By Pepper Parr

September 1^st, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

The federal government is looking for anything they can do to help get more housing built.

The created the Canada Public Land Bank and put 56 properties as potential locations for construction of thousands of housing units.  The 56 properties amount to 305 hectares of land across Canada.

This is comparable to a flea on an elephant – a sigh that they aren’t looking all that hard at the properties owned by the federal government.

Doing what government tend to do – inflate the information they hand out – we are told that the 305 hectares is equal to approximately 2,000 hockey rinks or 400 Canadian football fields

None of the 56 are located in Burlington

Properties were selected because of their suitability for housing development. The federal government is continuing to review federal surplus and underutilized properties, as well as actively working with partners to identify more properties for development.

A surprising part of the announcement is this:

If you are aware of a federal property that is currently not in use and has housing potential, please email us the location and a brief proposal at terrainspublics-publiclands@tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca (this email is not secure; don’t include personal information, such as telephone, address, SIN, financial, medical or work details). You can also provide us with ideas directly from the public land mapping tool.

All properties included in the tool will be ready to be released as soon as possible.

To get a look at the locations there is an Interactive map.  Click HERE to get there.

In an attempt to assure the Indigenous community that the government isn’t going to steal anymore of their land the government said it will:

honour known interests and previous commitments and Section 35 Constitutional obligations (including those related to asserted or established aboriginal or treaty rights). We will also engage with Indigenous rights holders, communities and developers on housing and economic opportunities that the Public Lands for Homes Plan may present.

The government remains committed to meaningful consultation and coordination with Indigenous communities and organizations. We are working to ensure that the Public Lands for Homes Plan is applied in a way that recognizes and promotes Indigenous rights and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and that we fulfill our Crown’s duty to consult with Indigenous Peoples.

Canada is the world’s second-largest country with a land mass of 9,976,139 square kilometres. Canada comprises 7% of the world’s land mass.

1 square km = 100 hectares.

This is so embarrassing.

By Pepper Parr

November 19^th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

A Private Member’s Bill was announced in the provincial legislature this morning.

Mary-Margaret McMahon, MPP for Beaches-East York and Ontario Liberal Critic for The Environment and Climate Action, is tabling a Private Members’ Bill, Resource Recovery and Circular Economy Amendment Act (Beverage Container Deposit Program), 2024.

This bill would, if passed, establish a beverage container deposit return system (DRS) for non-alcoholic beverage containers in Ontario.

Ontario is falling behind in the fight against climate change after 6 years of Ford’s Conservative Government. “This common sense solution will improve our recycling rate and help keep our cities, parks, and water litter-free” said McMahon, “The Government failed to act on this important legislation when they dismantled the DRS working group, despite more than 80% of Ontarians being supportive of the proposition”.

All Canadian provinces except Ontario and Manitoba have a deposit-return system (DRS) for non-alcoholic beverage containers. Without a beverage container recycling program, Ontario maintains the country’s lowest non-alcoholic beverage container recovery rate for non-alcoholic beverage containers – which is stalled at 51%, according to the latest estimate provided by Circular Materials.

Most plastic bottles used for soft drinks and water are made from polyethylene terephthalate (Pet), which is highly recyclable.

Today, Environmental Defence is celebrating the introduction of the private member’s bill to expand deposit return to non-alcoholic drink containers. This is a common-sense policy solution to bottles and cans littered in parks, along roadways and in our lakes and rivers. It’s also a solution the vast majority of Ontarians support.

Shifting to a real circular economy for plastics is a massive opportunity to close the loop, save billions of dollars, and decouple plastics production from fossil fuel consumption.

Shamefully, Ontario is one of only two provinces in Canada without deposit return for non-alcoholic beverages, and as a result has the lowest drink container recycling rate in the country at only 43 per cent.

We encourage MPPs to support this bill’s quick passage through the Legislature so that work can get underway to keep billions of beverage containers out of Ontario’s landfills, incinerators and environment.

