By Steven Smeall

A full plate of nutritious food in front of you every night for supper. It’s something that most of us take for granted every night, and for a percentage of people in Ottawa, that luxury is something they can only wish for.

Thankfully for those people, there are options out there for them so they don’t go hungry.

According to data collected by the Ottawa Food Bank in 2012, on average, 48,000 individuals took food handouts from the organization per month between the years 2011-2012. With the ever-increasing prices of food in grocery stores, some people are forced to take the option of taking food from the food bank.

Erin Wolfe is one of the people who had to use the food bank at one point in her life. She recalls the experience as a positive one.

“When I used the food bank the process was very simple,” said Wolfe. “I went in with proof that I’m on welfare and answered a couple questions.”

The process is left simple so that the Ottawa Food Bank can make sure that as few people in Ottawa as possible go hungry.

However, the amount of food distributed by the Ottawa Food Bank has decreased since 2011, and there are still many people relying on the food they supply and the programs that they offer.

The 2011-2012 data collected by the Food Bank shows 7.2 million pounds were distributed to people while in 2010-2011 8.1 million pounds were sent out.

The question is with the Food Bank being more important to Ottawa than ever now, why the decrease in distribution over the two years?

Throughout Ontario the hunger count (the number of people assisted by the food bank) has been decreasing. In March 2012 404,000 people were assisted and in March 2013 that number shrunk to 376,000.

Unfortunately for Ottawa, they have not been following this provincial average. In March 2012 Ottawa saw 30,474 people assisted and the next year that number increased to 30,961.

Despite the increase, this number is still far below the average per month seen the year before. This could be due to the increase in number of people assisted through the colder months.

“While hunger isn’t seasonal and the Ottawa Food Bank is needed all year-round, there is a spike in usage in the Winter months, specifically near the end of the season,” said Samantha Ingram, communications coordinator for the Ottawa Food Bank.

“Those months carry with them really high bills – heating, gas, electricity, etc. So at the end of the day, it can be difficult to make ends meet and thus more people need to turn to their local community food program for that little extra help.”

The Food Bank is ready to fight the increasing numbers with its multiple programs.

The Ottawa Food Bank is well known for the many programs that it offers to Ottawa residents. Nine programs were offered throughout 2012.

The Ottawa Food Bank’s main program is the Hunger at Home program which consists of distributing food to its member agencies located around the city.

Another main program is the Kickstart school breakfast and after school snack program which supplies food to 46 local schools for its students.

“The programs differ as they are all different sizes and different types of programs,” said Ingram. “There are some programs that distribute groceries to those in need and they serve a large number of people in their communities.”

Many people throughout the city rely on the Food Bank and its many programs, which is why they are always looking for donations.

The Ottawa Food Bank receives most of its donations through partnerships with third party organizations throughout the city. Some of the most notable organizations in the city such as the Ottawa Senators and OC Transpo host food drives during the year to help raise funds.

Over two dozen other events/programs take place throughout the year in an effort to get food donations and raise money for the Ottawa Food Bank.

Helping host all of these food drives and programs would be a lot of work for the organization. Thankfully, the Ottawa Food Bank is one of the top organizations when it comes to volunteer involvement.

Throughout 2011-2012, volunteers donated a total of 21,030 hours of their time to the Food Bank. A total of 16,990.5 hours was donated by volunteers inside food warehouses or with transportation, adding up to be 80 per cent of the total hours.

“I’ve always given either time or money to the Ottawa Food Bank, so for about the last 15 years,” said event volunteer Collette Lachance.

Other categories volunteers often frequented in were community harvest, events, board/committee and administration.

“I think overall families and people need help,” said Lachance. “Eating is a necessity and with the cost of living going up, it just helps them when they have a place to go to help fill those gaps.”

One of the examples of this outpour of volunteers was seen on Dec. 9, the day of the annual OC Transpo/Loblaws Food Drive.

“I’ve been doing the OC Transpo/Loblaws food drive for the past seven years now,” said event organizer Marie Pander. “It’s important to volunteer because a lot of people need the food bank this time of year and it’s a good community project to get involved in.”

Through the volunteer work that went into staffing and promoting the event, the food drive proved to be very successful.

The food drive received 182,000 pounds of food in donations and $21,600. These are just the results from one food drive in Ottawa. There are many food drives that occur throughout the year, hinting at how many donations must come in throughout the year.

What drives people to donate their time to the Ottawa Food Drive though?

“You get to meet-and-greet people and help raise donations for a great cause,” said Pander. “There’s a lot of people out there who really need it this time of year, especially with today’s economy with people losing their jobs and having trouble finding new jobs.”

“A lot of people are in need of the food bank. Lots of people are going through hard times. There are people even in the high-tech industry losing their jobs so they rely on the food bank to help feed their children and families.”

Food is distributed to many centres throughout the city and handed out to those people of need. Through fundraising the Food Bank is able to continue with their programs.

The biggest portion of that distributed food is canned goods. Canned foods took up a massive 22 per cent of distributions through 2011-2012. That’s 1.6 million pounds of canned goods distributed throughout the city in one year.

In 2010-2011 it was also the leader of the pack, but only being 21 per cent of distribution that year, with 1.7 million pounds of canned goods being distributed.

This shows the decrease in food distribution from one year to the next is very noticeable. The breads, cereal, and grain category had the biggest drop between the two years. Between 2010-2011 the Ottawa Food Bank was able to distribute 1.4 million pounds while the next year they were only able to ship out 1.2 million pounds, showing a 200,000 pound decrease in distribution.

Between 2011 and 2012 there were 30 community food banks that relied on the Food Bank’s distributions. Along with these community food banks there are many food cupboards, meal and multi-service programs throughout the city.

While the decrease in distributions may be concerning, the Ottawa Food Bank believes that it is a positive. On October 1st 2011, Quebec-based food programs were fully supported by the Maisson Outaouais, the largest food warehouse in Gatineau. Prior to this the Ottawa Food Bank played a crucial role in the Outaouais community, and now their sole focus will be on Ottawa communities and programs.

2011-2012 saw distribution increases in fresh vegetable, frozen meat, and dairy. Dairy products made up 16 per cent of the Food Bank’s distribution, which is the same percentage of bread, cereal, and grain donations. Fresh Harvest and produce each make up 13 per cent of distributions as well.

Most of these areas were higher in 2010-2011. Dairy products made up only 14 per cent of distributions while fresh harvest and produce were 11 and 12 per cent respectively.

The Food Bank may be lacking in some categories, but they make sure to have enough of the basics to supply all who need.

“When I went they gave me all of the basics that I could think of,” said Wolfe. “They gave me milk, bread, soups, margarine, eggs, and fresh fruits and vegetables. They made sure that everyone was happy and gave anything else they may have received as donations recently.”

One of the smallest categories of distribution for the Food Bank was in snacks and soft drinks, being only 6 per cent of distribution, as the Food Bank attempts to promote healthy eating with their donations.

While seeing an increase in frozen meat distributions, frozen meat still only made up seven per cent of the distribution through the year. The Food Bank also handed out baby supplies, which made up a small three per cent of the distribution throughout the year.

In the 2010-2011 year, snacks and soft drinks made up eight per cent of the distribution throughout the year, as did frozen meats. Baby supplies remained at three per cent. As the Food Bank focused on a more healthy selection throughout the year, these categories were expected to drop.

