For Immediate Release:
June 3, 2010
Queens Park – A pledge to introduce new Waste Diversion Ontario (WDO) legislation and make up for an embarrassing failure to deliver on diversion targets from Environment Minister John Gerretsen seems to have been a diversion in itself.
On Earth Day, as media attention was aimed at environmental issues, Gerretsen was quick to announce the supposed pending legislation in response to Opposition questions highlighting the failure of this government’s waste diversion direction.
“We look forward to that party supporting our new Waste Diversion Act, which will be introduced in this House within the next four to five weeks,” Gerretsen said.
Now six weeks later, with the house preparing to rise for the summer there is no legislation to be found.
“This is just the latest example of a government that makes its commitments and then leaves them at the curb,” Opposition Environment Critic Toby Barrett stated. “They promised 60 per cent waste diversion by 2008, now in 2010 we sit at 22 per cent – they are also achieving only one-third of their electronics waste target.
“Now they fail to deliver on legislation proposed to fix what they have broken.”
Despite the clear failure of government to deliver on their waste diversion commitments, Ontarians continue to fund the sputtering program. Recent reports indicate that on top of the government imposed fees already being payed, changes to WDO may also include an additional waste disposal fee.
“This government’s waste disposal strategy is held up by tax – specifically, tire tax, electronics tax and now a waste disposal fee?” Barrett noted. “As usual in McGuinty’s Ontario we will be paying more and getting less in the way of results.”
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For more information, please contact MPP Toby Barrett at
(519) 428-0446 or (905)-765-8413, 1-800-903-8629
Ontario Handsard
April 22, 2010
Hon. John Gerretsen: First of all, we look forward to that party supporting our new Waste Diversion Act, which will be introduced in this House within the next four to five weeks. We want to make sure that we keep as much out of our landfill sites as possible. We want to work towards a zero-waste society, and we need the help of everybody in this province-in the IC&I sector as well as in the residential sector-to work with us on that. So we look forward to their support when we introduce this new bill to make producers-the people who actually make the various products, the people who actually package the various products-responsible for their after-life use. We look forward to their participation in that.
We can do a lot better. We’ve done a lot, and the only way we’re going to do it better is by taking stuff out of landfill sites through a new waste diversion-