China’s new economic class has made them the biggest fur importer in the world, and increasingly Canada’s biggest export, much to the dismay of animal rights activists, environmentalists and fur-bearing creatures.

Canadian fur exports have almost tripled from 2009 to 2013. China in particular has an increasing demand for the product, which is reflected in a 392 per cent surge from the same time period.

Alan Herscovici, the executive vice-president of the Fur Council of Canada, explains the growth in Chinese imports of Canadian fur happens for two reasons. The first being that China has a booming middle and upper class, which creates a market for traditional luxury products. They are now the largest buyer of fur internationally. The second reason is their lower cost of labour. In many cases, raw fur is imported in China, manufactured into fur products, redistributed and re-exported.

Adrian Nelson is the director of communications from the Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals. This is a non-profit organization based out of Vancouver. They focus on protecting animals used for fur in Canada. He explains that when fur products are re-imported back to Canada, they return mostly as accessories on clothing. “Most comes back as fur trim,” he says, “Such as coyotes on collars and rabbits on boots.”

According to the Fur Council of Canada, “400 top designer collections” used fur in 2013.

The Fur Institute of Canada states that Canada’s fur trade contributes more than $800 million to the economy yearly. They report 85 per cent of the fur obtained in the global fur trade comes from domesticated and farmed sources which mostly focus on mink and fox furs.  The most important fur markets are China, Hong Kong, Russia, Ukraine, the US and various European countries such as Greece, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and the UK.

The institute says trapping in Canada happens in every municipality and the most common targets are muskrat, beaver, marten and even squirrel and raccoon.

Both fur advocacy groups boast humane trapping methods and environmental sustainability.

Both groups promote the “Fur is Green” website created by the Fur Council which explains that fur is a renewable, recyclable, biodegradable and environmentally friendly product.

The APFA says that each year 2.5 million animals are raised for fur in fur farms and 700,000 animals are trapped annually in Canada.

Nelson explains there are numerous reasons why fur is not a “green” resource. “Anytime you are taking animals out of an ecosystem you are really making things off balance…we really get yo-yo effect.” This happens when part of an animal population is lost, there can be a surplus of other animals they would have usually preyed on.

A major environmental danger of fur trapping is the manure run-off from the farms, which led to water contamination in Nova Scotia over the past few years.

“Over half of the mink farms in Canada are in Nova Scotia,” says Herscovici.

In 2011, the David Suzuki Foundation took action to expose and demand regulation for mink farming in Nova Scotia. This was because for years the manure, carcasses and waste feed seeped into local waterways – increasingly polluting them. This created blue-green algae in the water, which made it dangerous to animals and humans.

Another environmental factor is the list of toxic chemicals used in fur production, which includes formaldehyde, chromium and naphthalene that are bad for the environment and can be considered carcinogenic to humans.

“It’s very interesting how something can be very long lasting and compostable at the same time…we’re talking about garments that have been chemically processed to not rot away,” says Nelson.

As for the fur boom, it’s uncertain if the trend will continue.

“The fur industry loves to say that it’s making a big comeback because prices are rising. It’s a fashion, and it will fade like any other fashion.”

Street prostitution arrests rose 2000 per cent between 1985 and 1986, according to an analysis of national crime data, and some experts fear that if Bill C-36 becomes law, it could set back prostitution to that time.

Experts predict we could see a similar rise in prostitution arrests if the bill is passed, bringing us back to a time when street workers were fleeing underground and putting themselves in danger in order to avoid arrest.

They are concerned that this new legislation, proposed by Justice Minister Peter MacKay, will have that same effect and put sex workers at risk.

The new prostitution control measure that came into effect in 1985 caused a drastic rise in arrests. While pre-1985 laws prohibited any soliciting of clients, the 1985 law criminalized any communication in a public place for the purpose of buying or selling sexual services. Similarly, Bill C-36 contains a communication offence.

The main difference between today’s proposed law and the 1985 law is that Bill C-36 targets clients only; If clients are found communicating for the purpose of sexual services they can be arrested. Sex workers can only be arrested if they are found doing the same close to a school, day care or place of worship.

Janine Benedet, a law professor at the University of British Columbia, said the 1985 communication law was effective because for the first time, it targeted customers as well as sex workers. But she said clients didn’t take the brunt of enforcement.