Burlington MPP Natalie Pierre has an opportunity to help an important environmental issue and show her constituents that she too believes the environment is important.

There is an opportunity, for those who give climate issues some thought, to lobby Burlington MPP Natalie Pierre to do one decent thing before she leaves office – vote for the bill.

Send the MPP a note at  Natalie@nataliepierrempp.ca  and ask her to put the environment before party politics and show us that she really did care about what constituents think.

Background:

• Policy research by Environmental Defence estimates that upwards of 1.7 billion plastic drink containers end up landfilled, littered or burned each year in Ontario due to the lack of a deposit-return system for non-alcoholic beverages.
• In 2023, the Ontario government established a stakeholder working group to explore expanding deposit return to include non-alcoholic beverage containers. This past summer, following vocal opposition from retailers, the government cancelled the working group and abandoned the policy.
• The Canadian Beverage Association, which represents big brands like Coca-Cola and Pepsi has come out in support of Ontario implementing an expanded deposit return.
• Polling commissioned by Environmental Defence from Abacus Data earlier this year found that 81 per cent of Ontarians support deposit return for non-alcoholic beverages, and more than half want to be able to return their empties to grocery and retail stores.
• Ontario and Manitoba are the only two provinces in Canada without deposit return for non-alcoholic beverage containers
• The provincial government has set regulated targets for beverage producers to collect and recycle or refill containers: 75 per cent by 2026 and 80 per cent by 2030. The only proven way to achieve these targets is deposit return with accessible return locations, including at stores where non-alcoholic beverages are sold.

ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE (environmentaldefence.ca): Environmental Defence is a leading Canadian environmental advocacy organization that works with government, industry and individuals to defend clean water, a safe climate and healthy communities.

By Staff

October 28th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

Ontarians have been returning containers to The Beer Store for nearly 100 years — ensuring cans and bottles are sorted and effectively recycled or refilled. But retailers are seeking to weaken the deposit-return program for alcohol containers even as Ontario continues to lag behind most other Canadian provinces since it does not have a similar program for non-alcoholic beverages.

The Beer Store is taking in beer bottles and cans as well as wine and spirit bottles. Retails who now have the right to sell these products don’t want to do the cleanup part.

Every year, we estimate that more than 1.7 billion plastic bottles are littered, landfilled or burned in an incinerator because there is no deposit-return system for non-alcoholic beverages. The provincial government abruptly cancelled work on such a program this past summer after retailers complained that they would be expected to participate in taking back empties from the beverages they sell.

Now retailers are railing against the requirement to start taking back alcohol empties if they sell alcohol as part of this fall’s expansion of sales to convenience and grocery stores.

Give the guy on the bike credit for doing what he can to support himself – but this isn’t the way to manage the return of beverage containers to be recycled.

All effective deposit-return systems ensure consumers can easily return their empties. This keeps containers in the system and out of the environment while enabling people to get their deposits back. That’s why the province must ignore retailer whining and hold firm that stores that sell alcohol must take back empties. It’s only fair.

What’s more, the province must get back to the table with the non-alcoholic beverage industry, retailers and environmental advocates to design an effective and long-awaited expansion of the deposit-return program to non-alcoholic beverages.

Retailers all over the world take back empties — including in Quebec, Michigan, Germany and all over Latin America. There is no excuse for major retailers not to participate in reducing litter and waste in Ontario, refunding customer deposits, and ensuring containers can be recycled or refilled. 

By Pepper Parr

August 20^th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

Pot holes and recreation services are a large part of what a municipality is about – has been until population intensification got to the top of the municipal news hit parade.

The municipality you live in provides the services that matter most on a day to day basis.  And usually your municipal councillor is someone you pass on the street or see in the supermarkets – the exception for Burlington being ward 3 Councillor Rory Nisan who moved from where he was elected into ward 2.

The federal government issues your passport and collects taxes, the province is expected to ensure there is a robust economy that provides the good paying jobs that leaves enough to pay the taxes.

