Chris Selley: Toronto plastic bag ban isn’t nearly as bad as council treating the city like a model parliament
Chris Selley Jun 7, 2012 – 5:52 PM ET
Assuming Toronto’s surprise plastic bag ban comes to pass in 2013, I’m sure we’ll learn to live with it. I imagine it will proceed much as the LCBO’s transition from free plastic bags to a choice between $1 vinyl bags and free paper bags that break after a 10-minute walk and melt instantly in the rain proceeded. Personally, if I plan to go liquor-shopping (or grocery shopping for that matter), I take a bag. And if I pop in to the LCBO unexpectedly … well, I’ve owned a ton of those $1 vinyl bags in my time.
People who drive to do their grocery shopping, which I don’t, shouldn’t have much of a problem: They’ll just stow their eco-bags in the trunk, as most already do, and if they forget to now and again, they’ll make do with paper. And if their store is “bagless,” as some already are … well, I guess they’ll turn around and go home again, and then come back.
People will buy more plastic bags, for their garbage and green bin and dog mess — so that will eat into the total savings of plastic going into landfill. And of course people will consume more paper bags. And if you ask me, it’s just flat-out illogical to prohibit the sale of a product in increments of one, but allow it in increments of 100. (“Don’t give them ideas!” someone responded when I Tweeteed that last night.) But in the end, this ban will probably accomplish its goal: Fewer plastic bags will go in the garbage.
Of course, the 5¢ plastic bag fee was already accomplishing that goal. Mayor Rob Ford acknowledged as much. I never understood why a staunch capitalist couldn’t just see it at as stores selling bags for 5¢, the same way they sell chocolate bars for $1.50 and milk for $3.95. But the fee annoyed people, the Mayor insisted, so it had to go. (Others complained that retailers weren’t obliged to donate the proceeds to environmental concerns — yet another example of the perfect beating the good to a bloody pulp at City Hall.) Mr. Ford could not leave well enough alone. So he brought it to Council. And then one of his own staunchest allies, David Shiner, proposed an outright ban out of the blue — no study, no consultation, no nothing. And poof, it was done.
In a word, it’s infuriating — not the result so much as the process, or rather the complete lack thereof. This is a place that studies everything to within an inch of its life, and throws most of the studies in a pile in the corner until the next time someone wants the issue studied. Here is something that will really affect people’s day-to-day lives — not cataclysmically, but palpably — and they vote it in with a casual wave of their hands. It is not Mr. Ford’s fault. Foolishly making oneself vulnerable to attack does not justify attack. This slapdash ban is the fault of the people who voted for it.
Yet it was interesting to notice how many people charged to Council’s defence afterward, on grounds that they liked the idea of banning plastic bags. I doubt most of them would have appreciated it if a similarly casual vote had, say, ordered every bike lane in the city painted over, or a downtown bypass highway built across the Toronto Islands, or turned Yonge and Bay Streets into complimentary one-way thoroughfares.
Mr. Ford warns darkly that plastic-banning councillors will pay with their jobs when the next election comes around. That’s up to the voters; as I say, I suspect we’ll learn to deal with it. Personally, I’m far less dismayed by the prospect of bagless shopping than by knowing how many councillors were willing to treat Torontonians like the fictional constituents of a model parliament.
