street urinals in Guelph?

And how would I do that?

I agree that they may not even solve the problem they are intended to address. This is also the opinion of one of our downtown councillors, who opposes them.

The problem re exposure is in legalizing the behavior. Anyone who does it now is at least looking for a somewhat private area -- they will usually go around the corner and check who else is in the vicinity, or potentially be subject to a fine. There were a couple of hundred tickets written on this last year. Now we will have this behavior occurring in plain view of anyone else trying to use the street, even during the daytime, when visibility is greater and alternate facilities are available.

Believe it or not women have the same digestive systems as men and worse comes to worst, we will continue to have to use the bushes, where we -- unlike men, now -- would be subject to harassment and fines by police.

I have also seen these things in Europe, and they stink. That's their issue and their established practice. Most places here don't have them (although I understand Calgary does) and I don't think they're appropriate or necessary. Absolutely there should be adequate facilities provided, whether by the bars (who currently lock their doors immediately after last call, rather than allow patrons to return to them what they bought) or by the municipality. But how can a public body, in this country, in this century, possibly consider providing a service that can only be used by one sex?

So, I called the Human Rights Tribunal and they directed me to their legal support centre. The centre advised that there would be a potiential breach of the Ontario Human Rights Code, but it would be difficult to proceed with a complaint until the facilities are in place. They suggested speaking to our MPP and also writing a letter to the City Solicitor, which I will do.

Sorry, I should have clarified that this is for our famous bar crowd. After the supper crowd ends, most of the restaurants close for a couple of hours. They pick up all the tables and chairs off the floor and pile them in front of the washrooms. Then when they reopen later, they no longer allow food to be eaten on their premises, and that way they get around the legal requirement to provide washroom facilities while still getting to sell their food. Meanwhile, Chinese food and falafel and poutine packaging is spread out across the downtown every weekend morning after all these drunk people sat on the curbs to eat.

The Guelph Mercury interviewed one such restaurant owner a couple weeks ago and he said he used to leave his washrooms open until his sink got ripped out of the wall a couple years ago, a very expensive repair. Now he does the same as everyone else.

The background is that Guelph and Guelph U. have long had a reputation as a place to party, and our downtown is vastly oversupplied in booze barns (many under a single owner) serving the students of three or four universities, a number of colleges as well as other yahoos from the whole district. We have over 10,000 capacity in the downtown bars within a couple square blocks, in a city of, what, 120,000 people. The situation is exacerbated by well-intended local bylaws that at least until recently made it nearly impossible to get a liquor license in the whole southern half of the city. And to make the problem even worse, there is minimal late-night transit, and the police also control taxi licenses (ie as well as banning port-a-potties) so there are not enough of those either. It is not uncommon for it to take several hours for the downtown to clear out after last call -- even in winter. There is hooliganism. There are fights. There is noise. There is urine, and much worse; my kids have known from the time they could toddle that we have to watch our step carefully on the way to the ballet studio on Saturday mornings. It's a terrible problem for the people and businesses down there.

Yes, and they probably have other alternatives too.

OK so yesterday I called the MPP's office and discussed it with her staff. They are going to bring it up with her and see if she wants to be involved.

Today I wrote a letter to the city solicitor, cc the mayor and MPP, and sent this off by email. Thanks very much for all the comments and suggestions in this thread. I kept all these ideas in mind in identifying the problems with the urinals and some suggestions for alternative solutions.

I have also bcc'd the editors of the local papers on an FYI basis.

I may or may not copy the relevant city councillors since they never bother to respond to me, although one of them did bring up my prior message to him at city council during their last discussion on this, which (hilariously) prompted one of my compatriot malcontents on the right to write a big long opinion piece in the paper about how one citizen's objection seems to be given more weight than all the official stakeholders who worked so hard in commitee to bring forward this (disgusting) proposal. I thought that was a good point too, so in my letter I am also suggesting that all committees as well as all city staff (since they endorsed this) be given mandatory human rights training to eliminate any similar discriminatory proposals making it this far forward in future. It's interesting that our Human Rights Tribunal does have the ability to enforce this kind of a remedy, or any other reasonable solution that a complainant might propose. Of course this is not a formal complaint at this stage but there is always a chance that city legal staff will be alive to that possibility and they may go ahead and start some form of training before their hand is forced.

