Tag: ottawa

Homelessness in Ottawa; an Election Issue

September 22, 2202

One of our mayoral candidates in the municipal election, for Ottawa this fall,

vows to end chronic homelessness in Ottawa, in four years. This is a bold and noble goal. Does this mean that there will be no homeless in Ottawa in four years? Do we know how many homeless people we’ll have in Ottawa in four years? No, we do not. But, OK. This is a lofty goal, and we should not get hung up on details.

I found statistics on homelessness in Ottawa difficult to understand. The best information I gathered is there are between 1400 and 1800 homeless in Ottawa, on an average day.

Compared to other Canadian cities, the size of Ottawa’s homeless population is not the worst. The homeless population in Red Deer is 0.31 percent of the population; in Vancouver and Edmonton, it is 0.27 percent, while in Ottawa, it is 0.18 percent.

Homeless people concentrate downtown Ottawa to the huge displeasure of the area’s residents, while the problem is much less apparent elsewhere in the city.

In a survey conducted on October 27 and 28, in Ottawa, 55 percent of the homeless used shelters while 9 percent slept on the streets. Others bunked down with friends. (Over half of the homeless were racialized, and of all the homeless, over 25 percent were Canadian natives).  

 The mayoral candidate proposes to build “supportive” housing for 250 individuals and provide housing “allowances” for another 250 people and families. Although it is good to have a specific proposal, the downside is that there may be more homeless in four years, in which case, the candidate will not achieve the stated goal.

But, to me, the more important question is whether a sustainable long-term solution to the homeless problem is achievable by building and subsidizing housing. Why have people become homeless in the first place? Surveys show that although housing is important, substance abuse, poverty, mental health issues, and low wages are common characteristics among the homeless. I think these underlying issues will have to be dealt with before finding a sustainable solution. Otherwise, this proposal will be nothing more than a bandaid for the short term.

And if the word spreads that Ottawa is kind to the homeless and provides housing for them, the homeless from other parts of Canada may flock to Ottawa. The homeless population may balloon.

The City of Portland OR is an example, where a sympathetic Mayor tolerated tent encampments to such an extent that in some neighborhoods people are afraid to walk on the streets. Vandalism and robbery have become common. I am sure Ottawan does not want to follow the Portland example.

Providing subsidized housing is one answer to homelessness, but until governments deal with mental health issues, substance abuse, education, and the availability of sustaining jobs, I do not believe homelessness will be solved any time soon.

Experience with Doctors and Pharmacists

September 10, 2022

In late August at the cottage, I had a few cups of black coffee before breakfast. Soon after finishing my coffee, I felt queasy and dizzy. I had to lie down to get my mojo back; it took a few hours to get rid of the dizziness.

The next unpleasant experience occurred during the drive home from the cottage, when I suddenly felt like blacking out, with my vision blurring and experiencing weakness. It took a few deep yoga breaths to get my composure back. Fortunately, I was on the passenger side.

These scary experiences led me to an urgent visit to my medical clinic. There, the nurse practitioner gave me requisitions for blood testing, a Holter monitor (heart monitor) for seventy-two hours, a stress test and an ECG.

The next morning, I still felt dizzy and that made me go to an emergency room (ER) where they put me thru a thorough blood test, urine test and an ECG. After six hours the emergency doctor gave me a clean bill of health and suggested that I follow up with my family doctor should I continue to experience dizziness.

If my heart is all right, what might cause the morning dizziness (by the afternoons the dizziness subsided)? I became suspicious of one new pill I take, prescribed for me a few months ago, and I stopped at my pharmacist to check if some of the meds I take may work against this new pill. The pharmacist found this pill contradicts in its effect with another one I take and recommended a change to one of them. The next day I saw the prescribing doctor, who immediately agreed with the pharmacist’s  advice and gave me a substitution, another pill.

In some ways I was stunned the doctor did not question the advice from the pharmacist at all: but it made me think, do doctors know and understand what they prescribe? What damage could wrong prescriptions cause to patients?

My appreciation for pharmacists went up a few notches; they are knowledgeable of pharmaceuticals and decided that they know more about meds than doctors.

Based on the results of my visit to the ER, we decided to follow up on our vacation plan to go to Myrtle Beach, SC, and meet with family for a few days. It was a two-day trip, and we enjoyed the vacation until I received an email to phone my medical office immediately. When I contacted them, they told me to go to an emergency department ASAP. It was a terrible downer for me, and I asked what the cause or the reason was for going to ER, ASAP. I explained that I was in South Carolina and despite my Canadian medical insurance, it could be an expensive affair. I talked with a nurse at the clinic who did not know why I should go to ER immediately but promised to email the doctor to find out the reason: what was I going to say to the local ER, what was wrong with me which brought me to ER?