The Ottawa Food Bank relies on donations to be able to function the way that it does. Thankfully between 2011-2012 many donations were received. Throughout the year the Food Bank received $799,634 in general donations while they received another $343,145. The total revenue throughout the year was $3.65 million.

“The Ottawa community is so generous with time, food, and money,” said Ingram. “We’re a $3.6 million dollar organization and 10 per cent of that comes from a grant from the City of Ottawa.”

The year prior the Food Bank saw less revenue, mainly in their special events and other revenues where they only received $631,693. The various other revenue outlets all totaled up to be about the same as they were the year after.

In 2010-2011 the Food Bank used $1.26 million of its revenue to purchase food for its various programs. Salaries for contract workers took up another $1.23 million throughout the year. The Food bank also spends money on making sure the residents of Ottawa hear about the various events that they are hosting. They spent $391,834 to promote their events and fund-raising.

Throughout the entire year, the organization was able to turn over to the next year with a profit of $805. That would not be the case going into the next year.

The Food Bank spent less on buying food that year, only using $1.23 million of their profit for food purchases. However, many other categories saw an increase throughout the year.

With either more staff or staff getting higher pay, the Food Bank spent $1.33 million paying their contract workers. They also spent almost an extra $100,000 on rent and operations, resulting in a cost of $550,297. Promotion costs totaled up to be $481,309 while miscellaneous costs totaled $98,300.

Due to this spending, the Food Bank ended the year with a loss of $30,919.

Despite the loss of money, the outpour of volunteers show that the Ottawa Food Bank will be able to continue to supply the people who require the help, no matter the level of need.

“I think it’s a great cause for the community,” said Pander. “A lot of people need the food banks at all times of the year.”

The Ottawa Food Bank plays one of the biggest roles as a charity in this city.

Through their work, they are fighting to make sure nobody in Ottawa goes without a full plate of food.

Below, is my fusion table map (of food bank use by province)

Data (for the map ) was collected for the fusion table from the following link:

http://www.foodbankscanada.ca/getmedia/8241eca6-d291-4b39-8e95-0cb477bc4069/HungerCount2013_highres.pdf.aspx?ext=.pdf

[ FOR DAVID: None of my data was available in raw form or even in any charts so, creating visuals was a bit of a challenge. They definitely help illustrate the points made by my article and help the reader see a comparison. All of my statistics for Hydro Ottawa came from https://static.hydroottawa.com/documents/publications/ This is where Hydro Ottawa stores all of their statistical information. They do not leave raw data accessible to public. Hydro One information available on their site is limited as they do not personally retain long term data.]

Residents are thrilled to have more efficient service, less outages and lower rates than 73% of Ontario’s hydro providers.

Hydro Ottawa is climbing the customer satisfaction ladder yet again after a slight drop in 2011. The energy company, third-largest municipally-owned electrical utility in Ontario, has had no less than 80% customer satisfaction ratings in the past nine years.

As of the 2012 annual report, Hydro Ottawa services over 309,000 residential homes and commercial customers in their 1,104 kilometre service area. What they lack in area size they make up for in reliability and low rates.

In 2011, Hydro Ottawa had 8% less power outages than Hydro One, that gap is the closest it has been in two decades. Hydro One, the provinces largest power provider, has been dipping in satisfaction rates. Many municipally owned electricity companies are proving more effective than their larger counterparts.

Ottawans don’t often realize how fortunate they are until leaving the city. Katherine Morrison of Quinte West, Ont. had lived in Kingston for six years before moving to Ottawa. After receiving her first bill in the mail she was shocked. As of November 2013, Kingston Hydro and Ottawa Hydro were on par for electricity costs, but that hasn’t always been the case.

“I thought about calling the city to verify that I had not been under charged, I thought there was a mistake,” said Morrison. “It is like when you get your cable bill and notice some missing charges, you aren’t sure what to do. You can either tell them and hope they don’t charge for the mistake or wait and see if they ding you for it later.”

Morrison is not a lone face in the awe of hydro prices. Ottawa Hydro reports that their high satisfaction ratings are in part due to the number of Ottawa residents who move between cities. Lifelong residents compliment the speed and efficiency hydro workers maintain, which is something that newcomers don’t often notice.

In 2010, Hydro Ottawa had soared beyond any of its previous satisfaction records. Ninety-two per cent of customers were glad to have Hydro Ottawa pumping energy through their homes and businesses. That is over 280,600 happy customers.

After moving to Quinte West just over a year ago, Morrison had the opposite reaction. “I was sure something had to be wrong, the cost was nearly double what I paid in Ottawa,” she said.

Hydro Ottawa grid supervisor Carol Finch-Dawson hears many stories coinciding with what Morrison has said. “Ottawa residents are lucky to have a municipal hydro authority. When you have a small company, the rates are not as variable,” said Finch-Dawson. “Hydro One serves clients in the boonies, it costs more to send power far from the source. Our grid is contained in about 1,000 square kilometers. It is less expensive to service clients in a contained area.”

Ottawa Hydro’s sprawl extends to the city of Ottawa boundaries and as far east as Casselman, Ont. The out of town extension makes Hydro Ottawa ‘s area about the size of Toronto and Hamilton combined.

It’s technology is dated, only 23 per cent of Ontario hydro companies have implemented new hydro dams or performed major upgrades to their existing structures in the past three decades. Minor upgrades and storage developments have helped cope with the growing number of energy consumers.

Wires in older neighbourhoods of Ottawa have not been replaced in between seven to ten years. Unless damaged, there is no need for Hydro Ottawa to update their system.

“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” said Finch-Dawson with a laugh. “We haven’t had problems with our lines that many cities do. If we replaced our wires and equipment, it would cost the city a lot of money.”

Hydro Ottawa runs many of its power lines underground. This prevents the typical wire wares such as heavy precipitation, damage by animals, tree contact, ice and wind. Underground wires are more difficult to repair and can cause hassle when run through land of future housing developments but, the pros definitely outweigh the cons.

“What many people don’t know is that when building, land survey records are available at City Hall that display our wires other underground interferences that may exist,” said John McMillan, customer relations specialist with Hydro Ottawa. “If one has not been performed recently, the land owner is responsible for having one completed before construction.”

McMillan explained that customers often don’t have to worry about their own lines when digging, it is wires that go far beyond their homes that Hydro Ottawa is concerned about. “If there is a break in a line 15 kilometres from where the outage happened, we have had to dig up entire lines to figure out where the problem lies,” he said. Breaks in lines cost the city of Ottawa money that could be put elsewhere.

 

Hydro Ottawa has surpassed most municipal-owned power companies in revenues as well. Even with the low cost of electricity, Hydro Ottawa is able to bring revenues over $ 100 million to the City of Ottawa. Reliability in its power system and reduced number of outages mean despite various repairs, expenses for the hydro company are still minimal in comparison.

Hydro Ottawa also takes pride in impressing its customers with charity campaigns and community service. Since 200, Hydro Ottawa’s United Way workplace campaigns have raised over $ 1.3 million. Hydro Ottawa has also participated in the Brighter Tomorrows Fund and granted over $326,000 to Ottawa homeless shelters and homeless rehabilitation programs.

Out of the office, Hydro Ottawa volunteers help provide fun and safe activities for physically and mentally challenged persons. For many years, this has included annual trips to the Gloucester fair.

