User-pay on hold; Import/export policy stands; Tories promise to scrap growth plan

By Kate Harries AWARE Simcoe April 26 2011

Simcoe County’s plan to charge for garbage collection suffered a setback yesterday with an overwhelming vote in support of a motion from Bradford West Gwillimbury Mayor Doug White to temporarily shelve user pay.

Just two people (the weighted vote was 84-9) held to the position taken by council February 22, when the vote in favour of user-pay was almost unanimous.

They were Tiny Mayor Ray Millar and Oro-Medonte Deputy Mayor Ralph Hough.

Millar is a member of Zero Waste Simcoe, a group that has been steadfast in supporting full user-pay as a tool to get people to think seriously about what they’re throwing out. This sets the stage for pressuring the province to implement Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) that ensures that manufacturers, not municipalities, take ownership of the waste. (ZWS chair and Midland Mayor Gord McKay, who left the meeting before the vote, also urged staying the course on user-pay.)

Hough, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, is not for turning. “We can’t keep procrastinating,” he said, pointing to the fact that the county has just seven years of garbage disposal left in its own landfill sites (most recently reported as eight – an extra year has been found, thanks to county residents’ stellar diversion efforts in 2010).

He also noted that most county garbage is being disposed of at the Oro-Medonte landfill on the Oro Moraine, a spot that may be even more vulnerable than Site 41.

So what made the rest change their position?

At their waste workshop last week, councillors learned  that the bag tags may cost $3, not the $2 mentioned in speculation here and in the media. But perhaps more important than the still-to-be-determined tag cost was a feeling of discomfort that councillors are being pressured to make decisions now so the process to award the waste collection contract can proceed smoothly (it had begun – the county has posted a Request for Proposals.)

This is the first time the waste collection contract is to be awarded county-wide, rather than divided between different regions. This will eliminate the small contractor and (apparently) require the successful bidder (the betting is on Miller Waste) to purchase a fleet of trucks.

The existing contracts expire in July 2012 and, Environmental Services Director Rob McCullough told the waste workshop, the RFP has to close in early May of this year to allow sufficient time to order the trucks – which might differ in configuration according to whether residents are paying for collection, or not.

At the workshop, Midland Deputy Mayor Stephan Kramp questioned why the county was moving full speed ahead on user-pay even though staff had not provided council with the data that show that this option will result in significant improvements in waste diversion, nor answered a multitude of questions raised by councillors on implementation.

Some may have been swayed by the forcefulness of the forceful BWG mayor. Simcoe County is on the right track, White argued, moving from a 33 per cent diversion rate in 2006 to (almost) 60 per cent last year.

“Our residents are doing the right thing,” he said, and it’s council’s job to help them do better by offering more options (for instance, as other councillors pointed out, on clamshells, egg cartons and Styrofoam, all of which are accepted for recycling in Niagara Region).

Where do things stand now?

White’s motion provides that full user-pay “not be implemented until further consideration and direction by county council,”  that the RFP for waste collection be rescinded, and that staff be required to negotiate an extension to existing waste collection contracts.

A face-saving amendment was added for public relations purposes, to allow councillors to say that the reversal is not a reversal but actually means they are “moving forward.”

Otherwise, as Springwater Mayor Linda Collins said, the public might get confused. 

Another surprise. Essa Deputy Mayor Sandie Macdonald led the charge against a motion to rescind the county’s policy to neither import nor export waste, a motion widely expected to be passed. 

This policy does not apply to “commodity” waste – recyclables, or organics, but rather to “residual” waste, destined either for landfills or for what some councillors referred to as “magical” incinerators that emit no toxins.

Expecting another municipality to take care of Simcoe County’s waste is not responsible, Macdonald said. Others pointed to the history of the policy, which was aimed in part at ensuring that the county could not be forced to accept another municipality’s waste (observers remembered the fears that Toronto’s garbage could end up at the now-terminated Site 41).

McCullough has pointed out that it would take the stroke of a pen for the minister of the environment to override any Simcoe County policy position – but nevertheless, councillors decided to “to take the moral high ground” and stick by their past policy.

Until there’s a compelling reason not to. Staff have been directed to look at “options.”

Simcoe Grey MPP Jim Wilson and Simcoe North MPP Garfield Dunlop appeared at county council to express their unwavering support for the actions of local politicians on the growth issue.

“Are we out of water?” Wilson asked. “Are we out of land? Do we not want jobs?” 

Some would answer the first question with a “Yes!” especially in areas of South Simcoe. 

And we are losing land, foodland in the most fertile area of Canada, at an alarming rate. As for jobs – yes, we want jobs, and the first place we want them is on vacant industrial lands in Collingwood, Midland, Barrie and Orillia – not on Highway 400 away from population centres and transit routes.

Wilson promised that a Progressive Conservative government would scrap the Simcoe County Growth plan and Amendment 1, with its unique provisions designed to address the vast oversupply of land approved for development by past local councils in this area.

Both MPPs professed to have no idea what lay behind the special measures developed by the ministry of infrastructure. A cursory glance at ministry documents would reveal that provincial planners believe Simcoe County’s thriving agricultural communities and great natural spaces are deserving of special consideration within the context of the Greater Golden Horseshoe.

Unfortunately at the local level, the pressures on politicians from developers and construction companies – in the context of an indifferent public – are immense, and the Tory MPPs were playing to that.

Dunlop made one key point. Infrastructure Minister Bob Chiarelli’s referral of Amendment 1 to a facilitator was a ploy, he said, to get the Simcoe growth issue off the public agenda until after the October provincial election.

As the two MPPs and county councillors said – this has to be an election issue. Yes. Let’s bring this debate home.