Milton blog

The global movement to step out of the artificial light and into complete darkness – to draw attention to climate change – is snowballing across the country.

Since the launch of the Toronto Star’s countdown to Earth Hour, cities across the country have been signing up. Montreal has announced its intention to join up and Sarnia, Ontario has also been welcomed to the campaign.

“I’ve been a great believer that governments are too slow on moving on these issues,” said Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley. “Here is a way of getting a lot of people involved at no cost.”

Participation is as simple as turning off your lights – between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on March 29.

Bradley pointed out that Earth Hour is not all about sacrifice. “I also think it’s going to have a very positive impact on national unity because Canadians from coast to coast can all shut off Don Cherry all at the same time.”

Among those Canadians are the residents of Halton Region and Mississauga who also officially committed to the project this week.

Mississauga Councillor George Carlson said since the campaign was announced Mayor Hazel McCallion and the 11 councillors were 100 per cent on board.

“In fact some of them wanted to jump in with both feet and do things like turning out the street lights and shutting down recreation centres,” he said.

Their plan is to work with local environmental groups to get the message out and shut down as many lights as possible, including many at City Hall, he said.

“We unanimously supported it, which is a nice change for council.”

Sarnia, as Bradley points out, already has several green initiatives on the go. It has the largest solar farm in North America and one of the largest biofuel plants in the country, he said.

Bradley said if people were really realistic about problems with power shortages and air quality, “I could see an hour every day.”

– by Emily Mathieu of the Toronto Star

The following post is by Mike Cluett. Please visit Mike Cluett’s Milton blog site here:

A couple of days ago, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty released his third budget. This is something unheard of for a minority government being able to have this many budgets without being defeated. In many cases, they’re doing a good job and while most Canadians don’t want an election, they seem comfortable with our MP’s in this minority situation.

Here are a couple of items that I pulled from the budget. All in all, it is a pretty sound plan for the coming years. Some of the big highlights for towns and cities are as follows:

To continue reading this column, go to Mike Cluett’s Milton Blog.

The following post is by Mike Cluett. Please visit Mike Cluett’s Milton blog site here:

At this point, Milton doesn’t have all day GO Train service to Toronto with only a few trains in the morning and a few in the evening. Many of the commuters that use the Milton station come from outside the area in Cambridge, Guelph and northern parts of Oakville and Burlington. The provincial government recently announced a large investment in GO Train services of $100 million dollars.

Unfortunately none of those dollars have made it to Milton…

To continue reading this column, go to Mike Cluett’s Milton Blog.

Robert Sager of Milton was rushed through training for a $9 an hour temporary job and, on his second shift, crushed by a runaway forklift.

Workplace safety rules allow companies to keep spotless ratings even if poorly trained temps are injured or killed

Ontario companies that use an army of temporary workers are hiding a dirty secret behind their glowing safety records.

That’s because the province’s worker insurance program protects the company job sites where accidents occur, yet gives big financial penalties to the temporary agency that sent the worker to the job.

A loophole in the rules of the province’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) system is to blame.

As a result, companies that use a lot of temporary workers have no incentive to clean up their act because their “experience rating” – a financial calculation based on a company’s health and safety record – is not affected when a temp is hurt. Depending on company size, the firm can escape hundreds-of-thousands- or millions-of-dollars in annual payments.

The situation is “fundamentally wrong,” said WSIB chair Steve Mahoney, after the Toronto Star presented the results of its investigation. “To allow a company that is using temp agencies to simply skip the responsibility for safety is not in the interest of the workers and that is our main focus.”

Mahoney will ask the provincial labour ministry to fix the problem, which would require a change to legislation. The impact, if a change is made, will be significant. One in five workers in Ontario is a temp, employed by one of the 1,300 or more agencies in the province that use them.

Cases uncovered by the Star as part of an ongoing investigation into worker safety reveal factories, retail shipping firms, and other companies that did not train a temporary worker properly or take safety precautions, leading to severe injuries, crushed bodies, broken bones and, sometimes, death.

“I’ve seen companies get great safety ratings when we know that temps are injured there all the time,” said Suzanne McInerney, a vice-president at Staffing Edge, one of the largest temporary work firms in Ontario. Her firm, and others, want the province to pass legislation that would make injuries the shared responsibility with the places people work – not just the company that places them in the job.

Robert Sager agrees.

