User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Canada

Public toilets in Canada, called washrooms, cans, johns and flush, are found at a rate of eighteen per 100,000 people. The most common type of toilet is a sit toilet, and most public toilets provide toilet paper. Lack of toilet access for truckers along the Canadian Expressway has led to open defecation.

Public toilets
The local word for public toilet is washroom. Toilets are colloquially referred to as cans and johns. flush is a common word for toilets in the Maritimes.

A 2021 study found there were 18 public toilets per 100,000 people. The most common type of toilet is a sit toilet, and most public toilets provide toilet paper. The typical charge to use a public toilet is CAN$0.25.

The 2019 International Toilet Tourism Awards gave the Saskatchewan Science Centre the award for best design.

The lack of public toilets along the western part of the Canadian Expressway during the 2000s caused problems for long haul truckers. Their solution was often to pee into bottles and then leave them along the road in bushes. Sometimes, road maintenance crews and mowers would run over them as they could not see them in the high grass, resulting in a shower of warm, stale urine.

Women's toilets
In quasi public spaces in the Western world with toilet facilities, there is rarely rigid sex separation. This includes in large, private homes where lots of entertaining is done. During the Victorian period, a woman's modesty could be threatened by the act of using a public toilet. Women's toilets often require special sex-specific features. This includes places to dispose of tampons and sanitary napkins. The disposal container is often a large plastic bin. In smaller toilet stalls, this can make it difficult for women to sit because of these disposal bins may touch the seat or a woman may come into contact with them when she sits on the toilet seat.

When the National Arts Centre was renovated in the mid-2010s in Ottawa, it became one of the only buildings in the city to specifically address the need for women to have larger comparable public toilet facilities than men.

Senator David Plett authored an amendment to the Canadian Human Rights Act in February 2015 that would have allowed people to use the public toilet that aligned with their gender identity instead of their sex. Opposition to the amendment said that this would make women feel unsafe in public toilets and allow pedophiles access to women's toilets.

Accessible toilets
The law requires that all government buildings in Quebec provide wheelchair accessible toilets.

Montreal
American Coin Lock Co., Inc operated public toilets in the early 1950s at under contract from railway companies at train stations in New York City in New York, in Hartford, New Haven and New London in Connecticut, in Providence in Rhode Island, in Worcester in Massachusetts, and in Montreal.

In the early 2000s, Montreal started building new self-cleaning public toilets. In 2018, Montreal was building a number of public toilets in areas with high volumes of pedestrian traffic.

Ottawa
In 2016, half of Ottawa's 200 public toilets were closed at any given point in time.

Ottawa’s GottaGo! Campaign gave the city a C grade for the quality and quantity of public toilets in the city in 2018. In downtown Ottawa in 2018, there were at least 17 locations with toilets that were accessible to the public. These included toilets in the National Gallery of Canada, the National Arts Centre and city hall. Despite the toilets being open to the public, none of these buildings had outdoor signage to let the public know the toilets were available for use. 62 of Ottawa's 174 public toilets in 2018 were only open on a season basis, from late spring to early fall. Of the 112 toilets open year round in Ottawa in 2018, 48 were closed on Sundays. In 2018, transgender people were at risk of harassments when using public toilets in Ottawa. The average daily cost of running a portable toilet in Ottawa during the summer of 2018 was CAD$5. This cost included the price of being cleaned twice a week.

Toronto
Around 2017, Toronto started constructing free standing street level payment required public toilets. This was designed to reduce the pressure on local businesses to offer public access toilets.

Victoria
The Public Toilet Act British Columbia became law in 1996.