By Evelyn Harford Ride-sharing is a cheap transport alternative in a legal grey-zone. Uber has come under-siege recently by the City of Ottawa, which calls it an illegal ride-sharing company. However, the City of Ottawa continues to promote carpooling among its residents. The line drawn between illegal and legal ride-shares remains blurry. Ride-sharing is a transaction between a driver and passenger to share a ride from point a to point b. Ottawans, like Algonquin College student Adrian Sterling, flock to the web in search of cheap ride-sharing options. Sterling frequently uses Kijiji to find cheap rides when he travels to Toronto or Waterloo. “If I was to go every week for a month, I would save about $100 dollars,” said Sterling. “I use ride-shares because they’re more efficient, I find I get there quicker, there’s not as many stops.” Sterling said that he usually likes to hitch a ride with the same ride-share driver each time he travels. With different drivers offering a variety of destinations and prices, it is always easy to find a ride. “There are other students. It’s a good experience,” he said. “At first I was skeptical about it. When you think of ride-shares you automatically think it’s you and the driver, and maybe one other person. It could be dangerous or something, but it’s always been a good experience, there could be two guys and three girls, we’ll play games on the way down and crack jokes.” Proponents of ride-share say the trend is growing. There were 51 ride-share Kijiji ads posted today alone. Others use Craigslist and social media platforms like Facebook and Tumblr to both find and advertise ride-shares. Craigslist ride-share ads. Kijiji ride-share ads. Facebook ride-share negotiation. Craigslist daily van ride-share. Craigslist daily van...
Watson to Baird: Forgo the Media on LRT and NCC...
By Nicole Rutherford Despite sparking a recent flurry of online publicity, Mayor Jim Watson seems to be drawing the curtains a bit in his fight with the National Capital Commission over his light rail transit plan. Earlier this week Watson caused a stir publicly, taking aim at the commission for not approving a key part of the light rail transit expansion and vowing to take his frustration to Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, who is also responsible for the National Capital Commission. The two have been firing contentious tweets and statements about their respective mandates, but today Watson’s special assistant, Brook Simpson, said that in the upcoming days the two politicians are trying to find a middle ground. “The Mayor has made his opinion pretty clear,” Simpson said in regards to recent media spurs, “but now what they want is to talk face-to-face rather than through the media.” [View the story “Mayor Watson and Minister Baird: LTR versus NCC” on Storify] John Baird’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Watson hopes to meet with Baird about the commission’s recent decision to reject the design for a partially buried part of the light rail transit line along the Sir John A. MacDonald Parkway. According to the commission’s website, this does not meet two of the board’s conditions: “1) Unimpeded continuous access to the corridor lands and Ottawa River shorelines, and 2) minimal visual impact on the corridor landscape quality and the user experience of this corridor.” As a counter-offer, the commission proposed a fully buried tunnel along the same route, which the city says would be far more expensive. When the City of Ottawa responded with an offer to dig a 500-meter-long trench instead, commission spokesman Jean Wolff said this “wasn’t...
Don’t phone home: The fight to stop distracted driving...
By Karen Henderson Distracted driving is set to outstrip drunk driving as the leading cause of death by collision in Ontario by 2016, according to the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. Ottawa police and many community organizations want to educate drivers about the dangers of cell-phone use while driving. “You’re focusing on your device. You’re not aware of your surroundings,” Ottawa Police Traffic Sgt. Denis Hull said. “If you’re travelling at 100 kilometres per hour while you’re texting, your head is down for the entire length of a football field.” “It’s a habit that people have, they need to be in touch with what’s happening,” Hull said. “As soon as they hear that ping it’s stronger than them and they just have to pick up.” Ottawa Police Services says distracted driving killed 78 people in Ontario in 2013, and it has taken the lives of more than 400 people in the province since 2010. In the last five years, distracted driving collisions caused 6,400 injuries in Ontario. The Canadian Automobile Association published statistics indicating that drivers are 23 times more likely to crash if they are fiddling with their cell phones. Many motorists don’t seem to think there’s a problem with checking their phone on the road. There is even a trend on Twitter using the hashtag #drivingselfie, where drivers take posed pictures of themselves while driving and post them to Twitter. Oh hey, #drivingselfie - I didn't kill anyone! And I have black eyes. pic.twitter.com/GM72Aqk2gh— CatasTrophy (@TrophyCatas) July 1, 2014 However, a drive to fight technology with technology has resulted in the design of several anti-distracted driving apps that customers can download for free. Grade 10 student Whitney Anderson from Prince George, B.C., invented a distracted driving app for the Canada-Wide Science Fair that won...
