Foreign workers hoping to find jobs in Canada are waiting twice as long for their permits to be approved compared to four years ago.

According to an analysis of data collected from Citizenship and Immigration Canada there has been a steady increase since 2010 in the amount of time it takes for the majority of temporary workers permits to be assessed.

Below shows the number of days it took in 2014 for permit approval in different cities across the world.

For example four years ago people applying from countries in Asia and the Pacific generally waited 70 days for their applications to be approved while in the last year wait times have risen to 196 days.

Cities that saw the greatest increase over the past four years in wait times:

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There are a many factors that could be causing these wait times said Chris Solio of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.

He speculated that a reduction in the number of people working for Canadian Immigration Canada has created a backlog. “The people who would be processing those work permits (is fewer) compared to the number of work permits.”

However differing permit requirements for different countries plays a large part in the delays. Immigrants from certain countries face higher restrictions and requirements than others. “The country of origin is a big part of it in how fast or how slow your work permit will be generated,” said Solio, (If applications aren’t) properly done then that would add into the delay or speeding up of your work permit.

Some of those differences depend on whether or not the country a worker comes from requires a visa to enter Canada.

Amy Casipullai, Senior Policy and Communications Director for Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI) said problems arise with the way the Canadian government ‘divides the world’.
“Some of the workers who come in are from countries where they don’t need a visa to come to Canada, generally countries in the global south have a visa restriction and countries in the global north don’t,” she said.

Two cities facing some of the highest permit wait times in the past year were Chandigarh, India and Manila, Philippines. Both countries require potential workers to apply for a visa plus a temporary work permit.

“Living caregivers who come from the Philippines will be waiting longer for their work permit as opposed to somebody in Hong Kong or in the Middle East,” said Solio.

Caregivers are one of the longest running temporary worker programs in Canada, it is known as the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). People from outside Canada come to work as nannies and caretakers for the elderly.

Casipullai said she has also heard complaints from LCP employers about long delays for permit approval.

According to Solio people living in the Philippines will sometimes even move to countries or cities where they know application approval will be quicker. He says there are major problems in this profession when Canadians who require care are not receiving it due to long delays for permit approval.

However not every profession is effected equally. Temporary workers are typically divided into two categories, high skilled workers and low skilled workers, though Canada also has large caregiver and agricultural worker programs.

High skilled workers who are recruited by Canadian companies can often get around the long wait times by hiring immigration lawyers or by using intra-company transfers argued Solio.

Agricultural workers are also tend to receive a quicker turn around for approval said Casipullai. “Those workers come in year in and year out,” she said, “and I haven’t heard of any delays in that area.”

Mexico is one of the countries where seasonal agricultural workers tend to come from. Its wait time for example is as short as 14 days in Mexico City. This has been fairly consistent over the past four years with the longest wait reaching only 18 days in 2011.

Things are not so easy for low skilled workers, who make up the majority of applicants said Casipullai. She said despite attempts by government to say most of the people using the temporary worker program are high skill that it seems like the majority are low skill.

These people travel to Canada because they know there are jobs here said David Onyalo of the Canadian Labour Congress. Even though they are considered low skilled many of them need to travel to Canada in order to find employment.

When asked to explain the differing processing times Citizen and Immigration Canada (CIC) responding by saying “work permit applications are considered on a case-by-case basis on the specific facts presented by the applicant in each case.”

They argued “the number of applications received, the complexity of the case, the response of applicants to requests for additional documentation or information, among other factors.”

In light of the complaints of abuse of the program in the last year CIC has attempted to create changes to improve the program. In an attempt to focus the program on high skilled workers they have imposed conditions on employers making it harder to hire foreign workers.

This has the potential to increase the negative impacts that are already being felt for low skill workers. Those not recruited by a company will likely have increased difficulty being approved for a permit, which is likely to result in even slower approval times in the future.

Here you can find the safety regulations for temporary workers.

The city has dumped more than 215 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of human waste and storm water into the Ottawa and Rideau rivers so far this year.

More than half of that got dumped on one day back in June, when 324,030 cubic meters of “combined sewer overflow” was released.

It’s a problem the city has been trying to tackle since 2006, but progress has been slow. The Ottawa River Action Plan calls for $195 million to build giant underground vaults to hold sewer water when heavy rain would otherwise trigger overflows. That storage facility was supposed to be finished by 2013 but the city has yet to actually apply for the federal funding it needs for the job.

