Ontario man Manfred Loerzel’s livestock shipment business is still up and running after being fined twice for inhumane transport of horses.

Last year, Canadian Food Inspection Agency fined him and his company, Loerzel Farm Transport Inc., $26,000 for causing the deaths of two horses during transportation. The agency’s investigation suggests the trailer that his company used had projections that injured the horses, which violates the Health of Animals Act.

According to the agency’s prosecution records, that act brought in $297,000 through fines since 2011, the highest among other regulations. And of all the eight cases, four are about inhumane transport of horses, and Loerzel’s company are involved in two of them.

Allison Danyluk Roff, a veterinarian with the agency’s office in Regina, does road checks on livestock trailers along two local highways. “The most common noncompliance in my opinion is overcrowding,” says Danyluk Roff, “and people often mixing different classes of horses together in a trailer, they could get aggressive.”

Heather Clemenceau from the Canadian House Defence Coalition, says the group is working on an access to information request to try to identify more of the ill-treatments to horses during shipments.

She says in one such incident, a horse fell down the trailer after the driver hit the brake suddenly. However, the driver continued on to his destination knowing the female horse was down, which left the horse suffering in pain for more than six hours.

Clemenceau says in other cases, horses coming in from the U.S. are left too long without feed and water. Canadian Food Inspection Agency staff check and seal loads of horses at border checkpoints. The agency says the horses should remain on the truck overnight so their staff don’t have to cut the seal and reseal again. But this could leave the horses more than a day without food. Canadian regulations allow horses to be transported for up to 36 hours without a break.

International horsemeat supplier

Horse shipments along the Canada-U.S. border have been increasing since 2006, when the American government initially banned horse slaughter for human consumption. As a result, the number of horses slaughtered in Canada in federally and provincially inspected establishments has more than doubled from 2006 to 2008.

The Canadian Horse Defence Coalition identified four major Canadian slaughterhouses, where live horses imported from south of the border are being killed.

According to figures from Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Canada exported 13,960,034 kilograms of horsemeat last year. Canadian Meat Council says the major markets include Switzerland, Japan, France, Belgium and Kazakhstan.

Bankrupt farmer gets fresh start with livestock transport business

Former Ontario farmer Loerzel declared bankruptcy in 2005. According to his Statement of Affairs document, he owed $799,000 to 44 creditors, including a finance company, a farm equipment company, a cell phone carrier, a car dealer and a bank. However, at the time of the bankruptcy, he had only $3,601 worth of assets to pay his creditors.

Loerzel owned two farm properties together with his parents before running into debt, and he got the sole ownership after the death of his parents. However, the TD Bank seized and sold the two properties in 2003 and 2004 after he lost a business contract.

A year after filing bankruptcy, Loerzel was cleared from all the debt because his creditors recognized he had no money to pay back his debt. Loerzel also gets to keep most of his assets, including household goods and his 1994 Ford car as those items are deemed of little value. The $100 his had on hand before declaring bankruptcy was used to cover the fee to file claim with the Office of the Superintendent and Bankruptcy.

According to records kept by Ontario government services, Loerzel incorporated his livestock transport company, Loerzel Farm Transport Inc., in 2007. But two years into his business, veterinary inspectors from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency found through their routine inspections that the trailer his company used had sharp angles that caused injuries to a number of horses and death to two horses. In 2010, during similar inspections, the agency staff once again concluded Loerzel’s company did not provide an adequate mode of transportation.

However, it wasn’t until three years later, when the Ontario Court of Justice in Windsor finally registered two convictions against both of the incidents, and struck down a total fine of $72,000.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency declined to give more details on the two cases. And the Ontario court of Justice says there’s no record of Loerzel’s company being fined.

Whether Loerzel paid the fines or not remains a question. But his company, Loerzel Farm Transport Inc., is still registered with the Ontario government with an active status.

Canada exports horses for slaughter too?

An article on the Canadian Horse Defence Coalition website, dated October 18, 2012, says draft horses from Alberta being shipped to Japan from Calgary International Airport are jammed in wooden crates to the point that they can’t stand.

The group says since 2009, it has been receiving anonymous footage showing horses being loaded into trucks with electronic prods and transported to the airport.