The nurse responded by email in an hour, and repeated that I should go to ER and attached two reports and told me to print them out to take with me – the results of the ECG and the results of the Holter report. We consulted with two acquaintances, both doctors, one is an ER doctor, and sent them the Holter report and the ECG, which they found not super urgent to attend to.

Confused by all these views, we decided to see how I felt the next day and still feeling bad in the morning we decided to drive home.

The next phase of my adventure was even more strange; we went to a different hospital ER in Ottawa, where I went thru all the testing again only to be told the Holter and ECG reports did not justify leaving our vacation early. This ER doc consulted with a cardiologist, so the news I received was very comforting to me.

So, what do I make of all of this when my family doctor says I am in dire need to visit an ER and two other docs and a second ER visit give me a clean bill of health? One must conclude that the medical advice from my clinic was misguided or plain wrong. Perhaps the attending doctor on duty at my family clinic was not fully knowledgeable how to interpret Holter monitoring results?  But why did he/she not call me to explain why my situation was bad? Is this expecting too much?

But, if I had gone to a local ER in the U.S. and if they had found my visit unnecessary, my insurance would not have paid for the visit, potentially costing me thousands of US dollars. And it may have given me a black mark in my record for future travel insurance, having a heart issue identified, even if it was wrong.

I think it was wrong of the attending doctor at my clinic not to check with other doctors or a cardiologist before ordering me to visit an ER, ASAP.   But, perhaps more importantly, he should have communicated in person, by phone, to tell me the “dire” news.

Although I felt much better being at home, I still felt a bit weak the next few days in the mornings, and now I was beginning to suspect that it must be my meds that are the problem, since I was fully examined and tested in two ERs over a two week period. So, what do I do? I looked at my meds again and talked to two pharmacists to check out how my meds may interfere with each other and what side effects they may have.

Both pharmacists immediately identified that I should not take two of my pills at the same time and suggested that I take one in the morning and the other in the evening. Not rocket science if you know your pharmaceuticals.

Lessons learned: do not immediately believe what your doctors tell you; ask for explanations. And check with your pharmacist regarding your pills. My appreciation for pharmacists had jumped astronomically after these recent experiences with them.

How College Students Spend Summers – Then and Now

August 3, 2022

This is not a scientific poll by any stretch of the imagination. But I reflected on how three of my college-age grandchildren spent their summers this year and compared it to what I and my friends did for summers while attending college over sixty years ago.

We had one goal: to get a job to pay for tuition, room, and board for next year at the university. My grandchildren had loftier goals: do something interesting, educational, and even exciting, while making money. Big difference in aspirations! Is this true? You be the judge.

OK. So what did I and my friends do when we were at college? To pay for the cost of attending university the next year, we took the first job we could get. The emphasis was on getting a job, any job. We did not think about fun activities.

Looking for a job in my first year at university, I had a couple of false starts. One was strawberry picking on the lower mainland of British Columbia, where the stench of the accommodation and backbreaking work all day finished my enthusiasm in one week. The other false start was my unsuccessful career selling Collier’s encyclopedia in small towns along the Fraser Valley to poor people. After these attempts, I was successful in getting a sustaining job: I settled into a summer of dish-washing at the Essondale Mental Hospital. Boring as dickens but steady and paid well. The mental patients ribbed me about seeing me doing “women’s jobs”. But I lived at home and could save all my earnings.

Other jobs followed in subsequent years. I was happy to be hired by a survey crew where I did machete work in the wilderness of Vancouver Island’s interior, memorable for the cloud of deer flies and mosquitoes. When I complained, they assigned me to work inside, where I experienced the most boring job of my life: drawing cross-sections for a highway from survey data. Each drawing took a few minutes; plot seven dots on graph paper and connect the dots. I decided never to be a draftsman for a survey crew.

One highlight of this job was that I learned to like and drink beer (in retrospect, this may not have been a positive highlight). We drank beer in the hotel pub at night, having nothing else to do. I learned to gulp down a glass of beer by holding the glass with my teeth and knocking my head backward while opening my throat. Most nights ended with the natives joining us and getting into a rumble that I avoided at all costs.

I left the survey crew in a haste on my last day, after hearing the crew members talking about teaching the “college boy” about real life by stripping me and inserting my private parts into an anthill.

So what do college kids do today? My grandson Cedric showed up at the cottage in Elgin, ON, after a 3000-mile bicycle ride from Portland OR. He is an engineering student at Oregon State University (in Corvallis) and decided to cycle coast to coast before taking on a summer job. What a great physical and educational adventure! And potentially dangerous, too.

Among his many observations he related, he found the prairie people more friendly and curious than west coast people and discovered coffee at Tim Hortons in Canada much hotter than McDonald’s in the US. He avoided places where people looked at him with suspicion, but also met many friendly folks who let him camp overnight in their yard.