Ottawans might also remember the rash of beach closures due to high E.coli counts this past summer. In July, when Mayor Jim Watson was campaigning for reelection, he said that getting the underground vaults finished will reduce the number of beach closures from high E.coli. His sentiments are backed up by the city’s latest draft climate change plan and he even had volunteers collecting signatures on a petition supporting the river action plan.

But he’s wrong. An analysis of Ottawa’s rainfall, sewer overflow and beach closure data shows that there is very little relation between sewer overflows and beach closures. When you consider that only one of the city’s four beaches is even downstream of the sewer overflow release points, Watson’s logic appears questionable. City hall did not respond to a numerous requests for comment.

But if it’s not coming from the sewers, where is all the E.coli at Ottawa’s beaches coming from?

Rainwater. Or, more specifically, runoff from heavy rainstorm events. The data shows that on June 24 there was a huge spike in rainfall, and a corresponding spike in E.coli numbers. The rain also triggered the largest sewer overflow event of the summer, but over the next two weeks the Westboro and Mooney’s Bay beaches saw two more equally high spikes in E.coli without the expected spikes in sewer overflows. Even Petrie Island’s beaches, which are downstream from the sewer outlet points, were closed less often than Westboro, Mooney’s Bay and Britannia.

“It’s from human waste, but also birds, dogs and other animal sources. E.coli is also getting into the water in heavy rainfall events from what are called ‘non-point’ sources, which is basically run-off from the land,” said Jesse Vermaire, an expert in water ecology and climate change at Carleton University.

Think of it like this:

Cities are dirty. Streets and sidewalks are covered with grime and dirt, spilled chemicals like windshield washer fluid and gasoline, animal and pet feces. There’s a reason you take your shoes off when you walk in your house.

When it rains in a city, Vermaire explained, the water can’t soak into the ground like it does in a forest or field. All of that filth is washed over the sealed-up parking lots, roads, buildings, and alleys, flushed into the storm drain and right into the river.

When it rains like it did in June, dumping 56 millimeters of rain onto the city in 24 hours, it’s like pressure washing the concrete jungle. And those heavy rain events are likely to be a lot more common. As climate change shifts our weather patterns, “there’s a greater probability of getting larger surface storm events,” Vermaire said.

“The average annual rainfall might not change, but there will be larger one-day rainfalls and longer droughts between rainfalls based on climate change,” he said.

The city has been able to reduce sewage overflow events and volumes since it began working on the problem in 2006. Installation of real time monitoring in 2008 was especially helpful. But even though Mayor Watson likes to tout the river action plan’s expensive holding tanks as a solution to the beach closure problem, the real answer lies in almost the exact opposite direction.

Carleton students and Glebe residents might have noticed the traffic calming sidewalks being extended along Sunnyside Ave. When they’re done, those new sidewalks will also have new gardens adorning them, though they aren’t just for decoration.

“Rain gardens is a much nicer term for them, but they’re really a form of bio-retention,” explains Darlene Conway, who manages the city’s storm water management strategy.

“The ORAP is a huge umbrella project that’s meant to address the sewer overflows, but it doesn’t address the other forms of pollution,” she said.

The gardens are part of a pilot project that’s testing bio-retention as a way to help deal with citywide water runoff. The idea is that the gardens will soak up rainwater that is funneled to them, allowing it to be slowly released over time instead of in a torrent. They also act like filters, collecting particles and some pollutants on site.

“Twenty years ago the thinking was ‘well, we’ve got the water all collected in one place, in our pipes and sewers. Let’s put something at the end of the pipes to treat it,’” Conway said.

“Now we’re starting to see a new approach which is to not centralize it. We’re looking at things like green infrastructure that doesn’t cause water to collect and run off into storm drains or rivers. We’re trying to let it dissipate the way it would have before there were developments and pavement,” she said.

The rain gardens are just one idea. Others include using paving stones instead of asphalt and other forms of “low-impact development” as the city repairs old streets or designs new projects like Lansdowne. The long-term goal is to take advantage of the city’s eventual crumbling to rebuild it in a way that isn’t as environmentally damaging. Essentially, the idea is to slowly make over the concrete jungle into more of a sponge, allowing it to absorb, treat and slowly release water the way a forest or field would.

As for the ORAP and its expensive holding tanks, no one is arguing that dumping raw sewage into the Ottawa River is a good idea.

“It’s extremely important to not be dumping human waste into the Ottawa River, and I think it’s great that they’re investing in this infrastructure. But from an ecosystem standpoint there’s a lot of other stuff ending up in the river as well that we need to deal with,” Vermaire said.

