An Ottawa man is demanding answers after finding a bag full of drug paraphernalia in the city's Byward Market.

"To find this amount of equipment was somewhat frightening," said Chris Grinham, who volunteers to pick up discarded needles in his neighbourhood near King Edward Avenue.

"We have a bag with well over 40, probably closer to 50 crack cookers," he said.

Grinham picked up the bulk bag of paraphernalia, which included condoms, alcohol swabs and needles, on the roof of a garage on Clarence Street. All of the items are similar to the kind of harm reduction paraphernalia handed out by various agencies in the city.

Grinham's findings come amidst a growing controversy about the number of needles discarded in parks and playgrounds in the city's downtown core. The number of needles that are dumped in neighbourhoods in and around the Byward Market has nearly tripled over the last three years.

Examining the program

Ottawa's medical officer of health was recently directed to study the program that offers clean needles to drug users in the Capital. He says scraping the current program and adopting one that would offer a one-for-one needle exchange would not benefit the city.

Instead, he says a needle exchange program would put addicts and the public more at risk because more needles would be carried around.

"That would put our police services and our emergency responders potentially at risk, as well as the community at risk. And I haven't even started talking about financial cost," Dr. Isra Levy, acting medical officer of health, told reporters.

Changes to Ottawa's needle program

The City is now taking steps to deal with the problem by changing how needles are cleaned up in the Capital. Those changes include hiring a summer student to pick up needles on city streets and establishing a needle hotline.

"We are taking this matter very seriously. However, at the same time we have been persuaded that a true needle exchange program would not bring the City of Ottawa the benefits that we imagined that it would," Mayor Larry O'Brien told CTV Ottawa.

Grinham, though, says he's cautiously optimistic about the proposed changes to the needle program.

"The burden of proof is now on them to show that it can be run safely and if it can't, then it needs to be re-evaluated again."

With a report from CTV Ottawa's Joanne Schnurr