Pipeline leaks in federally-regulated pipelines rose sharply in the last decade, an analysis of Transportation Safety Board data shows. According to the TSB’s data, the spills have increased by more than double between 2004 and 2013. Data from 2014 also shows reported occurrences at pipelines are on track to surpass 2013 levels.

 

Overwhelmingly, when there is an incident, it is highly likely that it will also mean “release of product,” or a leak. On average, 87% of the incidents recorded caused a leak. Similarly, incidents with a leak usually means an uncontained release. On average, a whopping 97% of incidents with a leak were “uncontained.” In both 2005 and 2006, every single incident with a leak was uncontained. In 2013, there was a sharp drop, but 2014 is likely to surpass that. From January to October, the same number of incidents have been reported, with still two months of data to report.

Transportation Safety Board Manager of Pipeline Operations Manuel Kotchounian says the increase is the result of a new 2009 pipeline and recent conversions. ”

More kilometres [of pipeline] means more potential issues,” he says. But that’s not all; there is also a difference in the way new and modified pipelines are monitored in their first few years, which Kotchounian says also contributes to the spike between 2009 and 2012.

“New pipelines tend to have a lot of attention focused on them… when a pipeline is being watched very closely, a lot of leaks are found,” Kotchounian says. “The more inspections, the more issues.”

The TSB’s 2013 report on pipeline occurrences gives a similar hypothesis for the marked decrease in 2013: “The decreasing trend may in part be accounted for by the decrease in the number of minor incidents for pipeline facilities that had recently been started up or converted (e.g., from a gas pipeline to an oil pipeline). In general, after an initial start-up phase, the number of minor incidents will decrease and stabilize.”

Currently, there are several proposed new pipelines that could be built in coming years, including TransCanada’s Keystone XL, TransCanada’s Energy East, and Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline, which has seen regular protests from anti-pipeline groups as it prepares for the approval process. Additionally, Enbridge is considering a reversal of its Line 9, in order to bring Albertan crude through Quebec for export on the East Coast. If these new projects are realized, many new incidents can be expected.

Ben West, Tar Sands Campaign Director at ForestEthics Advocacy, a US-based environmentalist group that has vigourously opposed the Trans Mountain and Northern Gateway pipelines, says there is just no guarantee that any new pipelines can be monitored to ensure there are no leaks.

“If you look at any pipeline in North America, they all have a number of spills associated with them over the years; some are bigger, some are smaller, but of course if you live close to one of those spills, even a small one is significant,” he says.

“So at the end of the day I don’t have a tremendous amount of faith that anybody can promise to build a pipeline that will never leak, when all it takes is one serious incident to have serious implications.” West says that instead of building new pipelines with higher standards such as those proposed, the standards should be applied to the existing infrastructure that is “out of sight, out of mind, until something goes wrong.”

This data only covers pipelines regulated by the TSB, which are any pipelines that cross provincial or international borders. All other pipelines are provincially regulated. Any pipeline that is regulated by the TSB is also regulated by the National Energy Board, using different criteria.  The two federal bodies collect, record, and publish data separately. Comparing data recorded between the two “would be comparing apples and oranges,” Kotchounian says.

“The National Energy Board has slightly different definitions of what is reportable. What this means is that you can’t reconcile data from different organizations,” he says. Comparing either of their data to, say, Alberta’s occurrence data “wouldn’t make sense.”

In October 2013, CBC News published NEB documents obtained through access to information that showed where incidents happened, and that they had doubled within 12 years. Kotchounian says the NEP definition of “incident” includes much smaller issues, because they are the actual regulator. TSB, on the other hand, has a mandate to promote safety across the board.

“We’re only involved when there is an accident.” An “accident” is usually a larger “big explosion or big fire,” Kotchounian says. These have remained steady throughout the last decade, at only a handful per year.

But shouldn’t the data be harmonized?

“In theory, they should be. But once you get into the nitty gritty, each jurisdiction has a different need for the data,” he says.The TSB is currently in transition with their data collection. Since July 2014, they adopted the policy that any occurrence, no matter how big or small, is recorded as one statistic.  But they are still recording both “accidents” and “incidents” as of October 2014.

“It’s kind of a grey area,” Kotchounian admits.

The Canadian Energy Pipeline Association says its members, which include all of the major operators in Canada, commit $1.5 billion annually to promote safety. CEPA could not respond to questions about pipeline safety by publication time.

West says that overall, the Harper government has shown to be on the side of the pipeline operators and oil producers, whether in rhetoric or in regulation.

“I think by and large we’ve seen more of a sales pitch than a genuine discussion [on the issue of building new pipelines],” West says. He and other environmentalists are adamant that the overall problem is climate change and the need to reduce consumption. This is the main reason – more than any individual leak – that his organization, ForestEthics, opposes Northern Gateway and Trans Mountain. They are currently involved in a law suit against the federal government and the NEB, arguing that the changes to NEB consultation infringes on section 2 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Whether a regulatory body or a Member of Parliament, West believes that ultimately all areas of the federal government are reflecting the pro-pipeline view of Stephen Harper.