“It allowed the police to place all their attention on street prostitution and the most marginalized women, women who were disproportionately aboriginal who were more likely to be heavily addicted to drugs,” said Benedet.

“This kind of fit in the idea that so long as prostitution was out of sight, it wasn’t a problem, but really all that does is push the abuses out of public view.”

Some experts predict that if Bill-C36 is passed, the law will have the same effect as the 1985 legislation. Katrina Pacey, the litigation director of the Pivot Legal Society thinks sex workers will be moving farther away from city streets and into industrialized areas.

“Street based workers will be forced to work in more dangerous circumstances and take less time to screen clients and have less time to negotiate transaction because they will be afraid of being caught by police or their clients being caught by police.”

The government argues that the new law will protect sex workers by targeting those who buy sexual services. According to MacKay, his legislation ­– slated to become law in December ­­– will reduce demand for prostitution and eventually abolish it, marking a “fundamental shift towards the treatment of prostitution as a form of sexual exploitation.”

Frances Shaver, an expert who has been researching the sex industry for 20 years said sex workers need to make a living and will do whatever they can to protect their clients from arrest. Shaver said this would then put sex workers in more isolated and dangerous situations, similar to the 1985 communicating law.

“They have to go to where the clients aren’t going to get arrested which means into darker corners,” she said. “Organized crime might get involved and might set up some presumably safe way for the clients to meet with the street basis worker in a way in which they can’t get arrested.”

Shaver believes Canada doesn’t need any more laws. “What we need are better social programs and better education programs.” Other laws like sexual and physical assault can protect sex workers rights, she said.

Mackay tabled Bill C-36 in June in response to a December 2013 Supreme Court of Canada decision known as Bedford, that found three of Canada’s prostitution laws unconstitutional. Those rules penalized sex workers and were deemed to violate Section 7 of the charter, which guarantees security of the person.

Benedet said she supports Bill C-36 and thinks the law fundamentally treats prostitution as a form of sexual exploitation. “I think that the law does something very important in re-classifying the purchase of sex as an offence against the person,” she said.

“It creates a framework in which we can now start to lobby for kinds of social supports that women need to avoid to resort to prostitution.” The government has pledged $20-million over five years to help sex workers get out of the trade.

Although, historically the 1985 communication law allowed police officers to crack down on street prostitution, Benedet said she is still worried that when Bill C-36 is passed the most vulnerable women will be targeted.

For details on Bill C-36:

This summer, 1052 people were forced to call Ottawa’s bylaw services to complain about noise in the Rideau-Vanier ward, an area situated around downtown Ottawa.

Rideau-Vanier is the twelfth ward, and this summer it ranked first for the volume of noise complaints received by the city of Ottawa.

Bob Forbes, vice-president of Action Sandy Hill Community Association, says that the summer months are a critical time in terms of making an impact with noise bylaws.

“Ward 12 has a large student population adjacent to families which differentiates it from other wards. This can lead to both noise and complaints, particularly on warm nights,” he says.

From April to August of this year, ward 12 is the only ward to break one-thousand noise complaints, leaving a number of residents unhappy and searching for answers.

Marc Aubin, a candidate for councillor in ward 12, says that better city services is a strong part of his campaign and something he would like to see change immediately.

“In neighbourhoods like Rideau-Vanier, there are more systemic problems in the neighbourhood,” he says.

“There will be problem properties where there are ongoing noise issues and the neighbours have to constantly call about that same problem address.”

Aubin says that he would like to see the city take an approach to be more proactive about bylaw enforcement, however right now the issue is the lack of city services for such a dense area of the city.

Similar to the Rideau-Vanier ward, Capital ward’s population density is higher than other areas of the city, according to the 2011 census.

Per square kilometre, the population density differs by only 12%, however in the past five months, Rideau-Vanier has had 692 more noise complaints than Capital ward. This shows that in an area with roughly the same amount of people, noise can be controlled.

Comparing the summer months of 2013 to that of 2014, noise complaints in the downtown area have reduced, but ward 12 continues to be the area issuing the most complaints.

Mathieu Fleury, current councillor of ward 12, is aware of the issues surrounding noise and hopes to continue the decline in complaints.

