Since being sworn in as mayor of Toronto on December 1, Mayor Ford has had an easy time of it. He managed to get the repeal of the vehicle registration tax, the reduction of councillors’ office expenses and a motion declaring the TTC an essential service through a council that is still filled with lefties.
Ford announced last week that he wants to eliminate the required 5 cent charge for plastic bags that was enacted by former Mayor David Miller back in 2009. The charge was not a tax; the money from the sale of every plastic bag in the city went to the seller, not the government.
Unlike the items that Ford was able to pass in the early days of the new council, eliminating the plastic bag charge was not a campaign issue. And according to the Toronto Star, none of the rookie councillors contacted by the newspaper said they would vote to repeal the charge. It’s all about the environment, you know.
The
Star was also squealing with delight over the fact that Ford may not be able to get rid of the charge. If the law requiring a mandatory 5 cent charge is abolished, retailers could continue to charge 5 cents per bag anyway. Ha, ha ha! This shows the most liberal mainstream newspaper in Canada doesn’t understand Rob Ford. And more importantly, they don’t understand the thousands and thousands of Toronto voters who went to the polls last October 25th and placed an “x” beside Ford’s name.
The issue is not whether customers can be charged 5 cents for every plastic bag they obtain from a store. The issue is whether the government should be mandating businesses how much to charge for products they sell or in this case, “give” to their customers.
Although it is very un-Canadian to speak about freedom other than during the first 11 days of November, businesses should have the freedom to set their own prices. The 5 cent charge was not a tax; it was a requirement that stores charge a nickel for every bag they give to customers. The large stores such as Loblaws, Sobey’s and Metro, love the idea of charging a nickel a bag. They could then brag about how much they were doing to save the environment. The reality is that there was nothing preventing them from charging 5 cents or 10 cents or whatever they thought they could get away with without Toronto City Council requiring them to.
Toronto is the only jurisdiction in Canada that requires plastic bags to be sold rather than given away. Yet stores in other jurisdictions charge a nickel a bag and although a lot of consumers don’t like it, they manage to cope either by paying for the bags or using reusable bags.
If these large stores really cared about the environment, they would have given reusable bags to their customers instead of selling them for 99 cents or more. And they would have begun to charge for bags long before the city government forced them to. But this is not about the environment; it is about feeling good. And it is about large businesses in Canada being just as dependent on the government as those who are on welfare or are homeless. Please, Mr. Ford, tell us how much to charge!
But it’s not only the large supermarkets that are required to charge a nickel a bag. All businesses that provide plastic bags are forced to charge for them. This includes small grocery stores, convenience stores and restaurants that provide takeout food. These are the businesses that suffer the most under the requirement to charge for plastic bags. And these are the businesses that will likely give the bags away if the law is repealed. These individual businesses use many less bags than do the large stores.
Of course the lefties don’t care about these businesses. They were completely neglected by the
Toronto Star when they laughed about the fact the stores would keep charging even if Ford repeals the plastic bag charge. Of course many of these small businesses are owned and operated by recent immigrants to Canada and they don’t really count. Their problems are ignored. They are only welcome in Toronto so the left can brag about what a nice, pretty multicultural city Toronto is. They are only here for show.
The government should not be dictating the prices that stores charge or do not charge for such things as plastic bags. Every other place in Canada seems to get this.
But the left on council will moan about the environment and global warming climate change and will fight Ford on this issue. And they have a good chance of winning.
The problem with the right, such as it is in Toronto, is they won’t do anything about it other than good old fashioned Canadian complaining. There is a simple way to protest the continuation of the mandated nickel a bag that would take no time and cost very little. But unfortunately, given the apathy of those on the right, it would never take off.
Small convenience stores and take-out restaurants should be able to decide whether or not to charge for plastic bags. Even the large stores that depend on the government should be left to make their own decisions.
