We should be even more transparent so we can know what arms ship to who,” Dorn said.

He said right now we know it’s shipped to a country but not whether it goes to governments, companies, individuals or rebel forces.

The federal government made it a point in the 2014 budget it’s looking to expand arms manufacturing and exports, and has said it’s focusing its foreign policy primarily on trade.

Last month, the government made a major announcement that it helped secure a $10-billion US deal for General Dynamics to sell armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia.

Derek Lothian, a spokesperson for the Canada Manufacturers and Exporters association, said deals like that provide a level of stability to the manufacturing sector.

“Military procurement is a more stable, long term market.”

He said Saudi Arabia has been “a long-time ally of both Canada and the United States.”

“I view it as a positive. It’s better for us to deal with our partners around the world. It’s not a bad thing – they’re going to get it from somewhere.”

He said the increase in arms exports, in general, is reflective of the world we live in.

“I don’t think it’s going to slow down anytime soon.”

Growth in Orillia came to a halt in 2012 with the global economic downturn, but it’s beginning to slowly recover.

Orillia, like other communities across the province and country, saw industry gutted over the past five years, said Dan Landry, the city’s economic development manager.

“We had all kinds of things that have changed that are not coming back,” he said. “It’s a whole new reality.”

Development in Orillia had been rising slowly up until about 2012, said Kelly Smith, the city’s chief building official.

The total value of building permits issued by the city rose steadily from about $60 million in 2008 to more than $105 million in 2011, but in 2012, the total value of the permits plummeted to little over $28.5 million. It climbed back up to about $37 million in 2013.

Industrial growth — which, in terms of building permits, generates comparatively low revenue for the city — is one of the biggest challenges, Landry said, but the city recognizes it’s one of the most important pieces of the puzzle.

With industry comes employment, he said, which brings people to the area who need somewhere to live and shop.

In 2010, Orillia issued a moratorium on industrial development charges to encourage existing factories and warehouses to expand and new ones to set up shop.

Over the next two years, heating-unit company CCI Thermal and steel foundry Kubota Materials Canada, both of which were already in town, took advantage of it to grow their plants.

Summary 2012 (Text)
CCI and Kubota combined employ about 400 people, a number of whom are skilled labourers making more than minimum wage.

“Those are the jobs that feed into the commercial and retail sector and the residential sector,” Landry said. “Those are the ones that, if we can stimulate, a domino effect kicks in.”

The first sign things had begun to stagnate in 2012 was the decline in residential development in, Smith said. The city made about $11 million on permits, which is about half of what it normally does. In 2013, commercial development followed suit.

“Our housing sector is recovering and so now in another year we’ll see the commercial sector recover,” Smith said.

While she said residential growth is typically reliant on industrial and commercial growth, new industrial and commercial projects can only be undertaken on land zoned for them.

Most of that is on the edge of the West Ridge neighbourhood, Smith said, where Rotary Place and Lakehead University were built off University Avenue in the late 2000s.

She’s forecasting building permits will be issued for commercial and industrial development on the 18 hectares of employment lands across the street.

The city is still negotiating with the Ministry of Transportation, which has concerns over the potential traffic impact in the area of Highway 11, the Highway 12 bypass and Old Barrie Road.

Smith said she’s heard there are businesses interested in relocating to the employment lands, but are concerned about what the financial costs of doing so could be, since its been floated developers could have to pay a chunk of the cost to improve the intersection.

West Orillia isn’t the only area slated for development.

The north ward will be home to the new $27.5-million high school, expected to go up this year on the former site of Park Street Collegiate Institute.

Two residential housing developments — one on Gill Street and one on Canterbury Circle off Sundial Drive — are newly completed. Another is going to be constructed on the old Atlas Block property near Highway 11 and Laclie Street.

“Out that end of the city, there are no grocery stores. There are not a lot of convenience stores. There’s no fast food,” Smith said. “There’s potential now in that area.”

Since 2008, there has been an increase in the number of cases of Clostridium difficile or C. difficile within hospitals across Ontario. However, there have only been a handful of official outbreaks at hospitals in Ottawa in the last six years.

This superbug is one of the most recognized in-hospital infections and was made well known to the Ottawa community in 2011 when an outbreak was declared at the Civic Campus of The Ottawa Hospital. There was a total of eight cases in June of that year.

An outbreak is defined as five cases within a four-week period in a hospital ward with more than or equal to 20 beds. Alternatively, in a ward with less than 20 beds an outbreak is deemed as four cases in a four-week period.

So, what exactly is this superbug?

It’s an infection of the bowel causing inflammation. The side affects are: occasional bleeding, diarrhea, and pain in the lower abdomen.

Dr. James Worthington, the Senior Vice-President of Medical Affairs and Quality and Performance at The Ottawa Hospital says the infection becomes an issue when the normal bugs in our bowel die off and C. difficile bacteria takes over.

“You get it after antibiotic use, you get it in patients who are weakened by cancer or if they’re on specific drugs that knock off their immune system so they can’t beat off infections, ” says Worthington.

Worthington says the infection is more common in acute care and large community hospitals, which treat complex patients.

In 2008, an incident of C. difficile at Sault Area Hospital in Sault Ste. Marie exposed the severity of this disease.

An unidentified elderly patient was sent to hospital in June 2008 with vomiting and a history of diarrhea. He had a previous admission, which was treated with antibiotics.

On his second visit, the doctor ordered stool samples and started the patient on Flagyl that day, an antibiotic used to treat C. difficile.

The lab confirmed positive test results for C. difficile. The attending physician ordered an increase of Flagyl but the patient only seemed to get worse. Four days later he died.

In 2012, this case was brought to the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board by the patient’s son. The applicant argued that during his father’s initial admittance to hospital in March, the family should have been notified of the possibility of C. difficile infection.

The hearing of the complainant’s case also came at a time when there was a spike in C. difficile incidents throughout hospitals in Ottawa. From 2011 to 2012, there was a 320 per cent increase at The Ottawa Rehabilitation Site and at the General Campus rates when up 53 per cent within the year. 

While data shows a decrease in cases at the General in 2013, there was a steady rise of incidents at the Ottawa Heart Institute and the Civic Campus.

Director of the infectious control program at The Ottawa Hospital, Dr. Virginia Roth says increasing incidents of C. difficile are caused by a combination of patient and environmental factors.

“The hospital is an environment that’s conducive of getting bacteria from one person to another. It can be transferred from the environment itself or through patients and physicians hands,” says Roth.

Roth continues that while the infection is not a common occurrence, it’s something that needs to be monitored closely because of potentially fatal outcomes.

To keep the superbug at bay; her team must perform regular check ups.

“As soon as we get second case in a medical unit, we employ a multidisciplinary team with medical professionals, occupational health and infectious control leaders,” says Roth. “We go on the unit within 48 hours and do a walk around with a checklist.”

Currently, there are an estimated seven cases of C. difficile at the General Campus and with a high occupancy rate at The Ottawa Hospital right now; the chances of an outbreak are greater.

PIDAC C DIFF 2013 (Text)