Recession sends Ontarians to food banks in record numbers: report

By Mark Brownlee

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.

Local crime prevention group on the chopping block

By Kim Mackrael

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.”

Photo gallery – Carleton University still has unsafe areas for students

Story and photos by Teghan Beaudette

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.

Watch the forecast: winter parking restrictions begin

Ottawa residents who park on the street will need to keep a close eye on the forecast.

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.

City moves to modernize parking meters, raise more cash

By Adam Hooper

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.

Opening day no-shows give Carleton students extra chance at H1N1 vaccination

By Mark Brownlee

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.

Ottawa economy could take a hit from harmonized sales tax

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.

Ideological tussle over child care as province moves to full-day kindergarten

By Teghan Beaudette

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.

World AIDS Day arrives, report says infections still rising

By Adam Hooper

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.

Gas blast causes evacuation of Gatineau buildings

Almost 5,000 workers were evacuated from three buildings at Terrasses de la Chaudière in downtown Hull after a pipe carrying refrigerant gas burst early Tuesday morning.

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.

Two years after student vote, Carleton to consider centre for sexual assault

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.

Government ups funding to fight colorectal cancer

By Paul Moore

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.

Ottawa hits H1N1 vaccination target

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.

City hopes new technology will reduce the amount of salt on roads

By Mark Brownlee

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.

New Canadians hope to save local school from closure

By Meghan Potkins

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.