“In the federal government, all roads lead to the Prime Minister’s Office.”

What province you live in might make a big difference in how healthy you think Canada’s economy is.

Generally, investment in non-residential building construction is up in Canada, but those increases are not distributed evenly across the provinces.

Prairie provinces such as Alberta and Manitoba have seen investment rise dramatically over the past three years. But in the four Atlantic provinces, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, investments are down.

And some economic experts say this is a sign of future trouble for the Atlantic provinces.

Investment in non-residential buildings is a measure of how much money is being spent on constructing anything that isn’t a residential household,  excluding engineering work such as bridges, roads or dams, according to Mahamat Hamit-Haggar, a research economist with Statistics Canada. The numbers are derived from building permits, he said.

Non-Residential Construction – Daily (Text)
The latest figures released by Statistics Canada are from the third fiscal quarter of 2014. When compared with the same quarters in previous years, back to 2011, Alberta has seen an increase of almost $300 million. Nova Scotia, by contrast, has seen a decrease of almost $50 million. Newfoundland and Labrador has seen investment in that province cut in half since the third quarter of 2011.

 

Unlike residential construction, which usually is tied to interest rates, non-residential construction is tied to overall economic health, according to Mario Seccareccia, a professor of economics at the University of Ottawa.

“If you have a big increase in say, oil prices are a good example, that would simulate some investment in that sector or around it. Fort McMurray and all these places in Alberta would be feeling the growth,” Seccareccia said.

Hamit-Haggar said the changes between the most recent quarter and the one before are not noteworthy.

“If you compare the figures in the latest release … I do not describe the declines in the Atlantic provinces as significant decreases,” he said.

But it’s not quarter-to-quarter or year-to-year where trends are seen, according to Talan Iscan, a professor of economics at Dalhousie university,

“It’s a highly volatile component of GDP … You’ll see in any arbitrary year they’ll go up and down,” he said.

A long-term decline over several years, like the ones the Atlantic provinces are seeing, are easier to read, he said.

“When you go to the long-term trends, the news is pretty bad for all four [Atlantic] provinces,” he said.

Finding causes is hard. Because non-residential construction can be impacted by the health of any sector, it’s hard to pinpoint which ones are responsible, Iscan said. However, one known factor is oil.

Since the late 1990s, Canada’s economy has become closely tied to the oil sector, Seccareccia said. How the Canadian dollar trades is usually a good indication of where oil prices are, he said.

“We’ve become a petro-currency. Our Canadian dollar has been falling and guess what oil prices have been falling too. Once the international price of oil goes up or down, we tend to move in tandem with it. Not one-to-one, but close enough,” he said.

But this wasn’t always the case. In fact, it used to be that the opposite was true, Seccareccia said.

“Until the late 1990s, when you saw an increase in the price of oil, if anything, our dollar went down rather than up. This is because oil was not a big export,” he said.

Atlantic provinces had a little bit of oil in the past, but that has stopped in recent years, Iscan said.

“Newfoundland has reached a plateau, they’re not drilling any new platforms. Nova Scotia had a bit of … Natural gas but that has plateaued. In fact they’re thinking of closing some of these things by 2020,” he said.

“It has been about natural resources in most provinces,” he said.

Oil also has an impact on other sectors, such as manufacturing, Seccareccia said. In recent years, manufacturing has had an inverse relationship with oil. If one is doing well, the other suffers, he said, because of how oil and the Canadian dollar are linked.

“If the Canadian dollar goes up, it stifles the export of manufacturing goods,” he said.

Oil has been dropping in recent months, which would provide benefits for provinces with strong manufacturing bases like Ontario. But the Atlantic have provinces, who can’t benefit from strong oil economies, also don’t have much in the way of manufacturing.

“In the case of Atlantic Canada I think it’s a bit of a chronic situation there,” Seccareccia said.

Whether the Atlantic provinces make it out of the rut is hard to say, according to Iscan. Nova Scotia’s hope, he said, is a federal shipbuilding contract awarded in 2011 that will bring jobs in over the next years.

“I think everyone here is betting on the federal contract flowing in the way it has been announced,” he said.

For the other provinces, Iscan said he’s not expecting major changes.

“It’s not very optimistic, other than the shipyard contract. It’s going to chug along … no one is expecting a stellar next three to five years around here,” he said.

 

 

 

Influenza vaccination has not increased in Ontario since the province started allowing pharmacies to give the flu shot three years ago, according an analysis of Statistics Canada data.

Thirty-one per cent of Ontarians aged 12 and older reported getting the influenza vaccine in 2013 compared to 32.9 per cent in 2011, the year before the program expanded to pharmacies, according to data collected through the Canadian Community Health Survey.

 

David Jensen, spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, said in an email that demand for the flu vaccine has “remained fairly steady” at around 30 per cent of the population for the past five years.