Fewer people are making their voices heard in Ottawa’s municipal elections for city councilors.

The percentage of voters who cast their ballots dropped 13 per cent in the last two municipal elections of city council, according to an analysis of Ottawa voting data.

Voter turnout in this year’s election was only 40 per cent of the electorate a nine point drop from 2006. Barrhaven had the lowest voter turnout in the city with only 34 per cent of eligible voters participating.

But what causes low voter turnout, and what are some possible solutions for this?

“The most important factors in voter turnout election to election are issues that people care about and competitive candidates that are capable to hold office,” said Duff Conacher, the co-founder of Democracy Watch, an Ottawa-based voter advocacy group.

“I think the whole city government has been aware of the low voter turnouts, so they added days to the advance polls so more people could come out,” said Allan Hubley, the councillor for Kanata-South.“It looks like it didn’t work completely, but people did use the advanced polls.”

A City of Ottawa spokesman wrote in an email that the Special Advance Voting Days were considered a “great success.” Polling stations were open from Oct. 1-3 as well as the traditional days of Oct. 9, 18 and 27.

Hubley’s ward in Kanata-South has seen the most dramatic drop of the entire city – 24 per cent fewer voters than in 2006.

He said voter turnouts are often a reflection of the competitiveness of the race and the actions of the particular politicians involved.

“In Kanata-South in 2010 the race was wide open and there were a lot more people involved. This year I was the incumbent and the community supported the work I was doing for them,” Hubley said, pointing to his high margin of victory as proof of community support.

His assertions about the competitive races appear to match the data.

In Somerset Ward, 11 candidates fought to replace Diane Holmes, who had been on council since 2003 and the voter turnout only declined by three per cent, which is half the drop in turnout between the 2006 and 2010 elections.

The race in Kitchissippi Ward was marred by allegations of smear campaigns and bullying. Its voter turnout was the highest in the city at 48 per cent – a drop of only three per cent compared to 2010.

The Toronto mayoral election, which dominated media coverage throughout the summer of 2014 saw a 60 per cent voter turnout in the election to replace Rob Ford. In Ottawa, Jim Watson was re-elected with only 40 per cent of voters casting a ballot.

Another explanation of voter turnout may be issues with the accessibility of voting.
According to Elections Canada, after the 2011 federal election, the most common reasons non-voters gave for not voting related to personal issues like work, school, and family.

“In 2004 there was a shift in the reasons given for not going to vote. The largest group of non-voters say that accessibility was the biggest issue,” said Nicole Goodman, an expert in online voting from the University of Toronto. “This is something that can be addressed with remote voting.”

“More Canadian electors have the option of voting in municipal elections that any other jurisdiction in the world,” Goodman said.

She said online voting has the potential to increase the voting rates for those who want to vote but have difficulty getting to the polling station.

But studies examining voter turnouts in Estonia – where almost a quarter of voters cast their ballots online – say there won’t be any significant increase in turnout.

“Internet voting can only ease voting for those who are already familiar with the Internet: that is to say, predominantly male, young people, the rich, and the well-educated,” wrote Daniel Bochsler in a 2009 report for the Central European University.

“E-voting is not a substitute for the people who are apathetic and won’t come out to vote. But it can be a tool for those who want to vote and have accessibility issues,” Goodman said.

But with this technology comes increased worry.

“There is no evidence internet voting increases turnout, and with the increase of internet hacking, there is more risk of having the results hacked,” Conacher said.

He suggested a ranked ballot system, increased government accountability and increased proportional representation at the municipal level as better ways to increase turnout.

“You’ll never get 100 per cent turnout, even with mandatory voting,” Conacher said.

Tecumseh – a small town in Southern Ontario – was one of several municipalities to add e-voting this year.

“This year there was a race in the mayor’s office, the deputy mayor’s office, and a prominent community member was running for council, so it certainly helped the voter turnout,” Laura Moy, the Tecumseh clerk said..

Moy said the addition of e-voting may have also been a factor along with the competitive races in the 5 per cent increase in voter turnout.

“There were a few people who loudly complained about e-voting, but most of the feedback from voters has been very positive,” she said.

She added the town was involved in making e-voting widely known and available to voters, especially in nursing homes and apartment buildings – where voter turnouts are usually low.

“Some people were worried about it, especially those with older parents, but once they realized how easy it was to do they were on board,” she said. “They didn’t need to go out and pick their parents up, bundle them up, and bring them to the polling station which made it easier for everybody.”