A runaway forklift crushed the 53-year-old Milton man in July 2005. He had been sent by temporary agency Kelly Services to an Exel Canada distribution plant for the $9 an hour job. Exel rushed him through training and he was put to work immediately at a Brantford warehouse.

“I felt pressured because at that point in time I really needed a job,” Sager said.

A few minutes into his second shift, the forklift he was driving accelerated backwards, threw him out and pinned him against a steel rack.

“I remember thinking `Oh God, I’m dead.’ I tried to call out for help and I could hardly get it out of my voice. I remember hearing someone say `Sager, are you all right?’ and then I blacked out.”

They discovered the extent of the damage at the hospital: a crushed pelvis, a torn urethra, ripped vertebrae, ruptured bowel, crushed kidneys, a head injury and testicles swollen tight with blood. He had three heart attacks immediately after the accident.

Two-and-a-half years later, the damage remains. He can barely walk, has memory loss, and needs help with everything from bathing to using the toilet. A nurse comes daily to change a dressing in his chest.

Under current rules, Kelly Services would face a hike in its annual workplace insurance payments, not Exel. However, neither firm would provide details of their case to the Star.

The Ministry of Labour investigated and laid charges; Exel pleaded guilty to failing to ensure that Sager was sufficiently experienced and was fined $80,000 under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Kelly Services is contesting safety act charges that it did not properly prepare Sager for the job.

The fine for Exel was a one-time payout that does not affect the company’s WSIB safety rating. A serious injury like Sager’s, with ensuing medical costs over many years, would significantly raise a company’s annual payments.

To better understand the WSIB, here is how the system works.

Ontario’s workers’ compensation system began in 1915, when workers gave up the right to sue companies in return for long-term compensation in a no-fault insurance program paid for by employers.

In Ontario, most companies pay into a worker insurance system to cover medical, salary and retraining costs for injured workers.

Each company pays the WSIB an annual insurance premium depending on the type of work. A mining company pays more than a white-collar office because miners are more often injured, and the injuries are more serious.

How safe a company is relative to other similar companies helps them save money. A good “experience rating” means they pay less; a bad rating they pay more. A company that pays an annual WSIB premium of $5 million could either save $1 million or pay an additional $1 million, depending on its record.

Worker advocates say that the policy behind the loophole needs to be changed.

“It is outrageous that this situation even exists,” said Wayne Samuelson, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour.

“If a company wants to avoid getting on the radar of the labour ministry, they can just offload their accidents onto the temp agency … that way their record gets attached to the agency.”

WSIB data released to the Star does not differentiate temp companies from firms that hire salaried employees, so it is impossible to tell how many temp workers report injuries each year. However, by looking at 200 known temporary firms in the data, we spotted a 32 per cent increase in injuries, from 5,345 in 2001 to 7,075 in 2005, the most recent information available. Industry experts say that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

What pains those who run staffing agencies is that the WSIB has no way of identifying companies where temp workers are frequently injured.

“It doesn’t even go on their record,” said Linda Ford, president of Temporary Measures. “Even if we put their name down when we file our paperwork, the WSIB does not have a way of recording it, so there is nothing to red flag the companies for their safety record.”

McInerney, of Staffing Edge, said some companies give temp workers the most strenuous jobs, without proper training.

“Companies push off those jobs to the staffing companies because they know there will be accidents and therefore their safety rate is kept clean and ours is not,” she said.

As a result, temp agencies typically pay double the premiums compared to companies that do the same work, McInerney said.

In 2006, the WSIB launched what it called its “boldest social marketing” campaign ever in a bid to one day reduce workplace fatalities and injuries to zero.

Staffing Edge president Lou Duggan saw an opening and wrote to WSIB chair Mahoney last year, asking for him to fix the temporary worker issue.

“We feel that lost time injuries should not only reflect the staffing firm’s frequency of injuries but should as well target the client site locations where the injuries occurred,” Duggan wrote.

“Instilling a greater accountability for (lost time injuries) on the client site is the key. This change would engage the management at workplaces and support your goal for a safer work environment.”

Duggan received a reply from the WSIB saying the issue would be studied, but nothing changed.

Yesterday, board chair Mahoney said in an interview that he would meet with the provincial labour ministry in two weeks and propose a change to legislation that would close the loophole.

– by Moira Welsh of the Toronto Star

Many municipalities require residents to buy tags if they want to throw out extra garbage bags

Toronto’s user-pay system for garbage is a departure from the way waste is collected in surrounding municipalities.

