Oasis of food. Photo: Britt Harvey

The economic downturn has forced Ontario residents to use food banks more than ever before.

According to a report issued Tuesday by the Ontario Association of Food Banks, over 375,000 Ontarians use food banks each month, a 19 per cent rise since the fall of 2008.

Ottawa posted one of the largest provincial increases in food bank use, jumping two per cent in 2008 and about ten per cent in 2009.

“There is little doubt that it has been our most difficult year in a generation,” wrote Adam Spence, the report’s author and the association’s executive director.

The report comes just one day after Statistics Canada reported that the Canadian economy posted a 0.1 per cent gain in the third quarter of this year, which technically means the recession is over.

But the food bank report says that Ontario residents are still feeling the effects of the recession. Only one-third of people using food banks in the province are either currently employed in full- or part-time jobs or were employed in the last six months.

“The shocking numbers offer a front line reality that is a counterpoint to the green shoots and leading economic indicators that point to a ‘technical’ end to the recession,” wrote Spence.

Crime Prevention Ottawa works with local neighbourhoods to improve community safety. Photo: Kim Mackrael

Crime Prevention Ottawa is still reeling after a committee voted to cut the program from the city budget last Friday. The announcement came two days after another committee approved the organization’s three-year strategic plan.

The organization was one of many affected by the audit, budget and finance committee decision to cut millions of dollars from Ottawa’s 2010 budget in an effort to keep property tax increases below four per cent.

Executive director Nancy Worsfold said she was shocked to hear that all of her organization’s $510,000 in funding would be eliminated.

“Honestly, my strategic plan got passed on Wednesday. I was so happy about it. Now…” Worsfold paused. “It’s not for me to speculate on what people may have been thinking.”

Ottawa Police Chief Vernon White sits on the organization’s board of directors. Reached by phone from Sydney, Australia, he wouldn’t speculate either. But he did suggest that the organization’s deliberately low profile likely means few councillors know about its work.

For example, White said Crime Prevention Ottawa played a significant role in the Vanier’s award-winning Taking Back the Streets program.

“CPO had a strong part in that but they really looked for no credit and received no credit for it,” White said.

Some of the organization’s work has sparked controversy among local activists.

Tara Lyons, of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, said she was surprised to see how much money goes into Crime Prevention Ottawa when the proposed cuts were reported in the news this week.

Lyons said she was concerned that some of the CPO’s work can stigmatize Ottawa’s poor rather than building a community strategy for crime prevention.

“In their work with community associations they are very explicit about encouraging people to call the police if they see someone who looks like they could be a sex worker on the street,” Lyons said.

“We want safe communities, but we don’t think that criminalizing certain people is the best way to go about it.”

Still, many of the organization’s efforts have drawn praise from community members and associations.

Cheryl Parrott of the Hintonburg Community Association said her neighbourhood has benefitted considerably from the organization.

“Before Crime Prevention Ottawa, we made connections with other neighbourhood groups by reading someone’s name in the newspaper and looking them up in the phone book,” Parrott said.

“CPO has given us more opportunities to learn from other community associations about what works and doesn’t before trying it ourselves.”

White said the loss of the program could have a significant impact on Ottawa neighbourhoods.

“It’s disappointing because in this day and age crime prevention and crime reduction should be our primary focus in any city,” White said.

“At the end of the day, I understand that the city has priorities to set but I’m not convinced this is an area they should be cutting.”

Rows of lockers in the basement of the Loeb building on campus are poorly lit even during the day. With low student traffic in the area and the absence of emergency telephones or consistent monitoring, the quiet location inspires uneasiness.

Kimalee Phillip, the president of the Graduate Students Association at Carleton University, has been advocating for a sexual assault center on the Carleton campus—something that administration has been stalling on for over two years.

Since a highly publicized sexual assault on the Carleton University campus in 2007, the university has spent over $1.6 million on emergency phones, cameras and lights.

Phillip took Hartwells staff on a walking tour of the campus—showing some of the changes that have been made to increase the physical safety of students on campus and some areas that remain unmonitored, poorly lit and continue to worry students who have to navigate through those areas, especially at night.

