‘It’s really stressful’: Advocates call for more washroom facilities in Halifax

Meig Campbell · CBC News

· Posted: Jul 18, 2026 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 3 hours ago

For Dalhousie University student Olivia LeBlanc, navigating Halifax is a daily exercise in logistical planning.

LeBlanc lives with colitis, an inflammation of the bowel, and works with Crohn’s and Colitis Canada.

She says finding a public washroom in the city is a constant, daunting challenge — and one that advocates say highlights a glaring gap in municipal infrastructure in Halifax and across the country.

“It’s really stressful,” LeBlanc said. “You need to plan your day around where the bathroom is going to be … when you physically locate one, that doesn’t always mean that it’s available.”

LeBlanc said she often finds the public washrooms that the municipality has available are not clean or they are locked depending on the hour or season. 

She cited the washrooms at the Halifax Public Gardens on Spring Garden Road that close at sundown and are locked up for the season after the summer. The washroom facilities at the Halifax Commons are also seasonal.

Julia Bedell, who was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease when she was 14, shares LeBlanc’s concerns about being able to locate a washroom in the city at a moment’s notice.

“Having the extra security of knowing that there were clean public washrooms around would lessen some of that mental load for me,” Bedell said.

In an emailed statement, the Halifax Regional Municipality said it operates 29 outdoor public washrooms. It said funding for washrooms and any future projects is prioritized based on municipal strategy and availability of funds.

The statement said the city has no plans to increase the frequency of washroom cleaning, citing “budget pressures.”

Bedell said the shortage of facilities puts an added burden on businesses around the city. 

“When we put the onus on business owners, and a lot of small local businesses, to provide a public washroom for folks, it’s putting the responsibility on them to decide who gets to use the washroom,” shel said.

Lezlie Lowe, a Halifax-based author, wrote the 2018 book No Place to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs.

She says her interest in the topic was piqued once she had children. 

“What I discovered was that I could no longer use the city the same way that I used to,” Lowe said. “You have a kid in diapers and you have a kid who’s toilet training, and it just makes you realize how few public bathrooms there were at that time — and still are — in the city.”

Lowe said she had hoped the experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic would increase the urgency to make bathrooms more accessible and readily available. 

“I felt like people who didn’t have those needs would start to understand what it’s like for other people who are dealing with a kind of profound lack of provision,” she said. “It really didn’t happen.”

• More stories from Halifax Regional Municipality

Lowe said more washrooms are needed to make the city more functional for everybody. 

“When we talk about walkability and livability and aging in place, and all those things we love to talk about in strategic plans and city plans, none of that can happen without adequate public bathrooms.”

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