The Ontario government began paying participating pharmacies $7.50 per shot administered in fall 2012. The goal of the program is to increase flu shot accessibility and relieve the burden on public health clinics, which can be “a bit of a zoo,” according to Dr. Jeff Kwong, a medical doctor and public health researcher at the University of Toronto.

Kwong said many people don’t bother getting the flu shot because of three main myths: influenza infection “isn’t a big deal,” the shot doesn’t work and it’s not safe.

“There’s tons of information out there but there’s tons of misinformation out there,” he said.

Kwong acknowledged that influenza isn’t a big concern for healthy people but said opting not to get the shot because it doesn’t work or isn’t safe is just wrong.

The flu shot protects people from the influenza virus but it doesn’t protect against other similar viruses that people often mistake for the flu, leading them to falsely believe the vaccine doesn’t work, he said.

“There are lots of other viruses that are circulating and people say ‘I still got sick,’” he said.

Kwong also dismissed concerns about Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a type of paralysis that patients have a one in a million chance of contracting from the flu shot.

“You’re probably more likely to Guillain-Barré from influenza infection than vaccination,” he said.

Ryan White, a pharmacist at West Carleton Drug Mart in Ottawa, said he occasionally gets clients who are skeptical or nervous about side effects from the flu shot, but the vast majority of people who come in are “highly motivated” to receive the vaccine.

Kwong also said the H1N1 flu pandemic that swept the world in 2009 could have affected influenza immunization rates, particularly in the following year.

“A lot of people were just tired. There was so much hype around the pandemic and the next year it felt like it wasn’t such a big deal,” he said. “They weren’t as scared of it.”

For the 2014-2015 flu season, which runs October to March, there are 195 community clinics, hospitals and pharmacies approved by Ottawa Public Health to give the flu shot for free, and that doesn’t include the private clinics set up by employers.

2014-2015 Ottawa flu season clinics

The Ontario government purchases 4.6 million doses of the influenza vaccine each year, according to Jensen.

“This is usually quite sufficient to meet the demands from all across the province,” he said in an email.

Ottawa pharmacists said demand for the flu shot is consistent so far this season with previous years and while it’s been busy, it’s manageable.

“People are really good about coming back at a later time when it’s really busy,” said White, noting that there have only been a few instances this year when clients at his rural pharmacy have had to wait to get the shot.

“So far we haven’t had to turn anyone away,” he said.

White said he administered about 170 flu shots at his pharmacy last season, their first year participating in the vaccination program, and they’re on-track to give the same number of immunizations this year.

The busiest time for flu shots is right when the vaccine becomes available at the end of October and beginning of November. White said he was giving about 10 to 15 shots per day during that period but now it’s down to as a few as two on some days.

Clinic rate per 10,000 residents by ward

Ontario public health officials are most concerned about the young and the old receiving the influenza vaccine because they are the most likely to get seriously ill or die from the flu. Up to 1,600 people die in Ontario each year from the flu, according to a 2012 Ministry of Health report.

White said his pharmacy primarily sees people 55 to 75 years old and a smaller number of children five to 12 years old. Children must be older than six months to get the flu shot and older than five years to get it in a pharmacy.

“The vast majority of clients coming in have had flu shots in the past,” White said. “One today noted that he started again because it’s a lot more convenient to come to the pharmacy.”

Donald Sin, a pharmacist at the Glebe Shopper’s Drug Mart, also said demand for the flu shot is consistent with previous years.

“We’ve always done a lot. We’ve always been a very busy store for some reason,” he said.

Sin said staff at the Glebe Shopper’s probably administered 1,000 flu shots last year and was doing as many as 60 per day during the busy period. Currently he is averaging about 10 shots per day.

Unlike White’s elderly client base in West Carleton-March, Sin said his central Ottawa pharmacy sees people of all ages.

The Ontario government runs annual public health campaigns encouraging all people living and working in the province to get the influenza vaccine. A flu information website maps clinics across the province and offers information on vaccine safety in an effort to combat some of the myths outlined by Kwong. It also offers information on how companies can set up a flu clinic in their office.

But ignorant attitudes can be hard to break among a healthy population that just doesn’t see the need for the needle.

“I don’t think we should force people to get the flu shot,” Kwong said. “But it’s hard to change people’s beliefs sometimes.”

Flu facts from the Ontario Ministry of Health

Flu Facts – Government of Ontario (Text)

Complaint calls about graffiti have tripled in the past year in Barrhaven, which has the potential to not only hurt a business’ appearance-but their wallet as well.

Prior to 2008 there were no graffiti-specific by-laws. There was a change in the regulation to prohibit any business owner to have graffiti on their building. If the owner’s space is vandalized and they fail to pay to remove it, they can be knocked with a fine.

Deborah Landry has studied graffiti in Ottawa for the past five years and is a criminology professor at the University of Ottawa. Landry says Ottawa’s approach is doing more harm than good. She said it does nothing to solve the issue of unauthorized art creation and can be costly to business owners.

