Accessibility and Access Keys [0]
Don Butler
Post Media News
Ottawa rates a mediocre C average in the Community Foundation of Ottawa’s 2010 Vital Signs report, which measures 11 quality-of-life indicators.
“This is not a report card I’d proudly bring home to my parents,” said Barbara McInnes, the foundation’s chief executive.
The 2010 checkup assigns its lowest mark, a D, to its top priority: the gap between rich and poor. Its second priority, housing, also rates a D.
The No. 3 priority, health and wellness — judged No. 1 in last year’s Vital Signs report — gets a relatively positive mark of B.
“Issues around poverty, homelessness and health care are top-of-mind among our citizens,” McInnes said. But there’s “growing frustration with the lack of improvement in these areas.”
The average monthly cost of food and shelter for a family of four in Ottawa is now nearly $2,000, the report says — $148 more than it could receive on social assistance. And distributions by the Ottawa Food Bank were at a record high in 2008-09.
There are still about 10,000 people on the waiting list for social housing, with no new rent-geared-to-income units being built.
Arts and culture and the environment both get B-pluses. On a per-capita basis, the city spent $6.47 last year on arts and festivals, up from just $3.64 in 2005.
The environment score was inflated in part by the city’s green bin program. The report says 95 per cent of Ottawa households now recycle.
Ottawa adults scored well for physical activity, though the number of city youths who are physically active has fallen below the Ontario average.
Wait times for MRIs in the Champlain health region, which includes Ottawa, dropped to 93 days in 2009-10, compared to 249 days in 2008.
Overall, the average hasn’t changed since the first Vital Signs report in 2006, said Judith MacBride-King, deputy chair of the project’s advisory committee. “When there’s focus and investment, there’s improvement,” she said. “When there’s not, we see it fall back.”
© Copyright © The Ottawa Citizen