He used the “warm showers community” website in his travels, where people offer a welcoming hot shower and a place to bunk down, to cyclists. What first-hand experience learning about your country!

My thoughts circled back to Cedric and his financial situation and how he could afford to spend six weeks cycling and not working. I recalled that last summer he did fire-fighting in Idaho and saved money: accommodation and food were provided in tents in the wilds of Idaho. They were paid for sixteen-hour days and there was no place or time to spend money. They worked in fourteen-day stints, then were off for two days before another fourteen-day session started. For Cedric, it was another amazing educational and well-paying experience as well.

Here is another example of what students do for a summer job today. Not satisfied with repeating a job as a cashier in a grocery store, my granddaughter, MaryKate, created her summer job. With friends from Georgia Tech in Atlanta, where she is a student, they secured accommodation from the friend’s family to stay at their cottage in upstate New York. Then they took training in whitewater rafting and obtained a job with ARO, an adventure class white water outfit in Watertown NY. Another great experience! When MaryKate did not work at the white water center, she worked at the local grocery store. She created her job!

One final example is how another grandson, Alec, parlayed three seasons of fun-filled sailing camp experience in Ottawa, Canada, into teaching sailing to disadvantaged children on Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans. All I heard from Alec during the summer sailing camps was the fun they had turtling (turning the sailing boat upside down), but obviously, they also learned to sail!

Alec negotiated his accommodation in New Orleans by sleeping on a boat belonging to a friend. It had never entered my mind that summer camps can provide skills making you able to get into the workforce.

Yes, three examples do not form a valid sample. Despite that, my cohort, over sixty years ago, had much more pedestrian jobs. Why? I can only speculate that the children today live more in the present and try to maximize their opportunities. As well, they have more confidence. What are your thoughts on this subject?

Interactions with the City of Ottawa

July 17, 2022

I witnessed a bylaw officer exercising his power by writing a ticket for a car pulling away from the curb, occupied by a hurried mother dropping off her child at day camp. On the same day, I also experienced an unbelievably friendly outreach by OC Transpo. Let me describe my day.

Although bylaws are necessary, and I support them, sometimes I find them heavy-handed when enforced to the letter of the law. A case in point is a situation I witnessed yesterday dropping off my granddaughter at a soccer camp by the University of Ottawa, which upset me to such an extent that I wrote to the Mayor of the City, Jum Watson, about it.

“Jim, I witnessed an outrageous incident this morning. Dropped off my granddaughter for soccer camp at the University of Ottawa Minto field on Templeton this morning when one of your meanest and nastiest bylaw officers wrote down the license plate of an unfortunate parent, going to work after dropping off her child. Yes, she was in a no-stopping zone and yes, the officer did what they pay him for. But…

Parents have to walk onto Minto field with the child to register, so one has to park and walk the child to the field, which takes a few minutes. Now I have the time to park a block away and walk back to register my granddaughter, but many parents work and try to drop off the child by putting on the flashers. This poor woman I saw running back to her car and getting in while the bylaw officer wrote the ticket. She drove away, and the officer was still writing the ticket. What a mean-spirited attitude!

I wrote this in the heat of my anger but received the following reply:

Thank you for your correspondence. Your feedback and concerns are always appreciated. I have shared your feedback with the Mayor and his staff for their review and consideration.

There you have it. Courteous and brief but will go nowhere. Perhaps they will copy their human resources group to train bylaw officers to use their power judiciously, considering the individual situation.

The same day, my granddaughter discovered double-decker buses in the city when we drove to her soccer camp. She wanted to ride one. Not knowing which routes these buses run and at what time, my wife contacted our local councilor, who referred our request to OC Transpo, the agency running the bus service. In a couple of hours, we received an email:

 “Hello, Katherine. Thanks for reaching out. We have an idea that might be the most flexible in your needs to get your granddaughter on a double-decker bus. I understand why she likes them. They are very different and fun to ride. It would be much easier to talk a plan through by phone. Please give me a call at your nearest convenience and we can discuss it. “

The upshot of the phone conversation was that a transit supervisor met us at 5 pm at Baseline station and flagged a double-decker bus for us, shepherded us into the bus, and recommended that we take the bus to the end station and wait and come back on the same bus, which took a different route to where we parked our car. The supervisor suggested we sit on the top deck, on the left, so that we can enjoy the view of the Ottawa River. We had a scenic ride that the supervisor recommended, almost a tour of a part of the city. My granddaughter was beside herself.

This was much more than we expected; all we wanted to know was where and when the double-decker buses run so we could take a ride on one. OC Transpo went beyond our expectations to assist us.