“Noise and property standards issues are some of the bigger issues in the ward and in order to address these issues, we have brought a number of changes to the policies,” he says.

“We changed the noise bylaw so that the owner of a building be responsible for the noise contained within. This change allows bylaw officers to attend problematic addresses.”

Fleury is running for re-elect this fall, and says he hopes to continue into the next term with a more proactive approach to dealing with noise issues.

Marc Vinette, a candidate for councillor in ward 12, says that good karma could be the answer to routine noise complaints. He calls his idea “karma for kegs.”

“It’s a way to promote tolerance for youthful shenanigans through community service payback,” says Vinette. His idea? Use neighbourhood suggestions to create a list of good deeds for the tenant(s) to undertake. If they decline however, Vinette says the consequences will heighten.

“Essentially, it’s a titanium fist of enforcement in a velvet glove of pro-social opportunity,” says Vinette.

If he gets another complaint about excessive noise, he will arrive with a member of bylaw services. “Ticket writing will commence and will only stop when these misguided souls shape up and join the program, move out, or their parents go bankrupt,” says Vinette.

Vinette also says that construction is annoying and poorly planned, but necessary. He says this contributes to a lot of noise in the city.

Whether the election brings proactive bylaw enforcement, changes to noise policies, or routine ticket-writing, ward 12 will have to continue working hard to avoid topping the noise complaint list in the months to come.

An ordinary afternoon for Cao Midi, 69, is playing a board game with three of her friends at the Yet Keen Seniors’ Day Centre in Ottawa’s Chinatown. All of them are originally from Southern China, where Cantonese is their first language.

Cao doesn’t speak English at all. Despite this, daily tasks are no problem for her. However, from the time she moved to Ottawa in 1993, she had tried hard to avoid hospitals.

“I just don’t feel comfortable when I don’t speak their language,” Cao says.

Because of this she has not had a regular checkup in nearly 20 years.

The first time Cao saw a Canadian doctor did not happen until 2011 when she had an unbearable drumming noise in her ears. After having gone in to the hospital, she insisted on seeing a Chinese physician. However, the experience of waiting for hours to see the only Chinese-speaking doctor in that hospital encouraged nothing but her fear toward hospitals.

Cao says after that happened, she convinced herself that maybe the best thing to do would be to see a Canadian doctor the next time she went to the hospital. She wanted to be seen faster, but it didn’t exactly work out.

“The nurse is local. I got very nervous when she was measuring my blood pressure,” Cao said. “I was shocked when I saw the result – the upper number was 190.”

Cao says the hospital then prescribed her high blood pressure medicine. “But it wasn’t the real problem,” Cao says. “I measure my blood pressure every day. It’s usually 120, and that scary number never happened to me before. I know I was just too nervous.”

Cao is not the only one to get nervous. Huang Xiufang, 76, Cao’s friend in the seniors’ centre, says the reason she gets nervous is because all she can count on is her luck.

“The first thing I do when I am in a hospital is to look around and spot a Chinese face to help me. Usually my luck works, but it is not ensured,” Huang says. “When I have to depend on myself, I use all my body parts to explain.”

Huang says once she was hospitalized due to a stroke. No matter how inconvenient it was for her to move, she still had to communicate with doctors and nurses by pointing at a board with translations on it.

Both Cao and Huang say it’s not that they don’t have family to help them, but their son and daughter are busy at work most of the time.

They also say although hospitals in Ottawa have interpreters, booking the service is impossible for them when they don’t even know how to call the hospital.

What is worse is that they often go to local clinics where there are no interpreters.

That’s the reason they have to ask for help from volunteers at the seniors’ centre.

Joe Woo, the volunteer coordinator at the centre, says the volunteer’s job sometimes include picking the senior up from their home, visiting the hospital, and send them back home. He says sometimes an entire trip can take a volunteer four hours.

“You can tell that elderly people very much cherish the help,” Woo says. “They are like children. If you tell them that you will pick them up at 7am, usually they are ready and waiting for you one hour in advance.”

Volunteers can solve the problems most of the time, but they can cause troubles, too.

“Once our senior had to go to the hospital because of taking the wrong pill due to a mistranslation,” says Anna Yip, the program coordinator at Yet Keen Seniors’ Day Centre.