Phillip stressed that while additional lights, cameras and emergency phones contribute to feelings of safety on campus, they do not address the larger issues surrounding attitudes towards sexual assault of women. Further, she said, sexual assault is much more likely to be perpetrated by someone familiar to the victim—so these types of measures only address a fraction of the issue.

A sexual assault centre on campus is a critical step in addressing violence against women, especially those on Carleton’s campus, added Phillip.

Areas like this one, surrounding the campus were poorly lit and provided low visibility for students accessing campus in the evening. Phillips said lights have recently been erected in the area.

Visibility in the Loeb tunnels is of concern to Phillips, where rows of lockers cut the sight lines of students accessing the lockers and approaching the area in the tunnel.

Numerous tunnels and hallways on Carleton's campus (like this one) remain poorly lit without the benefit of emergency telephones or cameras.

Narrow, windowless hallways which are sealed off at each floor with heavy doors are the rule when accessing the upper floors of University Center.

Students looking to go between the residences and areas of campus like the Azrieli Theatre may cut through this loading area, which is poorly lit and has several visual obstructions even during the day.

The city’s winter overnight parking regulations are now in effect.

That means, unless vehicle owners have a municipal on-street parking permit, street parking is now prohibited between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m. whenever Environment Canada forecasts a snowfall of seven centimetres or more. That will allow the city’s snow-clearing crews to plough the streets.

You can sign up to receive e-mail or Twitter notifications of overnight parking restrictions here.

Parking meters count down, whereas tickets from pay stations show the time at which they expire. Photo: Adam Hooper

Ottawa will start replacing parking meters with solar-powered pay stations Wednesday pending a City council vote which is expected to increase parking revenues by $1.7 million.

The new stations will be provided by Precise ParkLink Inc. There will only be a few in operation over the winter as the company makes sure they can handle the cold weather. If all goes well, about 600 could be installed in the coming years.

Under the new system, which has already been put into place in Montreal, customers can go to a terminal, pay for parking in advance, and do not have to return to the car to place a ticket or marker. The location of the car and its “paid-until” status is memorized by the system.

The initial phase will see Ottawa’s few existing pay stations in the ByWard Market replaced with the new solar-powered devices. On Tuesday the new machines were already standing next to their soon-to-be-obsolete brethren, covered by thick bags pending final approval.

Aline Brunet, from St-Jérôme, Que., saw benefits to the new system, having used pay stations in Montreal. “Nobody has to go running after each meter to collect money, so it should be good,” she said, after deciphering the old English-only instructions on the old meters.

Tuesday, new pay stations at Byward Market were ready to replace their predecessors. Photo: Adam Hooper

The pay machines will not let drivers use the minutes remaining after a car leaves its spot a, which is how the city will raise extra funds from the project. But letting people pay by credit card should make the system easier to use for drivers, who won’t worry about being caught without change.

Should the plan proceed, parking meters at Metcalfe and Somerset would eventually be removed in favour of a pay station. Photo: Adam Hooper

Patty Allen mixes the H1N1 vaccine with the adjuvant at Tuesday's clinic in Fenn Lounge on the Carleton campus. Photo: Mark Brownlee

Students, staff and faculty at Carleton University unexpectedly received the H1N1 vaccine from the school’s health services Tuesday morning after about 30 people failed to show up for their appointments on Monday. The clinics, which opened Monday afternoon, have enough of the vaccine for about 125 people a day until they close on Thursday.

The number of no-shows meant that people visiting the health and counselling services clinic on the Carleton campus for regular appointments were given the opportunity to receive the vaccine.

“If they want them, we give it to them,” said Maureen Murdock, director of health and counselling services at Carleton.

Carleton staff, faculty and students line-up outside the H1N1 vaccination clinic on the Carleton University campus Tuesday. Photo: Mark Brownlee

Health officials have to use the vaccine 24 hours after it’s mixed with the adjuvant, meaning that it would have gone to waste if it wasn’t used Tuesday morning. Murdock was unable to say how much was left over after Monday’s clinic.

“We only mixed what we needed yesterday and we only have a few doses left over and we gave it to the students that wanted it this morning,” she said.

Health and counselling services decided to change their policy for Tuesday’s round of vaccinations. They sent an e-mail to students in residence saying they would be able to receive the vaccine if they showed up without an appointment.