The article reveals draft horses from Canadian producers have been routinely shipped to Japan via airports in Calgary and Winnipeg. And they get slaughtered in Japan for horse sashimi, which is a Japanese raw meat dish, once they grow bigger and meet certain weight limits.

However, on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s website, horses exported to Japan are only identified as for permanent stay or racing. Among the more than 30 countries that buy live horses from Canada, only the U.S. has a category that says for “immediate slaughter.”

In the Canadian Horse Defence Coalition article, it quotes a 2008 Alberta Horse Welfare Report, saying the horses exported to Japan are worth $20,000 each.

The data below is to show the contrast between property taxes within the rural Ottawa region and the urban and scattered regions. The data is there to support the information provided by MPAC and RealPAC that rural and urban areas around Ottawa do not share the same taxes and have not for years even though amenities and services are more scarce in rural areas.

The map is there to show the surrounding rural areas part of Ottawa and where they are in regards to urban or centre Ottawa.

I used Infogr.am because it is a user-friendly site to create graphs from using any data you have and can either load the file or manually enter each data onto the graph — which I did.

The below data you see gives an example of reading test score rates among Aboriginal youth in First Nations communities. Reading scores are among the lowest of all categories, math and science being the highest. Most Aboriginal men and women often turn to college and trade schools for post secondary education if they can or choose to go.

The graph below that shows Aboriginal high school completion rates from 2001 to 2006. Rates go up almost 10 per cent across Canada for most provinces through to 2009 with a 5 per cent increase to 2006 and it also shows a significant decrease seen in Prince Edward Island and Manitoba. in 2006.

Infrogr.am was used to create this graph due to the fact that it was user friendly and simple to figure out. Vital Signs Canada provided all data necessary for this visual.

Links to pages on website about graphics:

http://journal.edumedia.ca/vody0001/wordpress/?page_id=2

As illustrated in my story, voter turnout has gone down in the province of Ontario tremendously. As you can see, I was 63 per cent in the 1990 election and declined to 48 per cent in the last 2011 provincial elections. I created this graph using data from Elections Ontario Using and online program called Infogr.am.

Please see the following link: http://infogr.am/ontario-elections?src=web

In light of the abysmal voter turnout among youth, I have created table table showing voter participation among all age groups. It shows that, even though the 18-24 bracket represents 20 per cent of eligible voters, it’s only 14 per cent of the actual voter turnout.

See the following link: Voters

The following five graphs outline the location of each consultant that the City of Ottawa hires through the transit commission in each quarter between 2012-13. Despite the fluctuating change of location for these companies, the city predominantly hire within the nation’s capital. Services of these consultants include engineering, fuel sources, wireless services, marketing and advertising.

My data feature was on the topic of youth unemployment.  Without data, my story would have been just a bunch of speculation.

The stats really did tell the story.  As my graph shows, other than a few ups and downs, youth unemployment has been on the steady increase since the mid 2000’s.

The graph below just show’s Canada’s youth unemployment rate, but the real problem is specifically in the province of Ontario where the youth unemployment rate is at an all-time high.  One of the most worrisome statistics is how Toronto, Canada’s largest city, also has a youth unemployment rate at an all-time high.

Throughout my article, the stats prove why this is happening.

http://infogr.am/youth-unemployment-rate-over-last-30-years?src=web

The sources I relied on include Stats Canada, Vital Signs, and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-626-x/11-626-x2013024-eng.htm

http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Ontario%20Office/2013/09/Young_and_jobless_final3.pdf

http://www.vitalsignscanada.ca/en/findings-89-getting-started-youth-15-to-24-years-of-age

Data Inforgraphic (PDF)

Ontario has the most local food initiatives in Canada, at 27.7 per cent and alongside British Columbia, Quebec and Alberta makes up 75 per cent of Canada’s local food. According to the Ontario ministry of Agriculture and Food, Ontario has invested over $113 million in local food initiatives.

This may seem great but there are only seven countries in the world that produce and distribute enough food locally to be considered sustainable. Though we have access to so much technology and have over 24 umbrella corporations whose business is to assist and promote farmers we are still behind countries like Turkey who produce enough local food to sustain a population twice the size of our own.

The following are charts of local food initiatives across Canada categorized by province.

For my feature, data and statistics were essential. The numbers obviously don’t tell the whole story, but it was essential for me to show how although there are more and more drivers in Canada, yet the roads are becoming safer and safer.

