Winnipeg Free Press
Sat, Feb 10, 2001
TOM OLESON
Being a family man himself, Mayor Glen Murray must know that two people produce more garbage than one person, that three produce more than two and that a family of six or seven will produce still more.
No matter how dedicated to recycling a large family may be, no matter how environmentally conscious it may be, it will produce more garbage than a single person -- this remains a simple truth. Mr. Murray's pay-as-you-throw garbage proposal for the city, however, takes no account of that fact. The question that needs to be asked is why?
Much has been made of the unfairness that was inherent in the original proposal that saw the inner city not having to pay for garbage pickup while the rest of the city did; of the inequity of a plan that would allow people poor enough to pass a means test to produce as much garbage as they like while requiring everyone else to pay a fee for every bag of garbage over the limit of two per household, even though everyone already pays for garbage pickup through their extraordinarily high city taxes.
As Winnipeg's poor excuse for a city council has muddled its way through this controversy, some of these inequities have been moderated. But no one, no councillor, appears to have wondered why the city would punish people for having families.
T-here has been a lot of babble from the mayor using the hot words 'environment' and 'recycling' in defense of his proposal. The babble, not to put too fine a point on it, is garbage. If the city dumps are overloaded, why are we taking cash to bury Kenora's trash? If the issue is recycling, the mayor's attention would be better concentrated on improving the city's program.
The list of what cannot be put into a blue box is as long as the arm of the garbage police Mr. Murray will have to create to enforce his new policy. All of the currently unacceptable items have to be put in garbage bags; soon that will cost $1.50 a pop.
City council will vote on the proposal on Monday. Mr. Murray appears to have found enough dunderheads among the councillors to carry the garbage. The swing vote, according to news reports, is Gord Sleeves, the new councillor who won the
byelection in St. Vital. Who would have thought that we would miss Al Golden so quickly?
Mr. Murray denies that his garbage proposal is a tax grab, but the fact remains that people will be paying the same taxes, receiving only a partial service and paying additional fees for the full service they previously had.
I could live with that if it were equitable, but Mr. Murray's plan is not. A single person who eats all of her meals at Mcdonald's (there are such people) and spends every evening in bars (those were the days, my friend) is allowed two bags of garbage a week. A family that buys groceries, cooks meals and spends their nights at home is allowed exactly the same. How can this be considered fair? You figure it out. Mayor Murray clearly has not, and neither have the councillors who support him.
There has been speculation that the timing of this proposal, and the urgency that the mayor and his supporters have attached to it, is driven by the hope that Winnipeg families will have grown used to the garbage tax by the time of the next civic election and take no revenge at the polls. That may be clever politics -- Canadians are too accustomed to extraordinary taxes, and Winnipeggers more so than most. But if this motion passes on Monday, the councillors who support it will need to explain their rationale to the voters of Winnipeg, why they choose to punish families for being families. And voters, as unaccustomed as they may be to taking revenge, should remember all their names when the next civic election comes around. It will inevitably come on someone's garbage day.