From time to time a citizen will have a concern with something a level of government has done and they want more in the way of information.

Freedom of Information request have been the process uses at every level of government.

A front page article yesterday the Globe & Mail published a report based on work done by the Secret Canada, Globe & Mail  national investigation on how well the Freedom of Information process was working – the consensus – not all that well.

Much like their federal and provincial counterparts, municipalities across the country must adhere to freedom of information (FOI) laws, which are intended to promote transparency by allowing individuals to request documents from public institutions. These laws require institutions to disclose requested information with limited exceptions.

A Globe and Mail audit of Canada’s 53 largest municipalities (from which most of this article was sourced) has found vast differences in how local governments perform on FOI. While they completed access requests in 25 days, on average – twice as fast as provincial and territorial ministries, and more than three times as quickly as federal departments – some cities still took much longer, including Edmonton (69 days), Hamilton (66) and Greater Sudbury (50).

The audit also reveals that some municipalities apply redactions much more heavily than others. Mississauga, for instance, released 78 per cent of its files in full – that is, without any redactions whatsoever. Halifax, by comparison, released just 2 per cent of its files in full.

To assemble this national picture of municipal access performance, The Globe filed requests to every municipality in Canada with a population of at least 100,000 people, asking for data on FOIs completed between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023. The findings reflect the performance of 53 municipalities across eight provinces. (Three additional cities – Thunder Bay, Lévis, Que., and Ajax, Ont. – were excluded from the analysis because they said they had no FOI tracking system, claimed they could not produce the requested information or provided incomplete data.)

Burlington ranks in the top half – doing better than Hamilton which isn’t a metric you want to be measured by.

Kevin Walby, a criminology professor at the University of Winnipeg who also studies freedom of information, said some of the audited municipalities’ performance was “just abysmal – like, their FOI offices should be put into receivership, or something like that.”

“Some of the lack of compliance is just totally wild,” he continues. “There aren’t a lot of sites where you get great compliance. Great compliance, I think, would be where you have most of the records released in full, and most of the disclosures released within 30 days, or in a reasonable time.” Prof. Walby says the findings are evidence that some municipalities haven’t adequately resourced their FOI offices. “It’s a really contradictory message for an apparatus of the state to be sending: You guys comply with all these other laws, but we don’t have to follow the laws that pertain to us.”

“How do they expect Canadians to want to believe in the legitimacy of the state and believe in these kinds of transparency initiatives when you see this kind of lack of compliance across the board?”

Kristan Cook, a former FOI director for Edmonton, says municipalities make decisions that “actually affect” people’s day-today lives. “It’s people wanting to know, why is my bus route changing? How much did this bridge cost? Why is the train going through my yard?”

Ms. Cook, who is now the director of privacy at PBC Solutions, a health benefits technology company, says that Canada has thousands of municipal governments across the country, and despite their varying sizes, they follow the same access rules as higher levels of government. “Whether you’re a government administration of three people or 300, that three-person government administration still has to provide the same service under FOI.”

Municipalities handle FOI very differently from provincial or federal governments: City clerks usually act as ranking officials on FOI matters, and local governments tend to have fewer layers of review – that is, fewer people who need to approve the release of a document – before an FOI response goes out the door, which likely speeds up the process, Ms. Cook says.

The FOI requests received by municipalities are also very different from those going to the provinces or federal government. “So many dog bites, like, an incredible number of dog bites,” Ms. Cook says. “Fire inspections, that’s a big one. And then requests about infrastructure, things like bridges and buildings and mass transit – those have a very municipal flavour.”

Ms. Cook says that these contrasts in timeliness often come down to records management practices.

“If you don’t know where your records are, then you can’t locate them and you can’t respond to an FOI request,” she says.

“Organizations of a significant size have hundreds of systems that store records. Some of these systems talk to each other, and some of them don’t. So it really depends on where the information is stored and how easy it is to gather the information and put it into the form that an applicant is seeking.”