Upon doing some research I found that it wasn’t just one form of traffic crime that is on the decline either. Impaired driving, driving while prohibited, and leaving the scene of an accident have all been cut in half over the last 15 years.

It was hard to believe how many numbers there are readily available for the entire country by province, as well as municipally. It is convenient that the numbers are there for nearly every year, as well as groupings of years when applicable.

I relied on a variety of resources for my statistics and data. Stats Canada, The Government of Canada and Mothers Against Drunk Driving all performed recent valuable studies that I used.

http://www.madd.ca/madd2/en/impaired_driving/impaired_driving_youth.html

http://publications.gc.ca/Collection/Statcan/53F0007X/53F0007XIE.pdf

http://www.vitalsignscanada.ca/en/findings-41-safety-traffic-crime-rate-2013-findings

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/legal50d-eng.htm

http://www.ottawapolice.ca/Libraries/Publications/2012_Crime_Police_and_Traffic_Statistics_Report_final.sflb.ashx

The number of drivers in Canada has been steadily increasing over time. As the number of drivers has increased, traffic crime in Canada has decreased at a steady rate. A report by Vital Signs Canada has shown that between 1991 and 2007 incidents of traffic crime in Canada were halved, going from over 800 incidents per 100,000 residents to the current national average of just over 400.
With the number of drivers increasing rapidly as Canada continues to grow, the question is now just how safe can the country’s roads get?
“It’s becoming more risky to be a bad driver and technology has had a big impact on it,” says Brian Vetter.
Vetter, a graduate of both Police Foundations and Criminology currently working with community policing, points to what he calls a “new era” of policing and better educating of traffic laws as a main cause of this.
“There are different ideas now to enforce traffic laws other than having police officers on the road trying to catch people,” explains Vetter.
“Roads have been getting much safer, even just having a police car without an officer present, when drivers see a car they follow the rules more, believing the possibility of caught is much more realistic.”
Modern technology has allowed law enforcement to monitor roads and enforce laws in a variety of ways such as red light and stop sign cameras. The prevalence of security cameras and camera phones has also lead to a decline in hit and runs, with getting caught a realistic possibility now.
“We had a class on red light cameras that showed a dramatic decrease in traffic crime directly related to them,” says Vetter. “The camera itself is noticeable; people know to look for it now, feeling like they could be being watched.”
While these devices have had a positive effect on reducing traffic crime, they have not been without controversy. Critics accuse some of the technology as an invasion of privacy, and try to argue the reliability of a machine rather than a human.
“A lot of people disagree with it, they call it an invasion or violation of their privacy,” says Vetter of the complaints. “A lot of townships don’t have it yet, but over the last few years it’s really taking off in Canada.”
Bigger cities with better-funded law enforcement have lead the way in policing the roads using technology, with smaller townships expected to follow suit. If the rates continue to fall, it may only be a matter of time until more technology comes into play.
“It’s still relatively new here, they’re still just starting to come out with a lot of the technologies with plenty yet to be used,” says Vetter. “It was really big in Europe first, specifically England. Now they’re finally slowly bringing it here, piggybacking on their success.”
Mothers Against Drunk Driving was founded in 1980 to tackle impaired driving. As an organization, they are responsible for reducing impaired driving numbers in a variety of ways. Supporters of mandatory and random roadblocks, MADD has promoted them in areas of need. As well, MADD has been one of the bigger proponents of breath alcohol ignition interlock devices. The device is a breathalyzer that is installed on a vehicle’s dashboard so that the driver must use before being able to operate the vehicle.
They are one of many sentencing options for impaired driving, becoming more and more common in Ontario.
MADD studies have shown how closely linked impaired driving and youth are, with one-third of alcohol related crash victims being under the age of 25 and 19 the most common age of victims. It is for that reason that MADD and schools are really using their resources to educate, to make sure that by the time students are in a position to be able to both drink and drive, they know better than to get behind the wheel.
The really notable thing though, according to MADD, young people are actually statistically the least likely to drive impaired. It just happens that the ones who do happen to be the most dangerous. Driving inexperience is the biggest issue, which when combined with alcohol or drug impairment has deadly consequences.