Landry said a better solution would be for the city to set aside money for business owners in case they need vandalism removed.

“Looking at other cities and the way they deal with it, and looking at how the city of Ottawa has dealt with it in the past as well, [the best solution] is to set aside money [for the business owners].”

She said the city allegedly spends $3 million on graffiti removal annually, and painting over the area is also much cheaper.

The city of Ottawa set up the Mural Program to encourage legal street-art and reduce vandalism. This program allows artists to participate in large art projects around the city such as painting murals below under-passes.

Landry said she supports the projects that allow others to create on public space, but they do little to help the issue. “There is no evidence to suggest that these programs actually do the things they promise to do…I think it is more of an attempt for the city to try to find some common ground,” said Landry.

Another issue with the city’s street art initiative is the murals don’t allow for text, only pictures. She explained that text is the basis for graffiti and stays true to the hip-hop culture in which it originated.

“They don’t want the aesthetic of graffiti anywhere near that,” said Landry. She explained there are also sometimes issues with bringing artists on board, because the programs don’t want to involve individuals with a history of working with graffiti.

Even when street-art is done illegally, she said the response to remove it is very different between text and pictures. Text is removed much quicker and is seen as more of an issue.

Landry said, “It is classist…and hip-hop graffiti is associated with a particular kind of root and I think that scares certain populations sometimes when they see that kind of artwork, but they don’t mind a mural with an octopus on it, for example.”

Mike Davis is a co-creator of Ottawa Urban Arts, which is a group that paints murals around Ottawa and is in coordination with Ottawa’s street-art initiative.

Prior to forming the group, Davis was a graffiti writer who gravitated towards the medium when he was a teenager because of its power for expression and self-identity. He used to participate in illegal art creation which led to unfortunate consequences like being arrested. When he started Ottawa Urban Arts, he wanted to give back to the community.

As for the issue in Barrhaven, Davis said it could all be because of a small handful of people. “It would probably be more like five people, and they would go out and hit up a whole bunch of spots,” said Davis.

Davis said there are levels of graffiti and street-art, which can range from tags, which is like a signature for that writer, to painted words, or pictures.

He said the city currently has two legal graffiti walls and in his opinion, there are never enough.

Davis believes having more legal wall space available for artists to create can help eliminate illegal art production.

“Maybe Barrhaven could really use a wall right now, you know? That would be a good idea, because these kids are definitely looking for somewhere to paint,” said Davis.

Rob is the manager of The Source in the Chapman Mills complex in Barrhaven. He thinks that graffiti can give a store a negative image, unless it happens to be a visually impressive art piece. If a store is covered in graffiti, “It looks like you don’t maintain your business and that is not the image you want … but if somebody left like, a nice mural, then sure, ya, I’m all for it,” he said.

The issue with the by-law change is that all graffiti must be removed, regardless if the owner likes the look and thinks it adds flare to their establishment.

Davis said it is a very gratifying experience doing art in an accepted atmosphere. “If you can do it legally, it’s a great reward. Communities love murals.”

 

It’s been half a year and none of the eight Chinese graduates from the class of 2014 Master of Economics program at Carleton University has found a job related to their education, according to one of them, Xiaohu Li.

However, all of them were nominated by Ontario Province as candidates for citizenship, thanks to the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP).

Half of the eight Chinese graduates thought they would be counting the accounts of the nation, not their cashier’s till at the end of the night.

Xiaohu Li, along with his classmates Rui Xiao, Shuhan Yang and Kun Zhang are currently working as cashiers after they graduated.

Li says a few of his Canadian classmates got job offers from government agencies and banks, such as Statistics Canada or the Bank of Canada, but he failed to find any job that is related to his field. Instead, he had to change his strategy and looked for any job that would let him stay in Canada. He now works part-time at a Tim Horton’s in Ottawa.

“I just take this job as a way to practice my English,” Li says.

Rui Xiao, Li’s classmate, began working for the Starbucks in Carleton’s library since July. She says she is the only one who holds a Master’s degree, and all her co-workers are undergraduate students.

“Many of them study in food science,” Xiao says. “At least they are working on something somehow related to what they learn, but me? This job has nothing to do with what I have learned.”

Li says there is a big difference in opportunities for local students and international students. He says, “Of course my goal is to work as a financial policy maker in the government, but the very first thing the government agencies asked me at a job fair is my citizenship, and when they learned that I am not Canadian they said ‘no’ to me very quickly.”

The latest Ontario University Graduate Survey shows the difference.

The survey shows that six months after their graduation, 18 per cent of master’s degree graduates think their work is not related to the skills they acquired through their program of study.

“Although the survey doesn’t exactly show the entire picture, it still tells you something about the reality,” says Tesia Lara Bojorquez, a data analyzer from Carleton University’s Office of Institutional Research and Planning.