Approximately 22.2 per cent of energy generated in Ontario is hydro. With an abundance of fast moving rivers and waterfalls, Ontario is the ideal landscape for hydro energy to thrive. Second only to nuclear power, hydro has toppled over natural gas, solar and wind by almost double the generation.

Canada’s reliability on hydro is so significant that 62.9 per cent of Canadians power their homes with hydro energy.

Nuclear has been deemed the energy of the future by many organizations however, Canadians are hesitant after the nuclear catastrophes in Japan.

In Ottawa, citizens are hesitant to transfer to nuclear energy due to the risk of major earthquakes in the Bytown area.

According to Natural Resources Canada, the St. Laurence low-lands, including Ottawa, are likely to be hit with increased number of earthquakes over the next decade. This has residents concerned abou the proper construction and maintenance of nuclear facilities near the city.

“One of the most common answers energy surveys is that Ottawa-Gatineau region would not change their energy source to nuclear. This stems from fear of natural disaster. We are in a green wave, more and more people want to protect the planet,” said Michael Belyakov. “Using facilities we already have or developing wind and solar farms are preferable to Canadians.”

But, Hydro Ottawa is doing things right. In 2012, after a short dip in its customer satisfaction the year before, Hydro Ottawa is climbing again.

“Hydro is green. Once the construction phase is complete, there is very little by-product from the dams,” said Finch-Dawson. “There is no fear of natural disaster or dangerous contamination that could affect our customers.”

Hydro dams built many decades ago still stand and still product energy efficiently. Out of Ontario’s 30,000 plus kilometres of transmission lines, only one per cent have been damaged by earthquakes in the past 25 years.

Hydro Ottawa shares its power with neighbours. A benefit to using hydro is that the energy production is constant and doesn’t require storage of hazardous materials. Though our storage is limited, Hydro Ottawa is able to export excess energy through five adjoining jurisdictions. These jurisdictions provide revenue for using our grid.

Ontario is able to import or export 4,800 megawats of power at any given time. That is enough to power 480,000 homes or approximately half of Ottawa.

In 2012, Hydro Ottawa exported 69.5 per cent more energy to surrounding areas than it imported.

Out of the 76 electricity distribution companies in Ontario, only 13 were able to export more than they imported.

Though Hydro Ottawa’s customer base of 309,000 is only a small portion of Ontario’s total number of power customers, they are doing things right in the eyes of their customers and governments.

Prior to municipal-owned power companies, Ontario was serviced by one large producer that racked up millions of dollars in debt before it was eventually bankrupted and its assets were divided. Every hydro customer pays 4.2 per cent of their bill towards that debt. With Hydro Ottawa producing so much extra revenue, that number has not had to increase in our jurisdiction. However, more than half of the hydro companies in Ontario were unable to produce sufficient revenues and therefore, have increased their Debt Retirement Charge up to 12.7 per cent, that is more than the government taxes on energy consumption.

Hydro Ottawa continues to expand with the growing population of Ottawa and over the next five years expects to have expanded its area to 1,200 square kilometers. Hydro authorities raise the prices of hydro to coincide with the Ontario Energy Board but, Hydro Ottawa expects to keep its mid-low range rates.

“It is our goal to maintain our current rates as long as possible,” said McMillan. “The costs of running an operation increase and taxes increase, so customers will have to be understanding when the time comes that we can no longer operate at our current rates. They are lower than most in the province, when inevitable cost increases happen we are proud of that fact and will remain a cost-effective organization.”

Over 40 years, Hydro Ottawa has developed from a small business with many technical difficulties to one of the most reliable hydro producers in the country. The company prides itself on the high satisfaction ratings it receives from customers and will not rest until the unsatisfied eight percent are happy.

Reliable grids and speedy repair teams have helped keep Hydro Ottawa’s outage numbers and duration lengths to a minimum. Hydro One, the province’s largest hydro producer has a lot to learn from the small municipal-owned power authorities.

Customer dissatisfaction number are rising with the larger companies and residents of places serviced by Hydro One are more likely than those serviced by Hydro Ottawa to look towards other sources of energy.

Into the future, Hydro Ottawa’s focus remains on its customers.

“Our client numbers could grow but without making our customers happy, we would be another big company looking to make money,” said Finch-Dawson. “We aren’t as large as other providers but, we do our best to ensure what area we do service is happy enough to keep hydro out of their mind.”

 

 

Molly Hanzidiakou

Upon walking out of her apartment, Heather Romanow isn’t in the place she wanted to be. Here, in Ottawa, Ont. she walks down busy streets without a single wave or greeting. She longs for the simple smile and “good morning” that can be heard back home in Dartmouth, N.S.

“I remember thinking, ‘I just want to go home,’” said Romanow.

Romanow moved from her home in Dartmouth 13 years ago. Coming from a military family, her father’s job caused Romanow and her family to move to Ottawa once he reached a certain rank.

Romanow didn’t initially make the move with her family. In 1999, her family started their new life in Ottawa but she stayed at home to begin her first year at university.

However, this was shorted lived.

“I ended up getting relatively sick,” said Romanow. “I had strep throat for about six months. It wouldn’t go away and the health care isn’t so awesome there, so my parents dragged me against my will to Ottawa. But it was to have access to better physicians so I understood.”

So, Romanow packed her things and moved to the capital.

Romanow, like many other Canadians, have moved between provinces at some point during their life. Interprovincial migration is a regular occurrence seen in Canada. Last year alone, over 613,000 people changed provinces.

Of those people, about 68,300 of them moved to Ontario. And these noticed it wasn’t like where they came from.

Before her move to Ottawa, Ont. Romanow had some ideas of what to expect.

“I had heard a lot about Ottawa being cold,” she said. “What I knew about it was that it was a very transient city. It had workers coming and going so it’s not the certain place you make friends who you have forever.”

She did look forward to the job opportunities that she would encounter in Ottawa. With the significant difference between minimum wage at Nova Scotia and Ontario, this would be a plus.

However, the idea of moving still worried her.

“I wouldn’t be the same. Nowhere is the same as the east coast but it feels like Ontario and specifically Ottawa is the most not the same,” said Romanow.

Once settled in Ottawa, unfortunately everything Romanow was concerned about was true.

“Here I find people look at their feet when their walking or have headphones in or have their phone to their ear. You don’t have to interact with them,” she said. “Whereas at home, when you pass by someone you look up, smile and acknowledged their existence opposed to keeping to their little space and not let other people invade it. The concept of personal space or personal interaction is very different.”

Because of this, it took Romanow a while to transition her life from home.

Years later, she understands that people here are different than the ones at home. Even if they don’t talk to people on the street, Romanow is comfortable with herself to do it.

“If you ask me where home is, it’s instantly Dartmouth. If you ask me where I see myself in five years I will have told you for the past 13 years that I see myself at home,” said Romanow.

What’s stopping Romanow is her family and career.

With two young children, Romanow and her partner need to plan the best time to make to drastic move. Schooling and taking them away from the friends they would have made is something to consider.

Her job is also important. She works as a research coordinator with the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. Here she works on many projects, one of which is to find a treatment for people with chronic pain.

“If I stayed at home there is a very high likely hood that I wouldn’t have done anything or gone anywhere,” she said. “I have quite a few years of work available in Ottawa and I can’t same the same thing if we were to move back.”

In 2012, about 18,000 people moved away from Nova Scotia. Many of these people did so to find employment.