The clinic was met with high demand from the university community when registration opened last Thursday morning. All of the roughly 500 spots were filled only a few hours after the spots were made available.

“As I went to register I could see the numbers going higher and higher…Within 5 minutes I think they all filled up,” said Niko Tzakis, a third-year Carleton student, while waiting in line Monday.

“It’s the first time we’ve used a registration system. Normally, we just let people come on a first-come, first-served kind of thing,” said Carleton’s Murdock.

Ottawa Public Health established a wristband system to try to cut down on wait times at city vaccination clinics. Those looking to receive the vaccine can show up to receive their wristband, then show up closer to the time they will be called.

Carleton’s clinic is one of the few to use pre-booked appointments. The University of Ottawa also used the appointment system for their H1N1 clinics held last week and were able to vaccinate about 4600 people after receiving about 5000 doses of the vaccine.

The remaining doses, about 350 of them, were left unmixed and sent to a health services group on campus to distribute. About 50 vaccines were wasted.

Carleton has received enough of the vaccine to inoculate 500 people before the special clinics close on Thursday. Health officials expect to receive more vaccine next week.

Filling up at the pumps in Ontario could cost you a little bit more under the proposed HST legislation. Photo: Paul Moore

By Paul Moore

The federal Liberal party has announced it will support the Conservative government’s controversial bill allowing Ontario and B.C. to merge their sales taxes with the federal GST.

After a caucus meeting Tuesday, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff told reporters on Parliament Hill that the party vote in favour of the bill, which will create “harmonized” sales taxes (HST) in the two provinces.

“This is a request from the provinces because they believe it will improve the competitiveness of their economy and create jobs,” Ignatieff said. “We will support this legislation in Parliament.”

Ignatieff’s announcement means the bill will almost certainly pass in the House of Commons.

Meanwhile, question period was suspended at Queen’s Park on Tuesday afternoon as two Conservative opposition MPPs protested a lack of public consultation on the HST issue.

However, if the legislation passes at both the federal and provincial levels, the changes will take effect on July 1, 2010. Ontarians would then have to pay eight per cent more for items now exempt from the provincial sales tax.

As she stepped out of a salon on Bank Street with a fresh new hairdo, Cheryl Fredricks was shocked to learn that, next summer, her $40 cut and style will cost her another few loonies.

“It just seems like the government is always trying to get us,” she said. “I feel like we pay enough already.”

At the Drummond’s gas station just a few blocks away, self-employed carpenter Jeffrey Matthews also wrinkled his nose at the

idea of paying more in taxes. He was filling up his pickup truck, something that he said will cost him an extra $50 every month under the HST legislation.

“I have to drive to get to my jobs, so I pay for gas a lot,” he said. “It may not seem like much, but for a guy like me, an independent businessman, that’s a big hit … It’s hard enough to make ends meet as it is.”

Carleton University professor and taxation expert Allan Maslove said the HST changes could hit Ottawa harder than other Ontario communities because the city does not have a large manufacturing base.

“Goods producers are probably going to be a little bit better off, and the ones that are going to be hit a little bit, if anybody, are service providers … I think it’s fair to say that Ottawa is a little more service-oriented, so it might affect Ottawa in that sense a little more.”

But, he added that he doesn’t anticipate the changes will be “really that dramatic” and may even benefit the Ontario economy as a whole.

“I think it’s the right move. I think it should have been done years and years ago,” he said.

MPs are expected to vote on the HST bill later this week.

Daycare kids. Photo: Tanya Springer

Plans to implement full-day learning programs for four and five year-olds in Ontario are moving ahead despite a heated debate between early childhood researchers and the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada about who should be caring for Canada’s children.

Ottawa school boards released a preliminary report with a list of schools to be considered for full-day kindergarten programs Tuesday—the first step towards realizing the McGuinty government’s long promised full-day learning plan.

The plan – which would see kindergarten programs extended from the current half-day – aims to improve reading, writing and math skills for four and five year olds and smooth the transition to Grade 1.

The full day learning program was harshly criticized this week by the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (IMFC), who released a report advising that the program would cost taxpayers billions at a time when the province is running a record deficit.