Bojorquez says, “If you look at the number for the average in Ontario, it also decreased by four per cent after two years of graduation as well.” That means, more people found a job related to what they’ve learned as time goes.

Li also says it may be a matter of time. He says that he will eventually find a job in some bank or a company’s financial department, just like two graduates did a year after their graduation in 2012.

In 2012, Chinese students accounted for 12 per cent of the economic graduate class. That number climbed to nearly 20 per cent in 2013, and remained at 15 per cent this year, revealed by the data obtained through a request to Carleton University’s Office of Institutional Research and Planning.

The same trend is more exaggerated in the business program. This year more than half of the new students are from China, nearly ten per cent more than last year.

In 2008, the percentage of Chinese students in the two programs was less than ten per cent (7% in business, and only 2% in economics.)

Select the year to show the percentage of Chinese students for each program in Carleton University. 

 

Gregory Aulenback, the international recruitment officer in the Carleton’s Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs, says the number of international applicants has been increasing steadily since 2009. That is when Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) in Ontario eased its policy for international master graduates in February of that year.

Under the policy, also known as the International Student Category’s Masters Graduate Stream, Ontario’s masters graduate students can apply for their permanent residency even without a job offer.

“That means, we already semi become a Canadian once we got our offer from Carleton,” Li says that’s how he reads the policy.

According to CIC, it takes no more than two months for a master’s graduate to get his or her provincial nomination. Then it will take around one year for the person to get a permanent resident status from the federal government.

So far, 100 per cent of Li’s Chinese classmates have already got their nomination from the province, and all of them are waiting for the federal government’s final decision.

Xiaohu Li, Rui Xiao, and Shuhan Yang all think it’s promising.

“Although it’s easier for Chinese student to get a permanent residency in Canada, it doesn’t mean they can work in the field they learned or simply they want.” Yu Zhang, the manager of a Chinese Education Agency, Yu Agency, says, “there is an imbalance between the supply and demand in the Canadian job market.”

Zhang says her clients’ top three choices of graduate programs in Canada are economics, mathematics and business. However, the Labour Force Survey from Statistic Canada shows the picture of its labour force is different from students’ choices.

Select the year to show the percentage of labour force in different fields in Canada.

In the past decade, finance ranks eighth, with only about six per cent of the labour force. Business ranks even lower, with an average of about four per cent of the labour force working in this field.

After being shown the data, Zhang says, “I think even local Canadians have the same problem in terms of finding a study-related job. Having so many Chinese competitors is like adding frost to the snow – making the situation even worse.”

“What makes the competition fiercer is the fact that most Chinese people tend to move into the same places,” Zhang says.

Data extracted from the Canada Census Analyzer shows that the top two destinations for Chinese immigrants are B.C and Ontario. In Ontario, Toronto and Ottawa are the most popular cities.

Zhang says, “The big Chinese community in some of the Canadian provinces will only attract an even bigger Chinese community. Therefore if Chinese students don’t want to change the provinces they want to stay, then at least they should seriously think about the programs they choose to study.”

On average, there is an oil spill in Alberta every two and a half days.

There have been 155 crude oil spills so far this year, according data from the Alberta Energy Regulator.

The majority of the oil spills were caused by a leak by pipelines, which transport 97 percent of Canada’s crude oil and natural gas on land.

Pipelines carry about 200 Olympic sized swimming pools worth of crude oil everyday, according to the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association. These three million barrels of oil travel across Canada and into the United States.

Penn West Petroleum Ltd. reported more oil spills than other companies that operate in Alberta.

The Calgary-based oil producer was responsible for 20 incidents in 2014 so far. Canadian Natural Resources Limited and Cenovus Energy caused the second and third most spills, with 17 and 11 incidents respectively.

A CNRL pipeline was also responsible for the biggest oil spill of the year when 60,000 litres of crude oil leaked near Red Earth on Nov. 14. It is believed a mechanical problem caused the leak, which is the same volume as one of the smaller exhibits of the Toronto aquarium, according to the incident report.

All oil companies are required to report any incidents where oil or a production was by-product was spilt to the Alberta Energy Regulator, the industry watchdog of the province.

The Regulator updates its database every 24 hours, according to spokesperson Carrey Rosa. The database does not include any of the pipelines that cross into other borders or the U.S. because the National Energy Board regulates those pipelines.

“In terms of the common causes of the incidents its corrosion, mechanical failure, and equipment malfunction,” she said.

It’s difficult to say what caused the majority of the spills, because a number of factors can cause a pipeline to leak, she said. The most common causes for pipelines to spill are machine and human error. Farming and construction can often damage pipelines and wells.

“We regularly inspect pipelines in Alberta to ensure that facilities remain in compliance with requirement and if they don’t follow the rules, we have a number of restrictions that we can put in place. We can shut them down for the day, or longer than that until the problems have been fixed,” Rosa said.

The majority of these incidents reported no wildlife or water bodies were affected by the spill.