Nova Scotia’s unemployment rate as of Nov. 2013 was 8.8 percent. This is not too bad in relation to other provinces in Canada.

However, the problem doesn’t seem to be unemployment, it’s having a career and becoming success in that field.

Similar to Romanow’s move to Ottawa, Adam Casey, a 20-year-old student in the city, noticed a major difference.

Casey moved from Cole Harbour, N.S, just 10 km from where Romanow was living in Dartmouth, to Ottawa.

Like Romanow, his father was in the military and in 2009 was posted to Ottawa.

“I find it’s a lot nicer in Cole Harbour and much more friendly,” said Casey. “It’s more of a country and not as much of a city which I prefer. The view is amazing; it’s not flat like Ontario.”

Another former east coast resident, Stephanie Dawe moved from Newfoundland to Ontario.

Moving from Marrystown, N.L. to Ottawa, Ont. in 1991, Dawe came to find employment.

“The town I grew up in didn’t have steady work as it was mainly seasonal work,” said Dawe. “I grew up in a town that had a fish plant so fishery was one of the main sources of income.”

It Marrystown, it was normal for people to move away to find work and build their career.

In 2012, about 12,000 people moved out of Newfoundland and to another province. With the unemployment rate being the highest in the country, 12.3 percent, it doesn’t leave Newfoundlanders with much of a choice.

After completing one year at university and three years at nursing school, Dawe knew she had to leave her home in order to find work.

“It’s silly, but my boyfriend at the time and I chose Ottawa because he had a friend that lived there. That’s the only reason. I had no family there and knew no one,” she said.

Once in the city, the infrastructure took Dawe by surprise.

“I moved from a small town to this large city. I remember seeing the 416 highway was a big deal for me and very different,” said Dawe.

Even going to school in St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland was not comparable to what Dawe saw in Ottawa.

Working at the Ottawa hospitals was a change for her as well. With more patients and a larger more challenging working environment, it was a new experience for Dawe.

“I wouldn’t go back to Newfoundland at this point because if I went back, to get to where I am now, I’d have to work my way up again,” said Dawe. “Three years ago I looked into moving back home, but the work isn’t comparable.

“Notice how I say ‘Back home,’” she pointed out. “That’s one thing you’ll find with Newfoundlanders and other people from the east coast; we consider where we grew up home. I’ve spent more time in Ottawa than I have in Newfoundland. I left when I was 18 and I’ve been living here since 1991, so I’ve actually lived here longer than I did at home. But, I still call it home.”

This is very similar to Romanow’s view of coming from Nova Scotia. Although both have a new home and have been there for over a decade, home is not in Ottawa.

But unlike Romanow, she doesn’t long to go back home.

“Ever since I’ve moved here I’ve never had a second thought of going back. So when I moved here, I made that decision to live here and embrace it,” she said.

Dawe and her two children have made trips back home. Her oldest daughter started attending Memorial University of Newfoundland this past September.

“At home everybody knows your business and wants to know how you are. That was one big difference here,” said Dawe. “I just didn’t find people were interested in how you were, who you are, what your life was like. Initially, nobody ever got personal with you.”

It is not only people from the east coast that find Ottawa is not a friendly city. People from the West seem to have more smiles as well.

Christina Lachmann grew up in Ottawa. Up until 2005, this city was all she knew.

However, after working at the Canadian Bank Note for many years and not enjoying it, she quit and moved to Calgary, Ala. all in the matter of two weeks.

Lachmann rented an apartment on her own. She found employment within the first two weeks.

In Nov. 2013, the unemployment rate in Alberta was the lowest of all provinces. With only 4.2 percent of the population without jobs, Lachmann was one of many who were able to find a career upon arrival.

“For a while I wondered why everyone was so much friendlier than in Ottawa,” said Lachmann. “Then I realized it’s a training city. They hosted the Olympics so trained people and every year with the Stampede. It’s the largest outdoor rodeo in North America so they have to train people to be friendly and deal with tourists.”

However, after seven and a half years living what she thought was finally her grownup life she was looking for, Lachmann moved back to Ottawa after a marriage divorce.

“It was so different there. People were nicer. I had two children and a great job. I had a life and coming back to where I spent all of my childhood wasn’t what I wanted,” said Lachmann.

This past year, about 61,800 people moved out of Alberta for another province.

With her arrival back in Ottawa, it has been hard for Lachmann find a job she wanted.

“Ottawa is great but I find I’m more limited in job opportunities because I don’t speak French,” she said. “When I moved back, I knew my career would never go anywhere because of this.”

Lachmann took French classes all throughout high school and college but it still limited her.

After taking human resources in school and learning French, she has what she needed to land a job when she first lived in Ottawa. However, after applying to a different sector in her field at the bank, the company out sourced it. She did not have the qualifications.

“I’ll probably never have a proper career, or the one I wanted now that I’m back here,” said Lachmann. “Ottawa is a place where people find employment, but it’s getting harder. This makes me not want to stay here and try another province.”

(To read a version of the story with graphics, please click here.)

Web Sources:
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/lfss01b-eng.htm
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/labr79-eng.htm
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/91-215-x/2012000/ct004-eng.htm
http://www.cjrs-rcsr.org/archives/22-3/Finnie.pdf

By Megan DeLaire

Canada is a nation whose popularity on the world stage rests on its morals and humanitarian reputation. However, while our nation’s history of domestic human rights abuses isn’t explicity taught in our schools or abroad, its repercussions are highly visible on the streets of our capital city where homeless Inuit people huddle.

The Inuit are the indigenous people of Canada’s northern territories. Nunavut, declared a distinct  territory in 1999,  is home to the most Inuit people in Canada. The highest concentration of Inuit outside of Nunavut is none other than our nation’s shining capital, Ottawa.

Where are Ottawa’s Inuit? The Inuit are a young demographic, with an average age of 22 compared to the national average age of 40. So they’re mostly in Ottawa’s universities and colleges right? Or maybe they’re working retail in malls like the Rideau Centre or the St. Laurent Centre.

The reality is that Inuit people in Ottawa are highly underrepresented in most areas, except on the street.
While Ottawa contains the highest population of Inuit people outside of Nunavut, Inuit only account for around two per cent of the city’s population. While Inuit are an underrepresented segment of the city’s population, they account for a large proportion of clients at urban homeless shelters like Shepherds of Good Hope.

“There’s a disproportionate amount of aboriginals in the shelter system compared to just living in the city of Ottawa,” said Stephen Bartolo, senior manager of transitional housing programs at Shepherds of Good Hope.
Bartolo said that Inuit people comprise almost 25 per cent of the downtown shelter’s population, and over 50 per cent of the population of its harm reduction program.

Shepherds of Good Hope’s  harm reduction program is a managed alcohol program which Bartolo said deals with most chronically hopeless alcoholics in ottawa: one to two per-cent of most addicted alcoholics, people who, if not in the program, will end up in hospital rooms and police cells nightly.
Participants in this program are medically assessed and administered a carefully measured doses of alcohol through the day to keep dangerous withdrawal symptoms at bay. These are the places in Ottawa where an Inuit presence is strong.

“I think the unfortunate reality is of our aboriginal population in our shelter system there is a very high correlation to addiction and trauma issues in terms of being the two predominant reasons that they’re ending up in the shelter system,” Bartolo said.