After assembling the documents relevant to a request, FOI offices read through the records to identify information that must be redacted under access law. Some responses are released as-is, without redactions, while others can be withheld in their entirety. The final status of an FOI package, also known as its “disposition,” is a useful indicator of how much information a public institution is actually releasing.

Mississauga released 78 per cent of its FOI responses without any redactions whatsoever, the highest full disclosure rating for any major Canadian municipality. Halifax, meanwhile, released just 2 per cent of its files in full.

(Some of these disclosure statistics are complicated by the types of FOIs they are processing. Winnipeg, for instance, also processes files for the Winnipeg Police Service, and police requests often carry personal information redactions. The Globe’s analysis aimed to measure how municipalities were responding to their requests, so it kept the request data it received mostly as-is, removing only FOIs that were abandoned or transferred to another public institution.)

Ms. Cook says that the variation in how extensively local governments redact records could be read many ways. Take a city that has high full disclosure rates: “Maybe it’s an organization that believes in transparency, or maybe it’s an organization that isn’t paying attention,” she says. Meanwhile, a municipality with high redaction rates may be “more on the cautious side of releasing information.”

Over all, municipal governments outperformed federal, provincial and territorial ministries across all FOI metrics in the audit. They closed requests more rapidly – 25 days on average, compared with 47 provincially/territorially and 83 federally – and completed the lion’s share of their files within 30 days. Municipalities also released files in full much more frequently: 38 per cent of the time, compared with 20 per cent provincially and 24 per cent federally.

To Ms. Cook, these differences can be explained in large part by the complexity of a public institution’s bureaucracy. People empowered to make final FOI decisions – the ones given “delegations of authority” – often have more levels of oversight at the provincial and federal level, she says, slowing down the process considerably.

“In some delegations, the people who are actually the people that you’re talking to when you’re doing the access request, they have the authority to sign something and send it out to you themselves,” she says. “In other places, they don’t. So, any time you have that – more people, more levels – the amount of time that it’s going to take for you to get something is going to increase. That’s a really important difference between municipal, provincial and federal.”

While several municipalities fared well in this audit, some stood out for how quickly and fulsomely they responded to requests. Red Deer, Alta., and Mississauga released more than 70 per cent of their files in full, and managed to do so while keeping FOI responses to an average of 22 and 23 days, respectively.

Nearly every request completed by Longueuil, Que., within the audit window was closed within 30 days – despite the municipality having completed more than 1,500 requests during the period.

Several Quebec municipalities achieved exceedingly fast completion times. Montreal wrapped up FOIs in an average of 15 days; Gatineau closed files in 13 days, on average, and Quebec City and Longueuil averaged 12 days.

Hamilton had the second slowest average response time (behind Edmonton), but it also ranked poorly across other metrics: It closed 40 per cent of its files within 30 days (third-worst, after Richmond, B.C., and Saguenay, Que.) and released 19 per cent of its files in full (13th-worst).

In a e-mailed statement, Hamilton city clerk Matthew Trennum said the municipality “takes its role as a steward and guardian of personal and confidential information very seriously,” and that Hamilton is “looking to invest in modernized freedom of information request tracking software to assist in managing timelines and more generally for project management.”

Marianne Meed Ward made transparency the watch word that got her elected – the phrase fell out of use when she was elected Mayor.

During the 2018 municipal election Burlington Council member Marianne Meed Ward running for the Office of Mayor began to suspect some of the information that was coming their way.

A member of the campaign team filed a  Freedom of Information request related to correspondence between the then Director of Planning and to some degree the then City Manger.  Shortly after the FOI was filed the city said they required a deposit of $700 to do all the work that was required.

While stunned at the amount the individual paid the deposit. We expect to have more detail on thus later in the month – we do know that some of the deposit was refunded.

We have been advised of another Burlington situation where the person filing the FOI request was asked to pay a deposit of more than $1000. They gave up at that point.

Burlington position on the list is at about the midpoint – better that Hamilton, which isn’t saying very much.