The city has lost over 8 million dollars of provincial funding for the Early Child program this year. To be able to qualify for the funding again the municipality will have to fulfill a list of requirements, such as the inclusion of children with special needs in the activities provided by the program.

Nathalia Padavoni has two small children and has taken them to a playgroup since 2016.  She goes to a family centre that is part of the Ontario Early Years Child and Family Centres program at least three times a week. “They have many toys that the kids can play with, they teach music, offer gym time, and I see my children developing new skills. Arthur took his first steps there”, she says.

Padovani decided to stay home while her husband works because paying for a daycare would take most of her salary. “We did the math and figured out it was better for me to stay with the kids. I do not know what I would do if the playgroup did not exist, especially during the winter”.

Other than playgroups for children up to 6-years-old, Ontario Early Years Child and Family Centres offers workshops for parents and caregivers. The program is free of charge and the idea is to provide an environment where families can do activities together. Some of the subjects discussed in the workshops are early child development, parenting skills and pregnancy. At the moment, not all the centres offer the same services, but that is about to change.

In 2016, Education Minister Mitzi Hunter, announced the creation of a new system, which will unify all the services provided. This way, all available services will be accessible in any community family centre.

Before deciding to merge the services, the city organized a series of engagement sessions held with communities around the province to identify priority areas for action. Community representatives pointed, for example, to the lack of public awareness about the Ontario early and child care system and the need to make the services more accessible.

From that point, the city was able to make a list of requirements for the municipalities to follow. They emphasized public awareness, by creating an online system where parents can access information, services and tools. They also developed an approach that will guarantee that culture sensitivity and diversity are built in the activities offered in the program.

To guarantee Ottawa will fulfill the requirements for the new system, the city will now be fully responsible for funding the program and will also be in charge of running it. In the past, most of the funding came from the province. This change represents a 700 per cent increase in the amount of money the city will spend with the program in 2018 in comparison to the previous year. Once the city makes the changes requested by the province they will be eligible for provincial funding again.

None of the councilors in the Social Services committee, in charge for the program, were available to comment on the transition phase or the budget increase. According to the City of Ottawa media relations, the municipality is making all the adjustments this year in order to qualify for provincial funding in 2019.

Media relations forwarded a short email from Jason Sabourin, manager of Children’s Services. “This transition plan has ensured that local service providers will continue to offer the same programming in 2018, while the city continues to work with community partners to develop the new integrated Early ON system in 2019”, Sabourin said.

Padovani says that she feels insecure hearing that changes will be made and not knowing what type of changes are coming. “I hope they will not cut any service,” she said.

In June, the city will present a report to Council with an update on the transition phase.

The Ottawa Police Service is struggling to contain volatile overtime costs that are putting it under enormous financial pressure, an analysis of their 2018 budget reveals.

The $2.1 million increase in 2018 represents a change of over 25 per cent compared to last year and makes up almost a quarter of the overall budget increase for the police department. To stay financially sound, the department has had to defer contributions to its capital funds, relying instead on debt to finance those projects.

According to their own forecasts, the police logged a $3.1 deficit through overtime costs alone in 2017.

The troubles are specific to the police department: neither the paramedic nor fire services have experienced similar difficulties with their overtime costs in recent years.

The Police Services Board, the civilian body that oversees the force, is well aware of the issue. Chair Eli El-Chantiry said in an email — he could not be reached in person or over the phone — that “there will always be a need for overtime in policing.” The budget increase, he said, is meant to “better reflect actual expenditures.”

According to a statement from the finance section of the Ottawa Police Services, who also did not give an in-person or phone interview, much of the increase in costs comes from how overtime is actually logged. Prior to 2015, costs in the form of lieu time were not counted in overtime.

Matt Skof, president of Ottawa’s police union, said the use of lieu time should never have existed as it was not governed by the collective agreement between the union and the service.