Inuit people often travel to Ottawa for relief: either in the form of advanced medical treatments not available in Nunavut, or to escape the hard reality of life in Canada’s northern territories.

Although Ottawa has always been easier to access than more southern and western Canadian cities, the city’s relationships with the Inuit intensified in the last 15 to 20 years. In the 1990s, patients previously flown from Nunavut to Montreal began to be flown to Ottawa to be treated for serious chronic illnesses like cancer.

Larga-Baffin Centre, a rest centre in Ottawa, was set up to house Inuit people specifically from Nunavut while they stayed in Ottawa for treatment at its hospitals. While Inuit people from other northern communities also travel to Ottawa for healthcare, Larga-Baffin only admits Nunavut Inuit. Still, these comprise a majority of the Inuit population of Ottawa, and this relocation of Nunavut Inuit to Ottawa for treatment has been responsible for a large increase in Ottawa’s Inuit population.

“This is where they would come from the North for their medical appointments,” Bartolo said. “That is by far the number one factor for the increasing population.”
Still more Inuit come to Ottawa to be nearer to relatives who have already relocated here. While not every Inuit person who comes to the capital city comes for medical treatment, Ottawa has become a gathering place for Inuit as people seeking treatment have chosen to stay here and their relatives have followed. Still others come to Ottawa expecting excitement and opportunity.

An Inuit woman known as Taina moved to Ottawa in 1989 for a paid vacation through her government job as a secretary in Iqaluit. She came with her daughters, two and 14-years-old, to see her sister, and never returned to Nunavut. She now resides at The Oaks, a Shepherds of Good Hope institution on Merivale Road after two decades of intermitten alcoholism, homelessness and shelter life.

Like many others, Taina believed a permanent move to Ottawa would be beneficial for her and her children. She now wishes to warn others against it.

“They think it’s probably exciting when it’s really not. If you don’t have a place to go right away you’re lost already, I mean really lost,” said Taina. “You don’t know where to go, you don’t know anybody, nobody smiles.”
“I really do not want to see a lot of my relatives here because they might become homeless.”
Taina does not personally know anyone who has moved to Ottawa as a result of seeking medical treatment here. She recalls that her newphew, eight years her senior, moved here when she was eight-years-old. Other relatives followed suit.

For Taina and her relatives, ill-prepared moves to Ottawa combined with culture shock and the sudden abundance of alcohol created the perfect storm for years of self-destruction and homelessness ultimately ending in tragedy.
“There’s no liquor store up in north Iqaluit. All of a sudden we come down here, everything’s so readily available,” said Taina. “A lot of people become homeless out there because they can not stop drinking, like me. I was living downtown for about four long, homeless years.”

Still, in spite of years of homelessness, Taina will not return to Iqaluit and considers her life in Ottawa an improvement.”I used to have a bad, bad life in Iqaluit,” Taina said. “I’m not going back. Only to bury my others, if they don’t come here to bury me.”

While it’s easy to point to substance abuse and poor planning as the reasons many Inuit people become homeless in Ottawa, to do so is to ignore the complex fundamental forces not only driving Inuit people to Ottawa, but to violence and addiction.

“There’s a lack of housing in the North so they think that the city has housing, which they do,” said Tina Ford, a housing support worker with Mamisarvik Healing Centre in Ottawa. “But right now there’s a lack of affordable housing for low-income people and so a lot of people are ending up at shelters.”

“The barriers are having addiction, having poverty and being new to the city.”

A report titled INUIT HOUSING: the personal and social dimensions of a chronic housing shortage and overcrowding conducted a case study of Cape Dorset, Nunavut and produced revealing statistics. Of 91 households studied, 47 per cent were over crowded, with 13 people living in a two-bedroom residence in the worst case. The study compares this with a national average rate of overcrowding of seven per cent.

Because of northern Canada’s cold climate, people spend much of their time indoors, sharing very small spaces with often five or more people.

When asked how having fewer people in their homes could help alleviate personal issues, 30 per cent of the study’s respondants said that less overcrowding would result in less of “People being angry,” while 19.5 cited “Problems with school,” 17.1 responded with “Depression,” and 14.6 per cent said less overcrowding would result in less violence.
Nunavut is a poor place, lacking employment, housing and funding for healthcare and other social welfare.

However, Juliet Kotierk a housing support worker for Mamisarvik Healing Centre in Ottawa cites issues which run even much more deeply than Nunavut’s current struggles with poverty. Kotierk traces the problems of today’s urban and rural Inuit to the settlement of the North by Europeans in the last century. Traditional Inuit culture is very specific to the climate in which the Inuit live, and thus deeply, deeply rooted in the peoples’ identity.

The disruption of their traditional livelihoods, naming conventions, language and community as well as unthinkable physical, mental and sexual abuse have led to a decades long identity crisis. This crisis has culminated in violence, depression, and substance abuse.

“In some of the settlements their dogs, their sled dogs for survival were shot by the RCMP,” Kotierk said. “Which is a big trauma and of course leads to a lot of distrust of the RCMP.”
Kotierk was born in Britain but lived in Nunavut for several years.  Her husband, children and grandchildren are Inuit. She states that Inuit people used to have to keep leather tags stamped with numbers, because government officians couldn’t understand their naming systems. Her husband has one.

The Canadian government enforced having a family name and a first name, as per western custom. The issue of naming became confused and convoluted. They had been given names they didn’t use, which made record keeping difficult.
Furthermore, Kotierk explained, an Inuit person’s Inuit name is not meant to be a family name but a special name to indicate reincarnation, a concept very important to the Inuit. For decades officials have been enforcing the use of those names as family names. Years of tampering with Inuit names, which are sacred and very familiar to the Inuit, have led to deep rooted issues with identity.

In residential schools there was abuse, there was the forced forgetting of native language, and destruction of Inuit culture and identity before children were sent home.

“Of course when they went back they spoke english or french and they had forgotten their language,” Kotierk said. “And they didn’t know how to parent, maybe they’d been abused and everything. So there’s a lot of trauma over these generations that hasn’t been healed.”

Kotierk argues that as a result, the Inuit suffered from low confidence and loss of power, and became angry. Kotierk and others, including Bartolo and Ford have strongly suggested that violent and self destructive behaviour in Inuit people is the result of intergenerational abuse.

Kotierk believes that healing is one of the keys to preventing future homelessness and substance abuse.
Unfortunately for the people who need them, services like Mamisarvik Healing Centre where she works are experiencing major cuts to funding due to the federal government’s most recent fiscal budget. At the end of the year the centre will lose almost $1 million.

“We’re really struggling next year. We’ve had to restructure and we’re really hoping that we can survive because people need that healing,” said Kotierk.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued an official apology to Canada’s First Nations people in 2008 for the use of residential schools. In 2012, four years later, his government made massive cuts to the National Aboriginal Health Organization, responsible for organizations like Mamisarvik attempting to heal decades of dysfunction and abuse. While the Inuit live mostly in Canada’s North, so many of their struggles begin and end in our nation’s capital.

