VANIER RESIDENTS PROTEST DRUG PROBLEM

Teen Worker Says She's At Risk On The Job From Needle Users

Fifteen-year-old Kim Charbonneau has a summer job at the Burger King
on Montreal Road. She flips burgers and cooks fries. She takes orders
at the register and works the drive-through.

Every fifteen minutes, she checks the dining room and the bathrooms,
wiping tables, cleaning toilets and taking out garbage.

Kim makes $7.50 an hour, and spends a lot of those hours worrying
about getting hurt.

Buried in the clear plastic garbage bags she hauls are beer bottles,
crack pipes and syringes. Last week, a co-worker was pricked with a needle.

Kim knows she is at risk, but she needs the job. She needs to get
work experience for college.

The discarded drug paraphernalia she finds in the wet paper towels
are the neighbourhood's not-so-secret secret. Like several
neighbourhoods in Ottawa, Vanier has a drug problem.

Yesterday, a crowd of Vanier residents met outside the office of MPP
Madeleine Meilleur to call attention to the problem.

Chanting "show us the money!" a small group of people canvassed
pedestrians for support and called for increased funding for
addiction services.

"We have been working closely with the community. It takes a
comprehensive approach and my government is ready to play its role,"
Ms. Meilleur responded.

Organizer Evan Soikie of the Vanier chapter of the Association of
Community Organizations for Reform Now said a majority of Vanier
residents is worried about drug use.

More treatment centres are needed, he said.

Kim's mother, Lise Charbonneau, agrees. She said the crack pipes and
syringes her daughter finds signal trouble in the community.

"We can't just shut people out, because addiction is a disease.
Treatment is the big thing," Ms. Charbonneau said.

Treatment, she added, might keep people from getting high in her
daughter's place of work.

"We need our kids to be working and they can't work in this type of
environment."

Tiffany St. Denis is a night supervisor at the restaurant. Eyes wide,
she described how one of her co-workers was injured by a needle on the job:

"She changed the garbage in the men's washroom and then she was
walking to the back with the bags when she got pricked. She was taken
to the hospital right away."

Ms. St. Denis said she does not feel prepared to deal with the
hazards she faces at work.

"I'm paid minimum wage and I have to deal with this stuff.

"And it's not just me, it's also my employees and the customers, too.
I don't want to be responsible if something happens to them.

There should definitely be some kind of precaution."

Kim said she was not trained to handle hazardous materials when she
started working at Burger King during her Grade 10 year.

"We put two bags in the garbage, but a needle is pretty sharp and you
can still get poked with it. I don't like that idea," she said.

Paper towels, dustbins and brooms are often used to clean up
dangerous refuse, she said.

A woman who picked up the phone last night and identified herself as
the manager of the Vanier Burger King would not comment on the
situation. "I can't talk about that," she said.

The company that owns the franchise could not be reached for comment
last night.

Other businesses in the area say drug use has been problematic for
them, now and in the past. At a Tim Hortons on Montreal Road, for
example, employees have found broken crack pipes in their bathrooms,
which are now kept locked at night.

Catherine Fregusson, clinical co-ordinator at the Ottawa Community
Health Centre, said she understands the concern. "This is definitely
a public health issue," she said.

Ms. Fregusson said the city offers a "black-box service" for
drug-users to safely dispose of drug paraphernalia. Yet, she said,
the number of syringes and pipes showing up in garbage bins
highlights the need for additional treatment programs.

The key, she said, is combining treatment programs with community engagement.

"We need to engage communities so they feel safe," she said. "We need
to address the poverty and marginalization that feeds this too."