But Greenpeace advocate Mike Hudema said this information simply isn’t reliable, because oil companies have a vested interest in saying there is no damage to the environment, he said.

The impact of a spill depends on its size and location, he said. Some, like the very serious spill near Little Buffalo in 2011 were disastrous. People complained of nausea and headaches and children had to stay home from school because of noxious fumes, he said.

“What we know is that spills have had a dramatic impact on communities, human health, and of course have had very damaging and long lasting impacts on ecosystems,” he said.

Any amount of oil leaking into the environment can harm the people and ecosystem in the surrounding area, Hudema said.

“There is very little enforcement here in Alberta,” he said. A self-regulation system for the oil sands just doesn’t work. Oil workers often call Greenpeace to tell them about spills that they employers have yet to report, Hudema said.

“Companies have a financial incentive to not report spills. It could mean litigation, it could mean their facility is shut down.”

The Ottawa Hospital was Ottawa’s largest provincial sector producer of greenhouse gas emissions in 2011, according to data provided by the Ontario Ministry of Energy.

The Ottawa Hospital is comprised of four campuses – the Civic, the General, the Riverside and the Vanier campuses. Each campus has separate emissions data that together add up to almost 72 million kg of greenhouse gas emissions.  Brock Marshall, director of engineering at the Ottawa Hospital, says that while emissions are high, it’s a big operation, and he’s always looking for ways to reduce.

 

In comparison, the City of Ottawa’s total emissions in 2011 were less than 48 million kg.  In the same year, Canada’s total emissions in CO2 equivalent – a measurement that adjusts for the different warming effects of greenhouse gas emissions – were 702 megatons, or 702 billion kg.

The Ottawa Hospital’s four campuses are around four and a half million sq. ft. in total area. In addition, some areas of the hospitals – operating rooms, intensive care units, post-anesthesia care units and patient rooms, to name a few – have to be ventilated around the clock, even when they’re empty, says Marshall.

“What really impacts us is the CSA, the Canadian Standards Association, sets the ventilation rights for our occupancies,” says Marshall. “It’s very prescribed.”

The CSA sets standards not only on ventilation, but temperatures and humidity as well, explains Marshall, which affects emission levels.

The Green Act, 2009 dictates that all Ontario municipalities, service boards, public hospitals, school boards and post-secondary education institutions report their energy use and emissions data to the Ontario Ministry of Energy. The 2011 data is the most recent available on their website.

Antoni Lewkowicz, professor of geography and dean of the faculty of arts at the University of Ottawa, warns that without substantial reductions to global greenhouse gas emissions, major problems are on the horizon. Infrastructure is built and maintained to deal with the specific climate of its location, and as the climate slowly shifts due to climate change, some areas are not going to be prepared for their new reality.

“We all adapt to the climate. The governments adapt, the societies adapt, the way we build adapts, the way the roads look, the way the drains look, all of those things are adapt to our current climate,” he says. “With climate change, there will be period where we are badly adapted to what we’re starting to experience.”

Marshall says research and lab areas also tend to contribute disproportionately to greenhouse gas emissions. He adds that he’s not really allowed to make adjustments or changes to ventilation or heating systems in those places.

“Those are all standardized,” says Marshall. “There’s a certain amount of rates that we have to have.”

Where they can, like in office areas, the Ottawa Hospital shuts off ventilation systems at night. “We do a lot of things to our building automations to reduce,” says Marshall.

Lewkowicz uses skating on the Rideau Canal as an example of climate change and adapting. He imagines a winter where during one weekend of Winterlude the Canal is slushy, not frozen. Then, perhaps, he continues, it will be fine for a few years. Eventually, it will be two slushy weekends. His point, he says, is how many failures will it take us to acknowledge that our new reality may not include Winterludes in Ottawa.

“And that is likely to happen,” he says. “And not necessarily very far into the future as the winters warm.”

The Civic and the General – the two largest campuses – were by far the Ottawa Hospital’s two largest greenhouse gas emitting sites, comprising 93 per cent of the hospital’s total emissions. The Civic can be especially bad on emissions, said Marshall, just because it’s a very old building – it was built in 1924.

In 1991, to offset their carbon footprint, the Ottawa Hospital began an energy reduction program. To that end, the hospital has embarked on at least 30 major projects, says Marshall.

“Those projects range from a heat recovery system, to changing our lights, to installing a building automation system, to upgrading numerous pieces of equipment,” he says.

The net effect of the program has been a cumulative reduction of 121,372 tons of emissions, he added.

“Had we done nothing, we’d be even worse,” says Marshall.

The best part, says Marshall, is that these changes have helped patients at the hospitals. The program has saved the Ottawa Hospital $28.3 million – money that has gone right back into direct patient care.

“We’re not done, we’re never done,” says Marshall, talking about energy saving practices and technologies. “We’re always looking.”