With more competitive elections, and further innovation, the trend of dwindling voter turnout may be reversed in Ottawa.

A unique trade agreement to export Canadian cherries to China could signal much larger free-trade agreements between the two countries.

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in China earlier this month he announced an agreement which detailed the conditions by which BC cherries could be exported to China. The terms of the product agreement are like no other and some experts think that it could open the door for substantial Canada-China trade agreements.

“It could serve as a very good stimulant for future, more in-depth agreements.” said Professor Yanling Wang from Carleton University.

According to Industry Canada data, the value of BC cherry exports to China were 19 times larger in 2013 than in 2010. Also, according to this data, BC is the only province that exports cherries to China.

The Phytosanitary Arrangement signed on signed on Nov. 8 is unlike any other.

A representative from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said that the BC cherry Phytosanitary Arrangement shows the government of China that the cherries being shipped comply with all official plant-health import requirements.

The Phytosanitary Arrangement hasn’t been made public yet, said James Watson from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. However, what makes the arrangement unique is that China agreed to a new cherry sampling process, said Sukpaul Bal, President of the BC Cherry Association.

Much of the negotiations for the Phytosanitary Agreement were around the treatment process and China has agreed to the brown sugar test. The alternative is the cold-treatment test.

According to Bal, not doing a cold treatment test is what makes this deal so attractive to cherry producers.

The brown sugar test samples one per cent of the cherry shipment by crunching up cherries in a mixture of brown sugar and water. After the mixture is left for approximately 10 minutes, if any larva is in the fruit, it would float to the surface. In a cold-treatment test, cherries are held in a room at 0 degrees Celsius for two weeks. Any pests wouldn’t survive that period, said Bal.

“It might open the door for other products in the future,” said Bal about the agreement.

According to some trade experts, this kind of agricultural agreement could open the door to additional trade deals between Canada and China.

There is an appetite for an agreement said Wang. Wang has previously worked as a consultant in the World Bank and as a researcher at the State Economic and Trade Commission, P.R China.

“I think it’s something simple to get the message out that it’s not so difficult – it’s something you could do and it’s something we should do,” said Wang about future trade agreements.

According to Bal there are other industries which are trying to get their products into China as well.

“I know BC blueberries is eager to get into China,” said Bal. “Other countries as well are looking at the steps we took and how we got access into China and are waiting in line to get their product in.”

This could be the start of something more.

“It’s tough to force products on people,” said Bal.

The demand was there in the case of BC cherries.

“Key groups in China were putting internal pressure as well. We were pressuring our government: ‘let’s work with these guys and figure something out,’” said Bal. “It all looks like this deal is going to work well for both sides. Cherries are such a highly valued product out there and we can grow such a nice product in our valley here.”

Bal said he was surprised when he saw Prime Minister Harper talking to Jack Ma, one of China’s most prominent businessmen, about Canadian cherries.

Canada currently exports $3,510,583 worth of cherries to China. Canada’s top five cherry markets are Hong Kong, the United States, Taiwan, China and Belgium.

China and Australia recently signed a free trade agreement.

“That made a lot of Canadians think,” said Wang. Australia and Canada have a lot in common, said Wang, many think that the Australia free trade agreement will have some negative impact on Canadian industries.

“That’s why they felt they needed to move,” said Wang.

By: Nichole Ekkert-Vine

City programs are forced to pick up speed due to the number of improperly discarded syringes quadrupling over the last four years in downtown Ottawa.

According to City of Ottawa open data, the number of reports filed for found syringes in the Rideau-Vanier ward have been rising steadily over the years.  A number which may have seemed small just four years ago has now grown to four times the size.

What Ottawa residents may not know however is that this is only a fraction of total needles improperly discarded in Rideau-Vanier each year. Ottawa Public Health reports that over 6000 improperly disposed of needles were collected in the year 2013 by various safety programs downtown.

The full data consists of needles, pipes, and other drug paraphernalia that are collected using different methods throughout the city. 

In response to the rise of dangerous sharps found in the area, Dan Osterer, an employee at the environment and health protection branch of Ottawa Public Health, says that many of their programs have undergone some changes.

“The programs that we do have have grown in size over the past few years due to positive results and increased demand. Our Needle Hunters program has seen an increase in staff as well as an increase in the number of routes that we take to find the sharps,” says Osterer.

“Last year we also implemented the winter route which targets areas where needles may be covered up in the winter months. They will comb the covered areas such as the snow and parking garages.”

The winter route simply targets areas that are trending in needle findings, but that may be covered due to heavy snow. It also targets common areas of public shelter, including the example of parking garages.