MILLENNIALS, UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE POST-SECONDARY HANGOVER

STEPHEN DUCHARME

DATA FEATURE

DEC. 13, 2013

1590 Words

 http://journal.edumedia.ca/duch0078/WordPress/

[What follows is my data feature on youth unemployment and education. This feature is meant to be presented in web form, on a four-tab format meant to segment the information and stories. In this format, a bold header will indicate a new tab]

[For David, my graphic data presentation has been compiled using the following sources. For the jpeg Total Population of Workforce with University Degree in Ontario, the information was created using the labour force survey conducted by Statistics Canada. CANSIM Table 281-0209, located at the following site…

http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/pick-choisir?lang=eng&p2=33&id=2820209

 

The data for these graphs were first streamlined on the Stats Canada site, removing unnecessary columns before being exported to excel. Pivot tables were used to compare the differences in identified employment between 2003-2012 before that data was recompiled and installed into Adobe Illustrator for presentation.

 

The fusion table, Growth of Post-Secondary Graduates from 1990-2012 by Province is available at this link…

 

https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1SbxuLqwsipQLzBGzZYVvglTiT4dQ4R9pNny6c2Q – map:id=3

The table compares completed post-secondary, in any form (diplomas, degrees, certificates), in 1990 to 2012. Provinces are heat-mapped to indicate the greatest growth. The information was compiled from the same Stats Canada table (CANSIM 281-0209) but using different variables compiled originally in Excel.]

  

Millennials, Unemployment and the Post-Secondary Hangover

 

WHO ARE MILLENNIALS?

What does it mean to be a young adult of the up and coming generation? Surveys conducted nationally point to a generation at odds with the working world. The education of adults in their twenties is at an all time high yet unemployment in their post-secondary lives is rampant.

Part-time employment, volunteer work and internships are filling a period of life that has traditionally been the beginning of their income earning lives.

Millennials, as they’ve be coined in the media, people in their mid to late twenties are dealing with crippling debt, multiple degrees and no jobs to show for it. What does this say of our country? Where is our society going? These questions are defining our era.

A profile of three individuals from three very different walks of life, along with statistical data, will showcase the problems of our countries inheritors. Failures, confusion and some success stories point to a flawed but enormously complex generation that struggles with an identity after their post-secondary tenures.

ERICAS STORY

 

Erica Walker is sick and eats a quick meal before starting her shift at a local restaurant. She has been on the move all day, coming to the restaurant after a full day substitute teaching at an elementary school.

She also has another job bartending at the Canadian Tire Place to make ends meet.

Erica’s employment situation is a growing trend among many people her age. According to the Statistics Canada labour force survey, Ontario has seen a 45 percent growth in part-time only employment among young adults with university education since 2003.

“It’s exhausting,” says Walker. “I could be up at 6 a.m., teach until 3:30 p.m. to be at my other job for 4:30 p.m. and be there until 1:30 a.m. Repeat.”

Still, the fact she has a substitute-teaching job makes her feel fortunate. She looks down at the table and then around the restaurant.

“I don’t hate this place as much as I used too because I was working all day every day here. Now I’m only working some nights here and spending my days teaching.”

Her mindset is based on first hand experience within Ontario’s competitive teaching market. According to internal polls by Ontario’s College of Teachers published in a 2011 report, 67 percent of teachers entering the job market are either unemployed or underemployed.

That figure has grown over 30 percent since 2006.

Furthermore, the polls only take into account teachers in their first year, meaning the annual tally is exponentially growing as teachers try to weather this job shortage with new competition entering the market every year.

It took Walker three years to get her on-call teaching job. While feeling fortunate, those extra years took their toll on her psyche and her ideals of a career.

“I was pretty deflated,” says Walker. “After being told growing up that if you got a university degree you get the better jobs, that whole ideal, and then none of that panning out.”

At 26, Walker already has two degrees completed through Windsor and Brock University, along with supplementary modules for teaching she continually upgrades through Queens.

She also has at least a few years navigating the substitute lists before she can even be considered for a full-time position.

She is also dealing with the debt of her education.

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to work out. Walker is concerned about her future, and feels the pressure of her parent’s generation.

“Where I’m at, at 26, is five years behind where my parents were at my age,” explains Walker. “My brother was born. My parents had a child and a house.”

“You want at least what your parents had. They want you to have more. This generation is stuck. I’m not going to be able to build what my parents had in the time that they built it.”

She finds irony in that, in her mind, the same generation as her parents is preventing her from moving into full-time employment.

“There is a lot of double-dipping,” says Walker. “A lot of them [teachers] retire from their job and come back as supply teachers, which takes away our entry level jobs.”

She mentions there is talk within the union and government to consider a mandatory retirement age, a long-term solution to an immediate problem.

When asked if she feels, at the end of the day, she will enjoy the same quality of life as her parents she provides a quick answer.

“No.”

 

 

TAYLOR’S STORY

 

It’s midnight and Taylor MacLeod thanks her last customer of the night as they leave the bar.

She’s been working at the same establishment all through her tenure at the University of Ottawa, but it’s been a year since she graduated and she’s starting to feel anxious.

“My first goal after I graduated was to travel.” Says MacLeod. “Did I expect to have a career right after I came back? Absolutely not.”

“If I have to do this for a bit I don’t mind, but I would have hoped not to still be here.”

MacLeod, 25 years old, has ambitions to be a detective. She graduated with a Bachelor in Criminology and has applied to the RCMP but with no success.

She now volunteers at the Elizabeth Fry Society of Ottawa for troubled women.

“I do it because I like it, and it looks good on the resume,” she says.

MacLeod is one of many post-university graduates struggling to get a foothold in the workforce. Many supplement their lack of success professionally with volunteer or unpaid internship work.

In Canada, hard statistics on how many millennials opt for this route are non-existent. However, the topic has become a legitimate concern and talking point when discussing the generation.

In a recent interview on CBC Radio’s Ontario Today.  Toronto labour lawyer Andrew Langille estimated there are between 50,000 to 100,000 illegal internships in Ontario every year.

“In the wake of the global economic crisis, many employers took that as a cue to start replacing paid employees with unpaid ones,” said Langille.

People of MacLeod’s age group are the most educated generation to date. According to Vital Sign’s 2012 report, Generation Flux, high school dropout rates are 11 percent in affluent areas.

As well, according to the Statistics Canada’s 2012 Labour Force Survey, over 40 percent of Canadian young adults over 25 have some form of post-secondary education.

As a resource, the academic aptitude of millennials and the current lack of entry level full-time jobs raise the question addressed by Langille of whether or not the generation is being exploited for free labour.

For MacLeod, she feels mislead about the potential job opportunities coming out of university.

“Well I knew I would be going to university in high school and I thought I would get a career right out of university, or maybe a co-op position that would lead to a career,” says MacLeod.

“The job prospects in this day and age are not even close to what my parents had.”

Because of this, MacLeod feels obligated to continue volunteer work until the jobs become available.

MATTHEW’S STORY

 

At 28, Matthew Buttler is well into a career with Ottawa web-startup company Shopify.com.

He got married in the summer and is looking into buying a house. For him, everything is on the right track.

“I’m lucky as hell I have a full-time job,” he says.

His educational background however may leave you confused as to how he ended up as consultant.

“I have a BA in English and Music as a double-major. I also have a diploma in Sonic Design, and after my undergrad I enrolled in a bachelor of education program at Ottawa U,” Buttler explains.

“You have to be practical. I knew I wasn’t going to get anything with just an English degree.”

That practicality extended to open-mindedness when it came to employment. As an e-commerce consultant, Buttler’s success in the private sector has changed his understanding of his youth and the generation to which he belongs.

“We all expected to be smarter than maybe we really are,” he explains.