The police’s finance section also said that the “drastic changes” to the overtime budgets of some sections within the force were better reflections of the actual situation. The communications, 911 and switchboard team, for example, has had over $527,000 added to their budget, an increase of 542% over last year. Frontline services, meanwhile, have seen their overtime budget bumped by $586,000, a 93% increase.

Matt Skof said that overtime costs have hit the communications centre and the frontline forces particularly hard because they both have minimum staffing levels that must be met. Even so, he said, the use of overtime to fill those gaps was unsustainable.

“We’ll inevitably, eventually, have to grieve the treatment of the members there because they are relying on overtime for their baseline of staffing and that’s not acceptable,” Skof said.

“Not to mention it’s fiscally irresponsible,” he added.

Too much overtime staffing increases fatigue in the force, making the lives of individual officers more difficult and increasing burnout rates, Skof said. And using overtime to make up for staffing shortages only increases those problems.

“You’re chasing your tail, trying to keep up.”

Still, Skof thinks that the increase in overtime budgets is the right move. He agreed with the city’s assessment that the budget is a “more accurate reflection of the experience over prior years.” But, he said, it doesn’t do anything to address the underlying issue of lack of staffing.

“Theoretically, if they had an appropriately staffed organization, they wouldn’t have the same need to have the budget for overtime,” Skof said.

In his statement, Eli El-Chantiry pointed to two things the police and city are doing to cut overtime costs: automating the tracking of how overtime is used and adding more officers. According to El-Chantiry, the force will complete its plan to hire 75 new officers in 2018, and is expecting to hire 30 more per year in the next three years.

The Ottawa police force will spend only 0.4 per cent of their salary budget to hire 23 more officers in a year slammed by increased gun violence. The numbers come from an analysis of the city’s 2018 budget and information released by the Ottawa Police Service. The additions close out the service’s three-year plan to boost the number of officers on the force.

Though Ottawa saw 13 shootings in January alone, the service could not confirm whether the new hires would directly combat heightened gunfire. The force claimed a formal request through Ontario’s freedom of information law was needed to reveal further details.

However, the Ottawa Police Service insist they are getting boots on the ground to address the issue.

“Out of the 75 hired over the past three years, 25 of them will work on priority areas. And right now, that priority is addressing gun violence,” said the service’s media relations manager Carole Lavigne over e-mail.

The service also said  three officers hired for events in 2017 would be assigned to full-time status this year, in addition to the 23 new officers. The new members will likely be added throughout the year and do not include officers hired to replace departing staff.

For some, this is not enough. Ottawa police association president Matt Skof believes the force is still short 200 to 300 officers.

“We are still in a position where we do not have sufficient resources to both patrol the city of Ottawa and do proactive policing,” Skof said.

He thinks the amount of time spent on calls, a rising population and the city’s failure to funnel more money into the service are contributing to a severely understaffed police service. In turn, Skof says there is “absolutely” a correlation between low officer numbers and increased gun violence.

“They’re simply shoring up a very depleted police department,” he said.

According to a draft budget report from late last year, the Ottawa Police Service plans to up its annual additions to 30 new officers a year.  Starting in 2019 and ending in 2021, the report lists guns and gangs as one of the areas that will benefit from extra staff.

But Coun. Eli El-Chantiry, chair of the Ottawa Police Service board, says the problem is “not a policing issue but rather a community issue.” Over e-mail, El-Chantiry explained that the “root causes” of gun violence need to be addressed and stressed that police were merely one part of the solution.

“As much as the community needs the police, the police need the community,” he said.

Meanwhile, anxious Ottawa residents are getting caught in the bureaucratic crossfire.

“Bullets travel a long way. If there are shots that are being fired, 300 metres away, 400 metres away, something very tragic could happen. And that’s what people are concerned about,” said John Marshall, president of the Canterbury Community Association

Marshall said his Alta Vista community has seen more gang-related gun play in the past two months than they ever have before.

“It’s something that’s just smacked us in the face,” he said.

Marshall wants police and other city officials to do more about the increased violence, but said the service has attended local meetings to keep residents informed. He believes it’s simply a matter of time before someone gets hurt.