Just to clarify one fundamental point that seems to have escaped you, Merowe, this is not a question of physiology, it's a question of androcentric design. We're not talking about a trough here; this is a hole halfway up a tall plastic cylinder, and I don't care how long your skirt is or how many of them you have on, there is no way that a woman is going to be able to reliably hit that mark. There are other readily available designs that do permit use by women -- even women wearing pants! as is our "more" on this side of the pond -- as well as children and men, including those who are mobility- and vision-impaired. We call these things toilets, or port-a-potties.

So you see, there is no intention to "penalize" men.

In reference to your suggestion that I am oversensitive to the prospect of viewing strangers' penises, and that this concern is vulgar and overstated, I will point out another fact that you appear to have missed, which is that these urinals will be placed not in any discreet corner but right out in the open, where their users can hardly be missed. And there is no need to grow a new generation of exhibitionists -- it's the ones we have already that I am worried about; not so much for myself, I would add, as for my pre-teen girls. I can guarantee you that I will not be using any street where these devices have been placed, when I have them with me.

It's nice for you though that you find this so amusing.

Well, I made the journey to Guelph as an undergrad years and years ago, I have met lots of other people who say the only time they have ever been here was as an undergrad to drink, and my nephew who is in his first year at Brock in St. Catharines has already made the expedition. Anyway, the numbers in Guelph speak for themselves; we have a problem that is way out of proportion to the size of the city. This is what makes things so difficult in terms of late-night transit, which we don't have the population to support, and taxis, which if we add more they may be underutilized the whole rest of the week.

With breastfeeding there is very little exposure most of the time, but if you went to school here, you should also be aware that it was residents of Guelph who overturned the Canadian law against women going topless in public, even when they are not feeding a baby.

No one was fighting for the right to flash their genitals. In its typical form this is exclusively a male practice, intended as intimidation and sexual abuse. I have been on the receiving end of it, and worse along the same spectrum.

That is the difference.

I ran into one of our councillors for the downtown ward yesterday, standing in line for the bus to the Hillside festival. He is opposed to the urinals.

The issue is going back to Council tonight for city funding and he thinks it will pass.

Other than the urinals, the two other planks of the campaing will be increased enforcement including a higher fine, and posters, both of which we agree are positive changes. The downtown business community has raised just over $4K but most of that will be going to the poster campaign. Councillor Bell wants the posters to say something like "Go before you leave, because you will get a $500 fine if they catch you doing it outside" but instead they will be designing one that says "Don't urinate on your neighbour's door". He doesn't think that will be very effective for the target audience.

He asked if the Human Rights Tribunal could issue an injunction. I told him I don't think so -- the impression I got from talking to their Legal Support Centre was that they will only deal with this after the urinals are already in place. They do have an expedited process for some cases though so when the time comes I will see if that is available.

He said there already are a number of public washrooms in the downtown area. I didn't know about them because they are not open after hours, due to security concerns by police. I explained my problem with the police force driving this whole process. He took my point that police should respond, not dictate.

I commended the excellent work that council has done this term. I said it would be a shame if any of them were defeated next year over a pissy little thing like this. He said the budget is going to council today too, and it may be overshadowed by this issue. (I suppose that could be considered an advantage, depending on what they are intending to put through, but I don't think there's anything earth-shattering there. I could be wrong.)

There was an article in one of the papers last week that finally made specific mention of the fact that, not only can these urinals not be used by women, they are also unavailable to men in wheelchairs. An editorial in the other paper a couple weeks ago actually suggested that urinals are not discriminatory because the Chief of Police had stated that they would not charge any woman who tried to use them; his words: "If women want to use them, God love 'em". I sent a rant to the editorial page editor explaining what adverse effect discrimination is, and a few days ago he wrote something else on another issue that actually promoted that perspective. So that is a general improvement.