A recent announcement from the federal government outlined plans to transfer land from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to the National Capital Commission, to make room for a brand new Ottawa Hospital campus. Marshall says the plan is to try to make the new facility “as eco-friendly as possible.”

He envisions the facility doing things like recovering grey water for reuse in toilets, using biomass for heat, and using ground source heat pumps. Anything to make the new campus energy efficient.

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Lewkowicz stresses that reducing emissions is the responsibility of everyone, because we all share the same planet.

“The atmosphere is the sink for everything that everybody around the world does,” he says. “It’s a global commons, just like the oceans.”

Canada has not protected enough of its marine habitat to help the dozens of species of whales and fish that are in danger of disappearing from Canadian waters, say environmental advocates and experts.

The federal government has protected less than one per cent of Canada’s ocean territory, according to an analysis of Environment Canada data. That ranks Canada second-to-last among G7 nations in percentage of marine territory protected.

The United States has protected 15 times more of its ocean territory than Canada has. Australia and Russia, two non-G7 countries, have protected 14 and 3.5 times more, respectively.

“I don’t think that there’s any question that, in terms of marine protected areas…Canada’s performance has been underwhelming in comparison to many countries around the world,” said Scott Findlay, an expert on conservation and ecosystem management at the University of Ottawa.

That’s a problem for the at-risk species that live outside of the few protected areas of Canadian ocean territory, said Chris Miller, a national conservation biologist at the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s (CPAWS) Nova Scotia chapter.

“At-risk” species are those in danger of extinction, or of extirpation—meaning the species that is no longer found in an area in which it has historically lived, according to the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.

More than 80 species of at-risk marine fish and mammals—as well as the leatherback sea turtle, a reptile—spend at least part of their lives in Canada’s 5.7 million sq. km ocean territory, according to Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

CPAWS Nova Scotia is advocating for a connected “system” of protected areas within the Bay of Fundy, which lies between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, to serve as safe havens for at-risk species native to the bay, such as the North Atlantic right whale and Inner Bay of Fundy Atlantic salmon.

The North Atlantic right whale was once hunted close to extinction, and has had trouble recovering in part because breeding-age adults are occasionally hit and killed by ships travelling through the bay, said Findlay.

Just a few such deaths per year can seriously harm an engendered and slow-to-reproduce population such as the right whale, he said.

Shipping lanes in the area have been changed to help remedy this problem, but more needs to be done to protect the at-risk species in the Bay of Fundy, said Miller.

The Inner Bay of Fundy Atlantic salmon, which spends much of its adult life in the bay, is nearly gone. At last count in 2008, fewer than 200 of this salmon population remained, down from about 40,000 earlier in the 20th century, according to the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.

The federal government has identified and protected important habitat for the salmon in freshwater rivers and brooks within Fundy National Park on the New Brunswick coast. However, the remaining Inner Bay of Fundy Atlantic salmon are likely dying because of “ecological changes” in the waters of the Bay of Fundy, not in the park’s protected rivers, the Fisheries and Oceans Canada website says.

“Canada has made no progress in identifying the critical marine habitat of inner Bay of Fundy (Atlantic salmon) despite the fact that these populations were listed (under the Species at Risk Act) about ten years ago,” said Sue Scott, a spokesperson for the Atlantic Salmon Federation, in an email.

The Atlantic Salmon Federation is a New Brunswick based-non-profit dedicated to conserving the Atlantic salmon and its ecosystems.

The federal government has protected eight marine areas in Canadian waters so far, including one around the Musquash Estuary, which feeds into the Bay of Fundy. There are eight other marine areas designated by Fisheries and Oceans Canada as “areas of interest,” which the government is working towards protecting. None are located in the Bay of Fundy.

Parks Canada is not considering establishing a protected area in the Bay of Fundy, according to an emailed statement from spokesperson Véronik Mainville.

Fisheries and Oceans spokesperson David Walters listed the Musquash Estuary protected area in an emailed statement when asked whether his department was considering establishing a protected area in the bay.

A protected area is “a clearly defined geographical space, recognised, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values,” according to Environment Canada.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, an international non-profit union made up of more than 1,000 NGOs and government agencies, uses the same definition.

Fishing and other commercial activities may be allowed in protected areas if the government determines it would not harm the recovery of the at-risk species that live there, according to the Fisheries and Oceans website.

Canada, as a signatory to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, has agreed to a target of protecting 10 per cent of its marine territory by 2020, Federal Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan said in his 2012 report to Parliament.

The federal government protected just one-tenth of one per cent, or just more than 730 sq. km., of marine territory over the past three years. Altogether, about 52,000 sq. km have been protected over the past several decades.

“We really need to be starting now” to come close to the 2020 target, said Miller.

There are three different federal government agencies that can protect marine areas: Environment Canada, Parks Canada, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Canada’s federal government has historically focused more on the conservation and protection of land habitat, said Findlay.

However, Canada doesn’t fare any better compared to its international peers at protecting land habitat: it ranked dead last compared to other G7 countries and Australia, Sweden and Russia, according to Environment Canada data from 2012.

