Emporer Miller

Kelly McParland: Toronto finds more new ways to make itself look ridiculous

Posted: November 06, 2008, 6:00 PM by Kelly McParland
Filed under: Full Comment,Kelly McParland

One thing you have to give the city of Toronto credit for is its absolute obliviousness to its own ridiculousness.

There is no sense of the absurdity within the politburo of Canada's biggest city. City fathers are able to tramp resolutely from one inanity to another, undisturbed by the notion that people of their stature should have more serious things to do.

Recently there was the example of the Great Trash Imbroglio, in which the city forcibly rounded up all the blue boxes people have been using to dispose of recyclable trash, and imposed new grey boxes. Only they don’t have enough grey boxes, so they sent out colour-coded tags. The tags are only good for certain trash, of certain types, at certain times. If you run out of tags in some colours you can get more; other colours you can’t.

This week the city got into a tussle with Tim Hortons, over lids. The city wants the coffee chain to change its plastic lids to paper, or something equally recyclable. If Tim’s won’t comply, the city says it will ban paper cups and make the chain use styrofoam, like in the old days. Tim’s has something like 83 billion gazillion outlets in Canada, but Toronto figures it can invent a whole new type of lid just for those outlets within the boundaries of the city. One step across the line into Mississauga and they can make lids out of concrete, for all the city cares. Tim’s says its lids are already recyclable, it’s just that Toronto won’t make the effort required. Grown people, paid by taxes, spend their days thinking up these tiffs.

Now the city is upset that it gets, in its opinion, too much bad press. Remember, this is Toronto, home of the Toronto Star, a paper so Liberal it defended Stéphane Dion right down to the bitter end, the only major paper in the country to seriously suggest Canadians make him prime minister. But apparently fawning coverage by the Star isn’t enough for the thin-skinned leftwingers of Mayor David Miller’s municipal administration, so it has decided to establish its own publication. Our Toronto will cost $800,000 and be delivered to every home in the city, whether they want it or not.

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