“If gangs want to shoot each other in the legs, it’s a terrible thing. But it’s not confined to them. Bullets keep going.”

In the scariest moments of their lives, Ottawans may not have to wait as long for help. To address increasing wait times for emergency aid, the Ottawa Paramedic Service will hire 14 paramedics and buy one new ambulance in 2018 with the $4.6 million increase to their annual budget. This is a 5.6 per cent increase in funds from 2017, according to the 2018 City operating budget.

Including the 2018 additions, Ottawa will have hired 50 paramedics and added six ambulances to their fleet since January 2016—a nearly 12.5 per cent increase in staff from 2015 numbers.

The 2018 budget is just the latest in a series of hikes that the city has made to try and keep up with increasing 911 calls and an aging population.

‘THE GREY TSUNAMI’

Darryl Wilton, president of the Ottawa Paramedics Association, thinks that the city needs to be looking to the future. “We know that our population is increasing, and we also know that our aging population is increasing. That’s what we call the ‘grey tsunami.’”

At the current rate, the city’s paramedics will have a hard time keeping up with increasing calls from the Boomer generation, Wilton says. Two thirds of 911 calls for paramedics in Ottawa currently come from people 55 or over. “The reality is that [as it stands], we can’t respond to all of their 911 calls,” said Wilton.

911 CALLS RISING STEADILY

Call volumes have been increasing substantially since 2013 but Wilton says  budget makers are looking at old numbers.

“Funding for paramedics is always between two and five years behind,” Wilton said. “The paramedics of 2018 are responding to a call volume from several years ago.”

WAIT TIMES MAY BE WRONG BENCHMARK

Ottawa paramedics are required to reach 75 per cent of their life-threatening calls within eight minutes. However, in 2016, an audit of the Ottawa Paramedic Service found that the service was just shy of the goal. Meaning, for more than one out of four people calling in a life-threatening situation, they had to wait more than 8 minutes for paramedic attention.

But paramedics warn against judging the efficacy of the service based only on wait times. “You have to be very careful with any benchmark,” said Deschamps. “It’s not only about that target, we’re not going to be blinded by it,” he said.

Instead, Wilton suggests looking at other benchmarks like patient outcomes, though, these figures are not currently being reliably tracked.

Wait times are of particular concern for Ottawans in more rural communities like Carp and West Carleton. In 2017, the city redeployed their ambulance fleet to be operated out of one central location: 2465 Don Reid Dr. in the Heron Gate area of Ottawa, meaning that it can take longer for ambulances to reach calls outside the Greenbelt.

Though this means that eight rural ambulance stations are now without a dedicated ambulance, Coun. Eli El-Chantiry (West Carleton-March) is not worried about service to rural wards like his. “I have been assured that this change is neither a reduction in change nor a substantive change to the current […] model,” he said in an emailed statement.

Coun. El-Chantiry points to replacement programs like the Community Paramedic Program—a roving paramedic that does preventative house calls to reduce unnecessary 911 calls—as a suitable answer to the relocation of the main fleet.

Both Wilton and Deschamps say that it may be time to reimagine Ottawa’s paramedic service. While it is currently classified as an “emergency service,” they argue that paramedicine ought to be considered as a health care service instead. This would mean shifting more support behind services like the preventative Community Paramedic Program, in an effort to cut unnecessary 911 calls.

“We don’t view ourselves as a response agency anymore. If we were, there is no way we could keep up: we would be chasing our own tail,” said Wilton.

People who depend on buses in the Ottawa area now face a 2.5 per cent increase in the city’s 2018 proposed budget which, according to an analysis of the budget numbers posted online, would be the fifth consecutive year prices have increased by at least this rate.

The City’s long-range transit plan, approved in 2011, says transit rates will increase over the next 30 years to pay for the transit system, which now includes new light rail transit. OCTranspo will also buy 80 new busses this year for an additional $50 million.

But the City faces criticism for these fee increases.