As valuable as technology is to keeping the roads safe, police presence will always be the first deterrent. RIDE (reduce impaired driving everywhere) checks, first established in 1977 in Etobicoke, have successfully reduced impaired driving. A MADD Canada study shows that 156 RIDE stops, an average number for most cities, reduces alcohol related accidents by at least 15%. Alcohol related accidents account for many traffic crimes, with multiple laws often being broken in a single crash.
The MADD impaired driving numbers show how for young impaired drivers, single-vehicle accidents are the most common as a result of losing control. They also show that once a young person has reached a blood alcohol level of 0.10 percent, he or she is 51 times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash.
With the popularity of social media, a single RIDE check can deter people miles away with information travelling at an ever-growing rate.
“With more frequent RIDE checks and everyone constantly checking their Twitter and Facebook, word spreads fast on social media about them, and the consequences of drinking and driving in general,” offers Taylor Lanthier.
Lanthier is a Police Foundations graduate who is currently working in security.
Learning about how the police are starting to use social media to educate and reach out to the public is now a part of the curriculum.
“In the past, they never had the outreach they do today online, not only to encourage safe driving but to explain the risks and consequences of unsafe driving,” says Lanthier.
The banning of cell phones while driving has been controversial. While cell phones are distracting, separate 2013 studies done by the American Automobile Association and Toronto Sunnybrook Hospital have both found that hands-free calling and texting devices are just as dangerous as cell phones, and even impaired driving. The Toronto study used MRIs to show how when using a hands-free device and making a left turn, the brain is forced to work at a capacity that makes driving safely difficult. Transport Canada has 40 percent of traffic fatalities occurring at intersections, with left turns accounting for them more than three times more often than right turns.
“With hand held technology there is still way too much distracted driving,” says Lanthier.
“When they are now known to cause more accidents than drinking and driving at times, it really shows how it can have it’s negative effects as well.”
Ottawa’s traffic crime rate (incidents per 100,000 residents) has been less than the average in Canada in each of the last 15 years, including in 2007 when they hit a high.
Ottawa Police stop between 15,000 and 30,000 vehicles in ride checks, and impaired driving has been on a steady decline. With less than 300 traffic crime violations per 100,000 residents, Ottawa has some of the safest roads in the country, thanks in part to a large police presence, at the municipal, provincial and federal levels.
Sgt. Al Ferris has been working in traffic enforcement since the early 1980’s, which has given him perspective on the changing road safety.
“Public education has been the biggest thing, community awareness at the municipal, provincial and federal levels,” says Ferris. “It starts at the city level, moving up from there to the country.”
Ferris points to a report of a popular investigative journalism team as one of the key figures in getting the ball rolling on reducing impaired driving.
“The Fifth Estate really got the ball rolling on impaired driving awareness in 1988, with a report on the dangers,” explains Ferris. “The MADD program was still relatively new, but the combination of these programs really raised awareness to where we are today with social media.”
Quebec has seen less of a drop in traffic crime than neighboring provinces, regularly finishing in the top two in the country. Laxer road laws, play a part, as well as a number of other factors. The lower drinking age can help explain the impaired driving numbers.
Quebec averages twice as many incidents of impaired driving as Ontario, with 230 incidents per 100,00 in the province compared to just 120 for Ontario. Quebec has begun to follow Ontario’s lead as well in implementing many RIDE stops, or sobriety stops, during the holiday season, when impaired driving is most common.
Canadians are noticing the roads becoming much safer. Brittany Rose is a St John Ambulance worker, which provides first aid medical services and ambulance services to those in need. They travel a lot, which means a lot of highway driving.
“Working with St John for close to ten years, weather has a pretty big impact on it, but careless driving is the big one,” says Rose. “In my first couple years here, a lot of our calls were for accidents on Highway 17, but in the last few years it’s been a noticeable drop.”
The majority of alcohol-related crashes are single vehicle according to Rose. A Government of Canada report shows an annual population growth of 1 per cent from 1991 to 2000. With the number of drivers increasing annually, it would seem surprising that the majority of alcohol-related crashes are single vehicle. During the same time period, the 16-24 age group or inexperienced drivers witnessed a 1.3 per cent average annual growth.
“Youth are realizing more and more the consequences, not just to them and their family but anyone they could come in contact with,” says Rose. “I think that really shows in the safety of the roads, but there is always work to be done.”