Since Ontario requires the City of Ottawa to make sure drug users have clean needles, the province should cover the costs of cleaning them up from city parks and sidewalks after being used and discarded, says a local city councillor.

Coun. Diane Holmes will introduce a motion asking for the city's needle exchange and cleanup budget to be quadrupled from $50,000 to $200,000.

"And for us to ask the province for this funding since … giving out clean needles is their program," she said.

Ontario's Health Protection and Promotion Act requires that boards of health, such as Ottawa's, provide needle and syringe exchange programs to prevent transmission of HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and other blood-borne infections among drug users.

Holmes said the expanded funding would pay for extra needle pickup crews in the Hintonburg, Byward Market, Vanier and Centretown neighbourhoods where many needles are found.

Meanwhile, a group of volunteers who pick up needles littering Ottawa's Lowertown neighbourhood said they don't think expanding the needle cleanup is enough.

Chris Grinham of Safer Ottawa, who helped collect a number of discarded needles and crackpipes from local streets and stairwells Wednesday, said he agrees with city councillors who think Ottawa should require addicts to turn in a dirty needle in order to get a clean one at the city's needle exchanges.

Right now, needles are collected and distributed separately.

"If the addict has to bring them back, then that needle's not sitting there anymore," Grinham said.

The city's medical officer of health has said requiring one-for-one exchange will discourage addicts from using the clean needle program and increase the spread of disease.