“We all studied what we were interested in,” says Buttler, referring to fine arts degrees. “We were a bunch of spoiled kids, we did what we wanted to do and our parents foot the bill.”

“Now we are seeing the by-product of that.”

Buttler is reluctant to get into any comparisons of his age group to the unemployment challenges faced over two decades ago.

A university trained literature major and having studied Douglas Coupland’s book, Generation X, Buttler saw broad strokes in similarity but believes the context between the generations is different.

“The overeducated and underpaid thing, yeah that’s true. But they saw the writing on the wall, and you had a labour force develop around the computer boom.”

There is evidence to support his statement. In a comparison of university educated young adults from 1990 to 2012 Canada has seen a 14 percent increase, using Statistics Canada data. Unemployment in 2012 among this group is higher as well than it was in 1990.

‘Soft’ degrees are becoming an argument by some to explain youth unemployment. In a column for the Toronto Star entitled Is there any point in arts degrees, Robin Levinson outlines that practicality and higher learning are perhaps twos different things.

Buttler understands the challenges posed with having such a degree. However enlightening it is, it doesn’t teach any practical skills for the job market. Responsibility for him is the first step.

“It’s our burden to bear.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources for this Feature

 

 

Erica Walker (613-324-2292)

Taylor MacLeod (613-808-1293)

Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey (CANSIM 282-0209)

http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/pick-choisir?lang=eng&p2=33&id=2820209

Levinson, Robin. Is there any point to an arts degree? Toronto Star. Aug 30, 2013.

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2013/08/30/is_there_any_point_to_an_arts_degree.html#

CBC Radio. Ontario Today. Mar 18, 2013.  (Andrew Langille)

http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Canada/Toronto/Audio/ID/2349405033/?page=8&sort=MostPopular

Ontario College of Teachers Survey/Report

http://professionallyspeaking.oct.ca/march_2012/features/now_what.aspx

Vital Signs Report. Generation Flux.

http://www.vitalsignscanada.ca/en/vitalyouth

By looking into the locations of found syringes throughout Ottawa, the biggest question in my mind was the number of syringes found in ward 12, Rideau-Vanier. This area has generally been populated with low-income housing and subsidized housing. In focusing in on this region, I noticed that there were two main clusters of syringe-areas. In doing a little investigating and found that they are currently Business Improvement Areas. This made sense to me as the syringe study came from 2008 and around 2007-2008 there were numerous articles and reports of drug use in the ward.

The purple areas represent the Business Improvement Areas. It seems like these two areas are being heavily focused on for business improvement in the city. This is something I will be looking into further. The dramatic different from this ward to others is staggering and it was probably a wise city improvement plan to  set up Business Improvement Areas in these places.

Pitch: I would like to look into controversy into government investments in the area. Gentrification is when investment into a community by local government results in rapid economic development and other benefits to the community. However, some experts believe that gentrification can result in population migration whereby low-income residents are displaced by higher-income newcomers.

This will take a trip to city hall to request information: the 2012 syringe data, information on property sales from 2008-2012.

So I would like to talk to the current city counselor for Rideau-Vanier, Mathieu Fleury about his plans with these areas: business incentives, types of businesses they are hoping to attract, and employment opportunities for locals.

I would also like to talk to Susanne Valiquet, the executive director of the Business Improvement Areas in Rideau-Vanier. Syringes are more likely to be a causality of a bigger problem, so I would like to ask her what is the need exactly in this area that they are focusing on. On this, I would enquire about the financial plan.

Talking to residents in the area about the improvements being made throughout the past five years would be a worth while conversation. These are the people whose lives they are supposed to be improving after all.  Through talking to locals if they are noticing any shifts in the affluence of the neighbours, and whether the cost of living it is unsustainable.

 

For my data research and manipulation, please see the following link:

Infogr.am presentation on farmers

This map shows the individual polling stations in each of the Ottawa wards. Data found on the City of Ottawa website.

This map shows a heat map of Ottawa’s wards. The darker the shade, the higher percentage of ward voter turnout. Data found on the City of Ottawa website.

With the next municipal election set to take place during October 2014, I’d like to examine voter turnout rates in Ottawa.

I have collected data on the 2010 municipal elections, from the City of Ottawa database. I plan to look at voter turnout percentage rates, how many voting stations there are per ward and the spread of voting stations geographically.

I hope to see if any of these factors have an impact on voter turnout, be it positive or negative. It would make sense that if the closest poll is difficult to access for one reason or another, voters could be deterred. My next step would be to talk to elections officials, to see what changes could be made to rectify any issues that might be uncovered from the data.

This data has shown that even the highest rates of voter turnout in the Ottawa election (52 per cent turnout in the Capital ward) were much lower than the 61.1% federal turnout rate reported by Elections Canada in 2011.

I cite Federal electoral statistics because there aren’t many examples of Ottawa-specific municipal research or reporting on what factors contribute to voter apathy.  Looking at the geographic elements would be the first step in finding ways to increase voter turnout, as it id probably the easier one to rectify.

For example, preceding the 2010 election, Voter Assist terminals were established to make it easier for people with disabilities to vote. However, there were only 168 of these voting stations established throughout the city, meaning they could still be hard to access for the people that needed them.

Further, to fully round out the research I would take into account advanced polling locations and turnouts, and whether they positively impact voter turnout rates. I’d also like to look at municipal turnout rates compared to other Canadian municipalities, to compare and see what initiatives have been successful in increasing the voter turnout rate.

On a Federal level, approximately 50% of eligible voters who did not cast a vote cited “not caring” and “being too busy,” as reasons to abstain from voting.  A follow up assignment might be to see what would need to be done to change these perspectives.

Rattus Norvegicus

The Great Recession may have only lasted from 2008 to 2009, but its effects are still felt today, particularly by the youth.

Vital Signs is a Canada-based community statistics group. In June 2012 they released a comprehensive report examining, among other things, youth unemployment in Canada and the rest of the world. The results, while concerning, should come as no shock to the Millennial Generation.

“I’ve been (job) hunting for the better part of a year and a half, maybe?” said Curtis Kupkee, a 20 year-old Radio Broadcasting student at Algonquin. “As soon as I got out of the second half of theatre at the college, I was like ‘okay, I need money to pay for tuition and everything,’ and I’ve been hunting since then. Twenty, 30 resumes have been sent out, and I think 27 of them have been no response and three of them have been a no – if I’ve been lucky.”

Unfortunately, Kupkee’s story is nothing new. According to the report, the percentage of unemployed Canadian youth in 2012 was resting at 14.8 per cent, more than double the national average of 7.2 per cent.

And just like Kupkee, the youth have not been sitting idly and waiting for the jobs to come to them, no matter how often the media calls them “entitled.” Vital Signs reports that in 2011, 55 000 youth had been job-hunting for a period exceeding six months. That is 14 per cent of all unemployed youth in Canada.

But what about the jobs that are available?

“My first job was at a grocery store in Manotick – it was an Independent grocery store,” said Kupkee. “I was maybe… 18 when I started working there? It was a good job – it was boring, tedious, I was stocking shelves all day – there was nothing too special about it. I haven’t really worked another job since.”

One third of all 25 – 29 year-olds with a diploma will end up moving to a low-skilled occupation when they finish schooling. Despite not fitting into that age bracket, Kupkee is struggling to find even a low-skilled, part-time job.

But is it all doom and gloom?