From Pyongyang to Ottawa
By Priscilla Hwang He pickpocketed in a North Korean market by day; he loitered in a train station by night. Today, he’s an intern for Conservative MP Barry Devolin in Canada. Sungju Lee, 27, is a North Korean defector. He escaped from North Korea in 2002 when he was only a teenager. Canada is his latest stop on a journey that began in Pyongyang. “We went to mountains almost everyday. My father collected firewood, sometimes he caught rabbits, sometimes squirrels, sometimes snakes,” Lee said. It wasn’t always like this for Lee and his family. This lifestyle of scavenging began for Lee in 1997. Lee’s father once worked closely to then-leader Kim Il-sung in his personal military until he made what Lee calls a “political mistake.” His family was then kicked out of the wealthy capital city and fled to the northeastern outskirts of North Korea where poverty and famine were rife. “When we were in Pyongyang, we had a house, nice food, and nice clothes. But after we got kicked out of Pyongyang… we lost everything,” he said. In 1998, his father left to look for food in China. He never returned. Three months later, Lee’s mother disappeared, too. Lee, being an only child, was left to survive on his own. That’s when he met six other boys. “We became a gang,” he said. Together they made money from stealing, begging and fighting; they slept at the local train station at night. “It became our job,” he said. “That was my life.” He lived on the streets for four years. In February 2002, Lee met his grandfather, by chance, at the train station – an encounter he called “a sort of miracle in my life.” This was because there were no cellphones, Internet or functioning postal service in North Korea at the time, according to Lee. He lived with his grandfather for eight months, until one day when a stranger showed up at his doorstep. “He had my father’s letter. It said son, I’m living in China. I really, really miss you. Come to China with your mother,” said Lee. “I asked the stranger, who are you? Do you know my father? He said, yes I am one of your father’s best friends. So I trusted him and the next day, I left my grandfather’s house.” Paid human traffickers helped Lee cross a river to China, create a fake passport, bypass airport security and to take an airplane to “Han gook”– a place Lee thought was just another city in China. Lee now knows that “Han gook” is the South Korean word for South Korea – a place North Koreans fear. North Koreans are brainwashed to believe that defectors to South Korea will be manipulated for information, and then killed. Knowing this, Lee’s father had told him he was in China, not South Korea. Lee was reunited with his father in South Korea. Lee is a North Korean working in the Canadian government. He arrived in Canada mid-July of 2014 after being introduced by a friend to the HanVoice Pioneers Project. The project selects one young North Korean defector per year to come to Canada. The defector has an opportunity to be active in sharing information with Canadians about human rights violations in North Korea. HanVoice is the largest Canadian organization to advocate human rights for North Korea. “They believe that the pioneer will be a leader in the North Korean community. They think we are potential leaders,” he chuckled, “But I don’t like that word, because everyone has potential.” Through this program, Lee received the opportunity to intern at MP Barry Devolin’s office. “I’m sharing my story with politicians,” said Lee. In October, Lee was a witness at the House’s Subcommittee on International Human Rights, discussing human rights issues concerning North Korea with Canadian policymakers. Canadians don’t often hear a North Korean’s impression of Canadian...
Transport Canada aims to clip drone pilots’ wings...
By Hayley Chazan With regulations still largely up in the air, Transport Canada is getting worried about the increase of drones in Canadian skies. On Saturday Transport Canada’s Twitter feed was buzzing with warnings for unmanned aerial vehicle operators to “leave their drone at home” in light of the Santa Claus parades taking place in various cities across Canada. On Tuesday Transport Canada tweeted about the dangers of operating drones in cold weather, reminding users of the dos and don’ts of safe and legal drone use. Happy #SantaClausParade #Ottawa! Be safe and leave your #drone at home http://t.co/89RH1VJLkl #yow pic.twitter.com/O4RVOXr3YG— Transport Canada (@Transport_gc) November 22, 2014 Cold weather and #UAVs are not a good mix. Think #safety first. http://t.co/3HD3pNI9RB— Transport Canada (@Transport_gc) November 24, 2014 Transport Minister Lisa Raitt used the launch of the social media campaign last month to announce new guidelines on the use of drones in Canada. According to current regulations, all commercial drone users need to apply for special permits through Transport Canada. Demand for those permits is growing exponentially. In 2013 alone, the government saw a 500 per cent increase in the number of permits handed out. Recreational operators, on the other hand, need to obtain certification if their device weighs more than 35 kilograms or face up to $25,000 in fines. But if a copter is under that weight restriction and the operator is flying for fun, the sky is almost the limit. All drone operators are restricted from flying higher than 90 metres and need to stay at least 30 metres away from any vehicles, boats, structures or people. Drones also need to operate at least eight kilometres away from any airport, heliport or aerodrome. But if you’re flying for commercial purposes, the government does a...