“The question for parents and taxpayers is, how much are you willing to put into family policy and would you rather have that money in your pocket?” said Andrea Mrozek, manager of research and communications for IMFC and author of the report.

The IMFC estimates the cost of full-day kindergarten in Ontario at $1.6 billion annually. Mrozek said the IMFC is not against child care spending, but they believe the money would be better spent in direct payments to parents. She believes they are in a better position to educate their children for the second half of the kindergarten day.

“The IMFC is in favor of choice in child care. A huge, massive institution doesn’t offer parents, really, choices. Money in their pockets would,” Mrozek said.

On the other side of the debate, early childhood researchers argue that research indicates that the extension of regulated early childhood programs benefits children, and the full-day learning plan is a step in the right direction.

Martha Friendly, coordinator of the Childcare Resource and Research Unit, said there isn’t much choice involved for parents who want to work, with long wait lists for regulated child care spaces and prohibitive costs. The full-day learning program could alleviate some of that need and expense.

But Mrozek argued the program will raise taxes and could put pressure on two-parent families to work. “If you have those high taxes you need both parents to work in order to make ends meet.”

Friendly says the IMFC is affiliated with conservative Christian organizations, and their arguments are based on the belief that mothers should stay at home with their children and out of the workforce—which simply isn’t realistic, she said. “Mothers are working anyway, and the children better be someplace good.”

Friendly said critics of the program aren’t taking into account who will benefit from these programs. “These people—they got a university education at times when tuition was lower, they had the benefit of health care, most of these people have decent pensions, and they’re just railing about young families and little children having a share of the wealth.”

Regardless of the controversy, the full-day learning program is set to begin in September 2010 and is expected to be fully implemented by 2015.

World AIDS Day display at Carleton University. Photo: Britt Harvey

A new Canadian report released in time for World AIDS Day reveals that HIV, the virus that leads to the AIDS, continues to spread throughout Canada and particularly in Ottawa, where infection rates are the second-highest in the country.

The report – released in advance of World AIDS Day on Dec. 1 – estimates 65,000 Canadians were HIV-positive by the end of 2008, a 14.7 per cent increase over 2005′s count of 57,000.

The incidence of infection in Ottawa is much higher than in the rest of Canada and is climbing faster. The Ontario Public Health Agency confirmed over 3,000 infections in Ottawa by 2007 and added another 165 diagnoses in 2008. And those are just the known cases.

“On average there are about two new HIV infections in Ottawa per week,” said Jay Koornstra, executive director of Bruce House, an organization which provides housing, care and support to people living with HIV and AIDS in Ottawa.

“We’re really far under-serving people living with HIV-AIDS in this city,” said Koornstra. Bruce House offers support services to 35 homes, but there are still 250 infected people on the waiting list. Many are couch-surfing or hiding their status from the people they live with.

The higher incidence of HIV cases disguises some good news. According to the report, part of the reason for the higher infection rate is that people with the disease are living longer. But it also estimated that 16,900 Canadians don’t know they are infected with HIV.

“More and more people are infected by people who publicly don’t know they’re HIV-positive,” said Koornstra.

And some don’t want to know. Koornstra pointed out that many people who suspect they have HIV are afraid to get tested.

“The repercussions of being tested are very real,” he said, citing concerns over people being jailed for not disclosing their status to their partners, or being turned out of their homes after telling the people they live with.

“We’re still dealing with stigma and discrimination,” said Monique Doolittle-Romas, executive director of the Canadian AIDS Society, which advocates on behalf of people affected by HIV.

World AIDS Day, said Doolittle-Romas, is a moment to stop, think, and work towards a world without AIDS. To mark the occasion, her organization handed 300 red AIDS ribbons to MPs and senators. Doolittle-Romas hopes the ribbons worn in Parliament on Dec. 1 will spread awareness of the disease.

“We need to talk about it on a regular basis,” she said. “We still have a lot of work to do around education.”

Police said 10 Wellington St. and 1 Promenade du Portage would be reopened around 10 a.m. The offices at 25 Eddy St. were to remain closed for longer.

No one was injured in the blast.

Police said a maintenance worker accidentally caused the leak.