“I entered the workforce when I was 15,” said Casandra LaNeve, a 20 year-old Child and Youth Worker student at the college.

And where was this job?

“Wendy’s – it was awful.”

To be fair, though, LaNeve’s job-hunting experience was painless compared to Kupkee’s.

“I literally was looking for my job for the first time, I handed in my resume, and they hired me on the spot. It was really easy.” This was the first and only resume she had given out in her search.

However, the report covers this as well. It explains that many jobs available to the youth are “part-time or a series of piecemeal jobs that do not provide benefits or career prospects.”

The workplaces themselves often reflect this dead-end nature. LaNeve’s experience at Wendy’s was typical.

“The first day I got there – I had just turned 15, this was literally my first job, I had never been to any kind of job before,” she explained. “I come in and I’m waiting at the front of the counter, waiting for someone to come see me or something, tell me to come in. I didn’t want to be rude.”

“Someone asks, ‘Why are you standing there?’ I replied, ‘Oh, it’s my first day here, I don’t know what I am supposed to do.’ They yelled, ‘You work here now. You’re allowed to walk back here.’ So the first day I got there, I got in trouble.”

LaNeve feels that this set the tone for the rest of her time working there. She went on to explain that they did not treat their employees well, and that she feels that the work she had to do for Wendy’s was worth much more than her minimum wage paycheque.

While these so-called “student jobs” have traditionally been a sort of necessary step to adulthood, we are beginning to see them disappear as well.

According to the report, “those aged 55+ hold 37%” of all jobs traditionally held by youth. Jobs in establishments such as fast food restaurants, movie theatres, and grocery stores are beginning to be worked by the elderly. And as the report showed, it isn’t because these establishments are unable to find young people to employ.

But what about those who are past this point in their lives? What are the opinions of those who have worked student jobs earlier in life and have since moved on to stable careers and families?

“I’m 50/50, actually,” said Leigh Ann Hayward, 48. Hayward, a Corporate Foods Business Manager and mother of Kupkee, has held numerous steady jobs throughout her life, staying at each one for a decent amount of time.

“I see a lot of – and I’m going to try not to gender-stereotype – I find that the girls seem to be more aggressive and looking for employment,” she continued. “But I think that might be because there are more opportunities for them – retail, when you’re 16, 17, or 18. When you get to hit 19, it’s easier for the females to get a job in a bar.”

“The males tend to sometimes – and I’m not saying this about all of them – want to get the job that they want to do. Let’s say they want to work at EB Games. ‘Well, if I can’t get a job at EB Games, I’m not going to get a job.’

She isn’t wrong. The report shows that the majority – 66 per cent – of long-term unemployed 20-somethings are men.

However, she also shares the view that many of the older generations share – that young people just don’t want to work unpleasant jobs.

“If you really want to get far in life, you need to work hard at it,” she said. “Someone’s not just going to walk up and hand you an $80 000 a year job, it’s not going to happen. Sometimes you’ve got to do crappy jobs. You just don’t get the plum jobs right of school.”

Again, this isn’t wrong – it is very uncommon to get a good-paying job immediately after graduating. But as Vital Signs showed, the 25 – 29 year-old graduates have learned this and are adapting. Of the two-thirds that are not finding low-skill occupations after completing their education, many return to school to increase their job opportunities, though this will often plunge them further into debt.

It may be a little unfair, then, to claim that young people are unwilling to work their way to the top, particularly when even these low-skill jobs are being snatched up by the same generations that criticize the youth for being unemployed, lazy, and entitled.

“Everybody wants experience,” said Marie Agapitos, a 23 year-old Masters of Science in Interdisciplinary Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa. “If you don’t have experience, you can’t get it because everybody wants you to have it.”

Agapitos held her first job when she was 18 – she worked retail at a Rogers store. She left after two years, prompted by management changes “way up the chain.”

“It was just a bunch of things that I didn’t feel like dealing with,” she said of the restrictions placed upon the workplace.

After spending a significant amount of time unemployed, she was later able to find a job working as an administrative assistant at the university.

“It’s nice to be in an office environment and not have to work shift work,” she said.

However, the reason she got the job was because she knew the hiring manager.

“The woman that hired me – I’ve known her since I was 12.”

This is by no means wrong or somehow immoral – after all, when there are so few jobs available, you do what is necessary to find employment. Agapitos, having graduated the psychology program in 2012 and continuing into her current program last September, will have plenty of bills to pay when she is finished her education.

It does raise questions, however. Why is a university graduate with a medical specialty only able to find a job through connections she made when she was 12?

In 2008 – just before the recession hit – youth unemployment was sitting at 7.4 per cent, a mere 0.2 per cent higher than the current national average. Over the course of one year, that percentage doubled, with roughly 229 500 youth aged 15 – 24 lost their jobs. Those jobs accounted for more than half of all jobs lost during the recession.

Of interest is the fact that while the youth were facing massive job losses, employment among those aged 55 and older increased by 83 100 – right in the middle of the very same recession.

So while the youth were losing their jobs, the elderly were gaining them. This phenomenon could certainly justify resentment.

But does it?

“I guess I don’t hold it against them personally,” said LaNeve. “I do get mad at the older generation because it’s like, ‘Get out of our jobs.’ But at the same time… I also kinda get it. I don’t think everyone really planned for (the economy) to turn out the way it is.”

While she is upset at the prospect of elderly people taking jobs traditionally held by the youth, she also understands what they are going through – life has gotten more expensive in recent years.

“Everything is getting more expensive – people’s pensions and their retirement plans aren’t really ready for all this,” she said. “Gas has gone up, food as gone up, rent has gone up, everything. People who planned to retire at a certain age can’t now because they don’t have the money to.”

Understandable, of course, but this is not the case for all elderly.

“My mother-in-law is going to be 67 this year,” said Hayward. “She works for the government, so she’s got a wicked pension. She’s planned for her retirement, she’s invested wisely. She can afford to retire. For her, it will most likely be a boredom thing that will put her back to work within a year.”

Granted, Hayward’s mother-in-law works in consulting and would likely return to that, resulting in no jobs lost for the youth. But this boredom – this need to keep one’s self busy – can often lead to the already strained job market for youth becoming even more strained.

So how far will the youth extend their understanding?

“If it’s just someone getting a job out of boredom, like if they have financial stability or if they don’t have to worry about money… I’m not as fond of that, obviously,” said Kupkee. “If they’re doing it because they’re bored, then… why are you doing that? Please stop.”

So what can we do to fix all of this? Other generations faced struggles – the Great Depression, wars, and social change. Vital Signs feels that this struggle is unique, however, in that we have never faced such a combination of obstacles – “the requirement for post-secondary, the high cost of education and housing, the debt load, demographic shift, prevalence of technology and all its implications for physical and mental health, and the delays in life transitions are unprecendented.”

However, the report also states that Canada’s youth are becoming more involved in direct action, believing that to be a more effective way of initiating change than joining a political party. The Occupy movement, KONY 2012, and the student protests in Montreal are all such examples.

Perhaps the winds of change are blowing in Canada.

Perhaps it is time we take things into our hands.

All information used for my article came from Vital Signs, a community-based statistics group. They published their findings on their website in a report titled #Generation Flux. The statistics they provided and the charts I produced help provide context to my story. They allow a visual representation of the information given in the story, communicating the ideas in a much clearer fashion. They allow the reader to literally see the trends explained in my feature.