Trevor Haché, a board member with the Healthy Transportation Coalition, said transit-goers are “not seeing the same 2.5 per cent increase in their social assistance rates or hourly wages.” He argued the increase impacts other areas of life including “the amount of healthy food they can put on the table, or the amount they can heat their house in the dead of winter.”

Inflation rates have only risen an average of 1.6 per cent since 2011, which means the City hasn’t kept levies on par with inflation, as the transit plan says it would.

“Ottawa now has, amongst cities in Canada with more than 500,000 people, the most expensive cash fares in the entire country,” said Haché.

Bus-goers lined up outside the Rideau Centre all expressed concern over the price increase.

“I think it’s ridiculous. I don’t know how people are supposed to keep up with that,” said Liam MacPherson.

“[The City is] charging transit users more because they know that so many people use the bus,” suggested Brittnee Kossongo. “There are other fees that could go up instead,” she said.

Carleton University student Sarah Taylor explained the cost of life for students is “already so hard with everything increasing every year.”

“The City is clearly trying to capitalize on it,” she claimed.

Zameer Masjedee, President of the Carleton University Student Association, said the cost increase affects students in particular. “It really hurts. Transit is really essential for students to just get to the university and to commute around the city,” he said.

Masjedee claimed the Association plans to begin conversations on transit with the City this summer.

Councillor Marianne Wilkinson, who sits on the Transit Commission responsible for fare budgeting, admitted transit affordability “is an issue” but the City has no other way to make enough revenue to pay for the system. “There’s only so much available to us in [property] taxes,” she said.

Wilkinson said that despite the fare increase, the City still does not make enough to cover the costs of the system each year.

She explained the Commission assumed a 2.5 per cent inflation increase in its initial budget assessment, but could lower future levies based on forthcoming assessments. The Commission determines the increase annually.

Trevor Haché argued that to continually increase prices at a faster rate than wages sends the wrong “price signals” because it discourages people from using public transit. He suggested the Commission increase City parking rates and freeze transit fees each year instead.

“We often hear governments talking about the desire to encourage people to ride public transit, and to considering driving a little bit less […] We think increasing parking rates would do a lot for more healthy, affordable transit in this city.”

Ottawa will spend 5.2 per cent more this year paying paramedics, according to an analysis of the city’s budget. With an aging and growing population, hiring extra emergency responders every year could be the new normal.

“The baby boomer population is increasing – that’s what we call the grey tsunami. Two-thirds of our call volume comes from that demographic, and as they get older, they start increasing the burden on our system,” says Darryl Wilton, president of the Paramedic Association of Ottawa.

“The people coming into nursing homes now are pretty chronic or complex. It’s important because you need somebody here fast. We don’t have physicians on staff 24/7,” says Lori Norris-Dudley, head of Osgoode Care Centre.

The staffing squeeze is the delayed result of budget decisions made before this council was elected, says city Councillor George Darouze (Osgoode). “We had to work so hard and hire 50 paramedics in the last three years so that we could finish playing catch up,” he says.

According to annual reports from the Ottawa Paramedic Service, call volumes went up almost every year between 2011 to 2016. “Between 2009 and 2011 our services were very high up. It was a bad move to stop hiring then,” says Darouze.

However, it’s unclear whether demand can be met in 2018 – not until the service can compile its annual report in March 2019.

“We don’t know if it will be on track or not,” says Marc-Antoine Deschamps, spokesperson for the Ottawa Paramedic Service.

And, because the paramedic service cannot measure and respond to data in real-time, officials can only speculate about next year’s needs. “Funding for paramedics is always between two and five years behind,” says Wilton.

Wilton says it would need to add 60 paramedics and five ambulance vehicles to the fleet to meet demand. He does not expect paramedics to have the resources in place to deal with call volume in 2018.

“There’s no way you could keep up with increasing call volumes – you’re constantly chasing your own tail,” says Wilton. “It’s definitely a step in the right direction, but I tend to temper that and say it’s just a drop in the bucket.”