Students were asked to 'air out their dirty laundry' at a sexual assault task force meeting last month. Four of the students who wrote on clothing at the meeting said they had been sexually assaulted by someone who still goes to school at Carleton. Photo courtesy of Coalition for a Carleton Sexual Assault Centre.

By Kim Mackrael

After two years of student lobbying, Carleton University says it is prepared to consider a proposal for the creation of a sexual assault centre on campus.

“The sexual assault centre has always been a possibility,” Carleton president Roseann Runte said in an email Monday.

But Runte’s statement contrasts with what student groups have characterized as strong resistance to the centre on the grounds that it could be bad publicity for the school.

“I cannot emphasize enough how much of a shift this is from [the administrations’] previous attitude that the centre was just not going to happen,” said Julie Lalonde, co-founder of the Coalition for a Sexual Assault Centre.

Runte’s comments came one week after the university’s equity services department posted a notice on its website asking for student feedback on the school’s sexual assault services and stating that a student-run sexual assault centre “will be included in our review“ of services.

The notice is the first public reference to a sexual assault centre by university administrators since the idea received overwhelming student support in a January 2008 referendum run by Carleton’s graduate and undergraduate student councils.

In September 2007, a student was sexually assaulted while working late in a Carleton chemistry lab. The high profile case and subsequent lawsuit have landed the school in the media several times, most recently for a Carleton statement of defence alleging that the student failed to properly look out for her own safety.

Lalonde said her group was told the school would not consider a sexual assault centre because of the potential for additional bad publicity.

But Runte said any hesitation from her administration about creating a sexual assault centre was based on the need for a careful evaluation of all options, not a concern about the school’s image.

“In addition to space and funding considerations, we want to make sure that whatever we might offer would be [a] best practice and be equipped to meet the need it is intended to serve,” Runte said.

“We already offer on campus a number of support services that complement those offered by the City of Ottawa.”

She added that Carleton has spent more than $1.6 million on campus security in recent years for cameras, lights, emergency telephones and the school’s new emergency notification system.

Linda Capperauld, the school’s director of equity services, said she thinks the administration’s message was misunderstood by the coalition.

“We have some really interested students who want the best services possible,” Capperauld said. “Sometimes not all the communication gets through.”

“What we want is whatever is going to be best for Carleton. The issue of sexual assault is a public issue, we all know it exists and we’re not going to hide our heads in the sand. It’s all about finding out what’s best for Carleton.”

The University of Alberta established its own sexual assault centre in 1993. Director Kris Fowler said her staff and volunteers see about 150 new clients each year, in addition to the centre’s prevention and outreach services.

Fowler said she is concerned that emergency systems like the ones Carleton has put in place don’t recognize the reality that most sexual assaults are committed by someone the victim knows.

“My frustration is that that kind of funding and money going towards those measures is limited in the types of sexual assaults it can address,” Fowler said. “An acquaintance sexual assault happening in residence isn’t going to change with blue phones and lighting.”

And while there are sexual assault support services off-campus in Edmonton, both Lalonde and Fowler said many students just don’t venture that far away from campus, especially during a crisis.

“You have to know to call or email to find out where the centre is, make an appointment, find the place,” Lalonde said. “People don’t do it. People at the [city centres] are rarely students, and it’s not because students don’t need the services.”

Carleton’s review is expected to last throughout the academic year and will likely involve a series of meetings with interested students and staff and communication with other university initiatives.

Capperauld said she hopes to present a recommendation to senior administration before students leave campus in April 2010.

For more information or to get involved with the discussion on sexual assault services, visit equity services’ sexual assault awareness campaign announcement.

Drugs. Photo: Meghan Potkins

People fighting colorectal cancer got some long-awaited good news this week when the province announced that it is extending coverage of Avastin, a costly drug used to treat colorectal cancer.

Sandra Thompson-Bednarek, who organizes a local support group for people with the disease, called Avastin “almost the wonder drug of the last few years.”

Anywhere from 10 to 25 people regularly attend her meetings, many of whom are treated with the drug. She said she knows cancer patients who have lived for years on Avastin.

But some patients simply didn’t have enough money to keep taking the drug.

