Green schemers run amok

Does Socialist Silly Hall have nothing better to do than attack good corporate citizens?

By SUE-ANN LEVY, TORONTO SUN

Last Updated: 13th November 2008, 3:27am

At today's planning and growth committee, councillors will be asked to approve an incentive program that will give commercial business owners money to install green roofs on their buildings.

That Eco-Roof program, according to the city report, will eat up some $1.07 million in precious operating and capital funds next year.

Let's not forget, either, that last Thursday, Mayor David Miller proudly presented the latest offering from the Politburo -- an $800,000 Pravda propaganda piece, er, "Our Toronto" newsletter, that is nothing more than a vehicle to shamelessly promote his wacky socialist mandate.

Yet, it seems, the city's green councillors are stubbornly refusing to spend $3 million to properly outfit their three recycling processing centres -- called Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) -- to sort recyclable paper coffee cups from their plastic lids.

Some $3 million -- the kind of money that is spent like water at King David's Empire on Queen St. W. -- is all that's needed next year to retrofit the city's MRFs with the kind of optimum sorting equipment that would allow the city to handle paper coffee (and tea) cups (minus their plastic lids) in the city's recycling stream.

Another $1 million in operating costs per year would also be needed to man the sorters, confirmed Geoff Rathbone, general manager of solid waste.

My point is in Miller's world, $4 million is chump change.

Instead it appears with its wacky, new in-store packaging initiatives, Socialist Silly Hall would sooner pick a fight with all of Toronto's coffee and tea chains trying to make a living in the city's competitive retail environment. Never mind that these companies pay huge taxes and provide real jobs.

In fact, as Nick Javor, senior v-p of corporate affairs for Tim Hortons noted, about 18,000 people are employed by their franchises in Toronto alone.

The availability of the technology notwithstanding, the socialists would sooner impose a ban on paper coffee and tea cups with plastic lids, claiming they're not "compatible" with the city's recycling stream. They'd sooner order the industry to create a special "Made in the Socialist Republik of Toronto" cup, as if coffee retailers have a safe alternative lid to transport their hot beverage at the ready (which they don't), and plenty of money to respond to council's whims.

It didn't seem to faze the green police one bit that the Tim Hortons cup and lid are accepted in either the blue box or green bin programs in cities across the province, including York Region, Kingston and Hamilton -- or that the company has been a good corporate citizen.

RISK OF LAWSUIT

The arbiters of all that's green (yesterday the strongest proponents were councillors Glenn DeBaeremaeker, Howard Moscoe and Gord Perks, who treated the industry reps with absolute contempt) think it's quite fine to impose a 20-cent discount on all coffee chains whose customers present a refillable cup and a 10-cent discount per bag on all retailers whose customers bring their own refillable bags -- ignoring the very real risk of a lawsuit against the city.

Kim McKinnon, v-p Ontario of the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors, said her retail members will have to absorb $88 million in extra costs from the discount.

She added they have an opinion indicating there is "definitely an option" to move forward legally.

Are council's eco-wingnuts out of their cotton-pickin' minds, or simply drunk on their own green power?

In my view, the socialists have gone so far this time this plan has the potential to get the "Anybody But David" (Miller) election movement up and running pretty darn fast.

Miller has been suspiciously silent to date on this policy. He kept away from the heated committee meeting yesterday, although I did spot him in the City Hall cafeteria clutching a styrofoam clamshell (also to be banned in 2010), presumably containing his lunch.

(Hmmm. You'd think the King of Climate Change would use his own refillable containers. I do.)

At least there were enough cool heads at the public works committee -- Mark Grimes, Chin Lee and John Parker -- to have the plan banning coffee and tea cups and lids referred back for more consultation.

With good reason. Too bad it took nine hours of pleading from the industry.

Coun. Case Ootes called this whole program "surreal" and said his colleagues are "absolutely ridiculous" to take on good corporate citizens.

"It's because we have an NDP government in power that takes on business ... that's the forte, their issue in life," he said. "They hamstring people who create jobs."