Lessons learned? The city provides numerous services; do not judge its performance by any individual activity. In one case, the city was client-oriented, while in the other, it was not.

Are Public Consultations Useful?

June 11, 2022

Are Public Consultations Useful?

Responding to an ad in the local community newsletter, I registered for a virtual meeting to discuss the future of Confederation Heights, an Ottawa employment hub for the federal government. The ad caught my attention, having been a city planner. Reading the ad, I realized this was the second meeting on this, aimed at getting public feedback.

The Canada Lands Company (CLC) was the lead on this project and hired consultants to carry out the work.

Before joining the second meeting, I read a detailed report: the consultants prepared a summary of the discussion at the first zoom meeting entitled “Realize the potential”. I describe the “key themes” gleaned from the meeting further down.

I looked forward to the zoom meeting with interest: they built Confederation Heights in the 1950s and it is time to reevaluate the aging buildings and sprawling parklands with an eye for improvements and future development (the Greber plan of 1949 recommended the idea of an employment hub). Several of the original buildings, built in the 1950s, have received heritage designations, on this 640-acre site.

The site today includes two extensive parks managed by the National Capital Commission, a recreation complex run by federal employees, the Headquarters for Canada Post, and several federal office buildings, some empty. Three four-lane thoroughfares cross the site, as well as a CN railway line.

The meeting started with the speaker acknowledging the Algonquin Anishinabe people, for having lived in the area for a millennium, and for their cultural and other contributions to the Ottawa area. I’ll have to do some research to find out what these contributions are. I am not aware of any.

Government agencies in Ottawa start public meetings with this introduction. I have experienced this in the past few months. In my opinion, it is a cruel hoax that raises expectations but is unlikely to result in anything material for the natives. But the artificiality of this hollow gesture pains me.

Since this was a presentation by federal government officials, the meeting had to be bilingual. I knew that from my previous work in the federal bureaucracy. But the interpretation services failed occasionally, and we had to listen to the English and then to the French speeches covering the same subjects.

The consultants began by describing the multi-year process to develop a plan for the next thirty years. I have trouble with long-range plans, which seldom produce the results desired. Many unanticipated events may interfere. Long-range plans should provide broad options, adaptable to future changes. I look forward to seeing the final product in a year.

The consultants also explained the site has many uses that will not change. The parks will stay and the RA Center and its playing fields are likely to stay along with the designated heritage buildings, which may be renovated for new uses.

Major city roads occupying extensive areas, crisscrossing the site with many access ramps, will have to remain. They will also preserve woodlots. Potential new buildings will have to blend into the roadwork, the woodlots, and the heritage buildings, a creative challenge for architects.

So what were the “key themes” derived from the first public engagement exercise that will guide the future development? The first theme was “mix of use, i.e.., shopping, housing, open spaces/parks, community amenities”. But is not mixed-use what you have in all cities, excluding suburbs? This is the reality of most large-scale urban development today.

The second highest priority theme was “sustainability”. What does that mean? Is it related to the woodlots that may house wildlife? Is there more to “sustainability”?

The next theme was “housing affordability and active mobility”. Would you define housing affordability? My interpretation of affordability is that housing prices are too high for the average income earner. But I am not sure urban planning is as suitable to deal with housing affordability, whatever it is, as government subsidy programs. And active mobility refers to bicycle and walking paths; most communities wish to have those.

The next two “themes” were “making public transit a priority” and “high-quality urban design”. Are these unique objectives or are these, really, objectives that should be taken for granted? Some people with cars may not consider public transit a priority. And others may not have an esthetic eye for urban design. But if you asked people and were given the choice, who would want poor public transit and low-quality urban design?

Are these “themes” anything more than motherhood statements? The same ideas propped up at the second meeting in which I took part, hoping to learn more useful information. Instead, I heard more jargon about “vibrant and diverse” communities with “tree-lined streets”, walking/cycling paths, and underground shopping malls to deal with winters in Ottawa (similar to what is in Montreal).

I wondered about the usefulness of these consultations. Have the consultants learned anything that would be useful in their design of the land beyond dreamy visions? But, perhaps, that was the purpose of these public engagements: to hear the public out on their dreams for the development of this site. The concepts which emerged from the public feedback could apply to any large-scale urban development in any city in North America. I cannot recall any comments that specifically relate to Confederation Heights.

The future of this property will depend on economic and population trends, and the resulting demand for commercial and residential properties. Nobody can foresee these trends with any clarity thirty years ahead.

I think the consultants will identify usable development parcels on the site and propose land uses and building envelopes by zoning regulations (highrise, lowrise, commercial, etc.). When economic conditions are ripe, developers will bid on parcels of developable land at Confederation Heights to do what they do best: propose workable projects with public appeal. Was this exercise anything more than checking the box on: “public engagement”? Just my opinion.