That’s why the centre is being very selective when picking volunteers. It’s now required that volunteers have some knowledge of medical vocabulary. “It can be really serious,” Yip says.

The centre now has about 200 seniors coming from the entire city, but only 50 of them speak English. “There is always a need of volunteers for us,” Woo says.

But according to the 2011 census from Statistics Canada, there could be a bigger need in the city for translators.

The data shows that nearly 12,000 people in Ottawa do not speak English or French, and more than 12 per cent of them are older than 65.

For Somerset Ward where most Chinese people live, the percentage for seniors is even higher – more than 20 percent.

“It is a real and urgent problem. It’s time for our province to fix it.” Woo says.

Ottawa health inspectors found infractions nearly three times more frequently than the city average at the restaurants they visited most, according to an analysis of municipal data dating back to the beginning of 2009.

The most serious infractions—those deemed “critical” to food safety, according to health regulations—ranged from failing to wash hands, protect food from contamination, or refrigerate food properly. The majority of infractions, however, were “non-critical”, such as failing to keep surfaces clean or keep a meat thermometer handy.

Inspectors found infractions at Feleena’s, in the Glebe, and Stella Osteria, in the Byward Market, during 68 per cent of inspections, more than three times the city average of 21 per cent. Both of those restaurants were among the 10 most inspected in Ottawa over the past five years, which collectively were found non-compliant with provincial or city health regulations during 58 per cent of inspections.

That doesn’t mean those restaurants aren’t safe places to eat, said Toni d’Ettore, a supervisor with the city’s environmental health protection branch.

A “non-compliant” score is not the same as failing a health inspection, she said. Many of the violations identified by inspectors—such as walls in need of washing—are not an immediate threat to food safety. Any restaurants found to be unsafe are closed immediately, she said.

Just five per cent of inspections last year found infractions serious enough to require “urgent remediation,” according to a May 5 memo from Ottawa’s medical officer of health, Isra Levy, to the Ottawa Board of Health, which governs public health programming for the city.

Clyde Ross, 72, owns Feleena’s and works evening shifts seating customers and managing the restaurant. He says he isn’t sure why Feleena’s has been inspected and found non-compliant so much more often than the average Ottawa restaurant, though he believes it has something to do with how busy Feleena’s gets during the summer months.

Feleena’s has never been fined or closed for a violation, he said.

Inspectors identified 30 violations of the provincial Health Promotion and Protection Act during the 19 most recent inspections of Feleena’s, dating back to October 25 2012, the cut-off point for inspection summaries for the restaurant on the city website. Most were labelled “non-critical” by the inspector—for example, failing to ensure a hand-washing station was available or stocked with soap, or failing to provide an accurate thermometer to measure food temperature.  Five were labelled “critical” for posing a threat to food safety, including four infractions found during an August 29 inspection:  failing to wash hands thoroughly before and after handling food, failing to properly refrigerate food, failing to separate raw and ready-to-eat foods in storage, and failing to protect food from potential contamination.

All of the critical violations were corrected during the inspection, the inspection summaries show.

Those violations are not unique to Feleena’s; the same problems have been identified at many of Ottawa’s restaurants since late 2012, the city’s inspection summary page shows.

Several factors together determine how often a restaurant is inspected, including a risk score that accounts for its intended clientele­—businesses that serve young children or the elderly are inspected more often—whether the staff handles raw meat, and the restaurant’s performance on past inspections, d’Ettore said.

Customer complaints are always followed up with an inspection, she said, adding to a restaurant’s total number of inspections regardless of whether any violations are found.

If a threat to food safety is found that does not require closing the restaurant, it will be inspected the next day to ensure the problem has been addressed, she said. Restaurants are given three days to remedy any violations that do not pose a risk to food safety, or longer if solving the problem requires renovations or significant changes to the restaurant.

Restaurants that are repeatedly found to be not compliant can be issued a provincial offence notice, which can lead to a fine or conviction, if city officials deem it necessary. Those notices are not made public, d’Ettore said.

The city’s ten most inspected restaurants averaged 45 inspections total—9 per year—since 2009, compared to 9 inspections—1.8 per year—on average across Ottawa.  Buffet Indian Aroma on Laurier Avenue led the way with 59 inspections, and was found in full compliance 36 per cent of the time.

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