The government began paying for up to 16 doses of the drug in 2008, which covered about eight months of treatment. Yet many people, said Thompson-Bednarek, require more than that. And with treatments costing thousands of dollars, she said some local cancer patients faced financial ruin in order to keep taking the drug.

“There’s one woman in our group… her parents were both self-employed, so neither of them had any supplementary health insurance. So there was no way they were going to be able to afford to continue,” Thompson-Bednarek said.

Last September, Ontario ombudsman André Marin released a report that described Ontario’s cap on Avastin treatments as a “cruel cutoff” and called on the government to increase funding.

Then, last Sunday, the province’s health minister said Ontario would now provide patients with at least 24 treatments and perhaps more if necessary.

Thompson-Bednarek said that for patients in her support group, the government’s decision may help make their battle against cancer just a little easier.

H1N1 vaccination clinic. Photo: Britt Harvey.

Ottawa Public Health announced today that it has reached its initial target of vaccinating more than 40 per cent of the city’s population.

In an interview earlier this week Dr. Earl Brown, a University of Ottawa virologist, said that the second wave of H1N1 appears to be cresting, but it’s hard to know for sure if we have seen the last of a serious outbreak for the time being.

“We have seen a staggering of outbreak – the more people that we have vaccinated the more that the virus will hit brick walls,” he said. “The more people that we make immune the harder it will get for there to be an epidemic.”

Vaccinations continue at designated sites throughout the city, and a temporary clinic at Carleton University opened this Monday to offer vaccinations exclusively to Carleton students, faculty and staff.

Rock salt. Photo: Chris Ferguson

The City of Ottawa is hoping new technology will help reduce the adverse effects of salt spreading on roads during the winter months.

The new technology, consisting of a black box with antennas that attaches to each snowplow, will tell city officials how much salt has been set down and which roads have been covered by transmitting data from each plow to a central system.

“Salting is our first defence against winter storms,” said Councillor Maria McRae, chair of the transportation committee in a statement issued Tuesday. “With this technology, we can better manage what we spread while maintaining safe roadways for motorists.”

City officials say the global positioning system (GPS) technology could reduce the amount of salt used on city roads by as much as 13,300 tonnes. That could save the city as much as $1 million each year.

There are also environmental benefits. Salt, which is used to make roads safer for drivers by getting rid of snow and ice, can also find its way into water flows, changing the amount of chlorine in area residents’ drinking water.

But, it’s still unclear if the new system will actually result in less salt being put down on city roads, since snowplow drivers decide how much to use.

“They’re the ones that have the information and have an understanding … of how much to spread,” said Owen Moore, president of Grey Island Systems, the company that developed the technology. “All we’re doing is monitoring it and appending it to GPS information so the municipality knows exactly where and when it’s put down.”

It will cost $200,000 to put the new equipment on the city’s salt spreaders.

Grade 9 Rideau High School student Alec Crete hopes he won’t have to change schools next September.

“I don’t want to have to start all over again. You know when you come to a new school and everything… I don’t want to do that at another school,” he said.

Parents and students whose schools are being considered for closure in the Ottawa-Carleton school district will have a second chance to express their concerns Wednesday night following a public meeting on Monday.

The school closure recommendations were raised in a school board review last month as a cost-cutting measure, and target schools with lower enrolment levels.

Rideau High School is on the list for possible closures along with two Merivale-area elementary schools.

According to Charlene Hunter, a communications officer with the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, enrollment at Rideau High School has been dropping off in recent years.

“When you have a school with that small of a population, you really reduce the opportunities for course selection so what you are really able to offer is the course programs that are mandatory,” Hunter said.

But students and staff at the Rideau High School say it serves a uniquely diverse community in a neighbourhood dominated by lower-income families.

According to Hunter, many of the delegates at Monday’s meeting were there on behalf of people whose first language is not English.

The school board staff recommendations were translated into five languages, including Dari, Farsi, Arabic, Urdu and Somali, in order to ensure the diverse community served by Rideau High School could understand the report.

“There were students who gave presentations… and for three of them their first language was not English.”

Ahmad Assadi, also in grade 9, is new to Canada. He said he hopes changing schools won’t mean he’ll lose out on the ESL classes he now takes at Rideau High School. “I might not have the same classes [or] the same teachers,” said Assadi.