This route is a recent addition due to the increase of needles found over the past three years. The Needle Hunters program consists of employees who are trained in safe disposal. They walk their routes a few times a day to make sure that any improperly discarded sharps in the public are taken care of.

A visual (above) a four-year trend. This represents the number of 311 calls due to discovery of improperly disposed of needles, from 2010-2013.

To help understand why some drug users discard their needles improperly, Ottawa Public Health takes note of the items they give out and how many are returned. Cynthia Horvath, an Ottawa Public Health nurse, explains that anyone can drop into OPH and request as many needles and supplemental supplies as they would like, without limit.

Each time someone comes in to fill an order, Horvath says the nurse on duty takes information from the client that does not identify them, but that allows OPH to track their use. Information such as birth year, sex, mothers initials and number of years using drugs all help to put an rough ‘identity’ on a user.

This way their confidentiality is respected, but research on who uses the services and returns the items for disposal can still be conducted. Gathering and analyzing this data is one of the ways Horvath says Ottawa Public Health tries to adapt to change in usage and improper disposal.

Working closely with Ottawa Public Health is DUAL, or the Drug Users Advocacy League, just down the street. DUAL supports safe use of drugs and helps clients through the journey of drug use and addiction.

Chairperson Sean LeBlanc says the area in itself may be to blame for the increasing number of syringes found.

“The majority of Ottawa shelters are located downtown, so this area is at higher risk for those sort of things. The police say anyone found with a syringe will not necessarily get arrested for drug use. Whether this is true or not is another story,” says LeBlanc.

“Often people who are staying in shelters live in fear of getting caught for using, so if they think they are in danger they may be more inclined to just ditch the needle on the street to try and get away from it.”

LeBlanc has been running DUAL since 2010 and says that although it is slow, progress is being made from the efforts of their organization, Ottawa Public Health, and the recent political support for supervised injection sites.

“If you want to know why people are using drugs, why they’re reusing supplies, or why they’re not disposing of the needles properly, you have to ask someone who understands,” says LeBlanc.

“We have a saying here and it’s ‘nothing for us without us.’ You can’t provide help for users without the help of those who can relate, and that’s what makes us so good at our jobs.”

LeBlanc had been an intravenous drug user for 14 years prior to quitting three years ago. “I don’t usually tell people about that, but it’s a lot harder than anyone ever knows and people need to know that,” he says.

DUAL has been working with the city for four years now in response to the rising rates of syringes found by the public. Their mission is to help drug users stay safe from the beginning of their journey and throughout their struggle.

In an effort to reduce the amount of improperly discarded syringes, the organization pairs with different city partners like OPH to tackle health issues that can arise from leaving supplies out in the open or reusing contaminated supplies.

These concerns can range from hepatitis C and AIDS transmission to nerve damage and abscesses. Tyler Pantalone is another employee at DUAL. He says he works to promote safe usage and disposal because he knows first hand what can happen.

“In these past four months I’ve been pretty bad, I’ve been using almost every day,” says Pantalone, showing the small needle wounds on his forearm.

“This is what a clean poke looks like, but for people who are using old needles or are reusing, the health risks are enormous.”

He agrees with LeBlanc that the downtown area has a population much different than other wards in the city, potentially contributing to the large amount of syringes found by the public. He says there’s no place quite like ward 12.

“A lot of the drug-using population are people who don’t have a permanent home or somewhere to keep their supplies,” says Pantalone.

“Normally if you were using at home, you would simply keep your supplies at home. But if you don’t have a home or are in a shelter, it makes it easier to just leave things behind or discard of them somewhere else.”

One thing that LeBlanc says the downtown area is doing to help reduce the number of needles left behind in shelters is the Black Box program. The program is one of the more recent efforts from the city to not only reduce the stigma around drug use but to lower the risk of carelessly discarded syringes in the area.

Shelters participating in the Black Box program allot one box to each person staying over night. The black box is a space where clients can store things such as drugs and supplemental products without getting in trouble with the law. The shelter does not do anything with the items in the box, so long as they are not weapons, and returns the items to the client the next day without question.

“It’s a great way to create a safer and more contained environment in shelters. At least while they are there, there is less drug use happening. Drug users are always scared of what is going to happen if they get caught, and I don’t blame them,” says LeBlanc.

“At least this way the city is keeping people safe and allowing them time to figure things out. It’s been a really hard journey [for DUAL] and everyone involved in the fight, but we’ve come a long way, and change is happening.”