Other developed countries have been more successful at marine habitat protection because their leaders made it a priority, said Miller.

Canada’s federal government has earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars for conservation projects on land and in the water over the past several years, and announced a national conservation plan earlier this year.

While Fisheries and Oceans Canada is working towards establishing eight new marine protected areas, Parks Canada has an “ultimate goal” of establishing 29 protected marine areas in Canadian waters, said Mainville.

The creation of a marine protected area “might be too blunt of an instrument” for conservation in some areas and for some species, said Findlay, though he could not say whether that was the case for the Bay of Fundy salmon or right whale populations.

From 2008 to 2013 the unemployment rate for recent immigrants increased by 17 per cent in Ontario, according to an analysis of labour force survey data.

“Given that the majority of immigrants come to Ontario, and the Ontario economy has had difficulties in the recent years, it’s becoming more and more difficult for immigrants to integrate into the labour market,” said Gilles Grenier, economics professor at the University of Ottawa.

It also increased by five per cent for the whole country.

According to Grenier, immigrants who arrived to Canada five or less years ago have still not recovered from the economic recession. “The recession had affected recent immigrants a lot more than Canadian born,” said Grenier.

Currently the Canadian immigration system works on a point system. If immigrants have enough points based on education, experience and language proficiencies, they are granted permanent residency. “Usually we see very highly educated immigrants, highly skilled immigrants, but they cannot find jobs in their field.” Although these individuals have outstanding education, it is not valued as much as Canadian education, said Grenier. “Most of the immigrants have university degrees that they got in their own countries and most of them look for professional jobs.” He said that most recent immigrants look for jobs in the engineering, health and education sector. “But most of the time their credentials are not recognized.” Canada receives over 200 thousand new immigrants per year. It is considered one of the most welcoming countries in the world. But Grenier said that over the past couple of years the recession has really caused a decrease in demand in the job market. There ended up being more immigrants than the job prospects. “The demand for them was smaller than the supply.” Grenier said this happened in the information and technology sector in the early 2000s when the industry was booming. It attracted a mass amount of foreign professionals who were under the impression that jobs were plentiful. But there weren’t as many jobs as the amount of newcomers that were flowing into the country and the recession caused the striving industry to slow down. Grenier said we have to re-think immigration policy so it focuses on the demand of the labour market. Kelly McGahey is a manager at Hire Immigrants Ottawa, an organization that works with employers to help them integrate immigrants into their work force. She recognizes that skilled immigrants face difficulty entering into the Canadian labour market, but said we also need to focus on the challenges employers are facing. Employers are sometimes not sure how to evaluate credentials and, “they have challenges in terms of effectively managing and increasingly diverse workplace.” She also said a lot of employers she works with in Ottawa have a hard time connecting with immigrants who are not in their networks. McGahey said if we can’t to keep the unemployment rate down for recent immigrants it’s important to address these perceived challenges employers face. “Were really spending a fair bit of time and effort just trying to inform and educate Ottawa’s employers about the changing demographics, and helping them to see that this is a talent pool they need to be considering.” They offer training on managing a culturally diverse work force and try to bring employers and recent immigrants together during networking and training events. “It’s all about chipping away at those various barriers.” For immigration lawyer Joel Sandaluk, the problem lies in Canada’s rapidly changing immigration policies. “Part of the problem is that immigration policy changes so rapidly now that it makes it incredibility difficult to predict and understand,” said Sandaluk, Mamann, Sandaluk & Kingwell LLP. He agrees that highly skilled immigrants ¬– who come into the country on the point system – are at a disadvantage. “Despite the fact that their credentials were outstanding, they didn’t have Canadian experience.” He said the government recognized this and created the Canadian Experience Class in 2008, to meet the demand of the labour market needs. The program was created for temporary foreign workers who wish to gain permanent resident status after working in Canada for a year. “Instead of rewarding people for their credentials, you are rewarding for their work they have already done,” said Sandaluk. He thought that the program would have helped the situation for recent immigrants and was shocked to hear the unemployment rate increased from 2008 to 2013. But the Canadian Experience Class has become much more restrictive over the years, said Sandaluk. Sandaluk who has worked with a lot of immigrants said that a lot of newcomers sacrifice a lot to come to Canada. “Immigrants are not generally thinking about themselves when they immigrate.” Most of the time they are thinking about their kids. “The government perceives immigration as a huge opportunity, and it is. But not for the people who are immigrating. He said that these families want their kids to get a better education so they come to Canada, but they don’t find jobs in their field. “They are not able to do the work that they are qualified to do.” The government announced it’s going to change the immigration system on Jan. 1. Under the new online express entry system, skilled immigrants will be matched with vacant jobs in at least 50 occupations based on skills and an individual’s ability to succeed in the Canadian economy. Only those with the highest ranking will be invited to apply for permanent residency and applications will be processed in six months or less.