Unlike Toronto, many 905 municipalities continue to use a system limiting the number of bags you may leave at the curb, with tags required if you want to throw out more.

Some municipalities take a gentle approach.

In Markham, for example, which boasts a 70 per cent diversion rate, residents have a three-bag limit per household, with biweekly collection. Those who want to throw out more -garbage need to get a tag from city hall – but it’s free.

The point of making residents go to the effort of getting the tag is to “make people think” about what they are putting out, said town spokesperson Catherine Harrison.

“Failure to comply is not an issue in Markham,” Harrison said. “We have not charged anyone.”

Other municipalities such as Mississauga, Brampton, Caledon (maximum two bags per week), Vaughan (three bags every two weeks), Ajax, Pickering and Oshawa (four bags every two weeks) force residents to pay for that extra bag, charging $1 to $1.50 per tag.

In Halton Region, residents are moving from a generous six-bag weekly collection system to bi-weekly collection, starting in April with the rollout of a green bin program.

Put out more than six, and city officials gently explain the importance of not doing it.

Ignore the warning and you’ll have to cart your extra garbage to a transfer station yourself. Ignore it further and you could get charged with a bylaw offence with a set fine of $90.

Peel Region’s waste management director, Andrew Pollock, said that in Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon, almost 91 per cent of homes respect the bag limits.

There has been talk, but no decision yet, on reducing bag limits or going biweekly to encourage more diversion.

Durham Region spokesperson Katherine Ross-Perron said Toronto’s approach is to treat garbage like any other utility by forcing users to pay proportionately and taking collection off the tax rolls. She said that in the surrounding regions, it’s likely that garbage collection will continue to be covered by property taxes.

– by Phinjo Gombu

A recycling plant that’s key to Toronto’s new garbage strategy has closed unexpectedly, throwing part of the city’s ambitious trash diversion plans into limbo.

The Canadian Polystyrene Recycling Association in Mississauga announced it was suspending operations just two weeks after Toronto began rolling out its mega blue bins.

The large-capacity blue boxes were purchased to accommodate the addition of polystyrene and plastic bags to the residential recycling program next fall. All Toronto homes will have one by spring.

The closing has also sent Peel Region and Hamilton, which already recycle these materials, scrambling to find alternatives. These plastics may end up being sent to landfills.

Foamed polystyrene, a plastic resin, is used for food containers and packaging electronic equipment.

While the total weight of polystyrene tossed out by GTA residents is small, the volume is huge. One kilogram of polystyrene packaging fills more than two household garbage bins. Hamilton collects about 3,000 kilograms a year.

The plant, the only recycler in the province big enough to take Toronto’s expected volume of polystyrene, had just invested $300,000 in state-of-the-art sorting equipment. But in a statement, the company cited declining revenues as the reason operations were halted.

“Our polystyrene market just went south,” said Steve Whitter, Toronto’s director of transfer, processing and disposal of solid waste. “Obviously it’s a setback.

“When Toronto gets into something like film plastic or polystyrene, they will very quickly swallow up all the available capacity that’s in the marketplace because we’re just so much bigger than everyone else.”

For now, the city intends to accept polystyrene and seek another market. “Normally, there’s a backup,” said Whitter. “Someone comes out of the woodwork who’s interested in taking the material if there’s a need, and there’s clearly a need.”

The closed plant has been recycling Peel’s polystyrene for years.

Its failure is “indicative of the whole issue” of plastics recycling, said Andy Pollack, Peel’s director of waste management. He said companies should only use plastic packaging if they can ensure markets are in place to recycle it. Last year, only 20 per cent of Ontario’s plastic packaging was recycled.

“Municipalities are at the end of the line. We have to manage what packagers and retailers decide to use so we’re constantly trying to figure out – out of all this plastic packaging – what is recyclable and what’s not,” he said. “It’s a big challenge for us.”

Cities can’t add items to the blue box mix that don’t have a market at the other end. “Someone out there has to say, `I’m a company that recycles plastic and I’m willing to take this type of plastic.’”

In two years, Michigan’s landfills will close to Ontario garbage, and all regions need to grapple now with ways to reduce, reuse and recycle. Forty to 50 per cent of all waste in the GTA, including organics, yard waste and recyclables, is diverted from landfills, but municipalities hope to increase that to 60 to 70 per cent in a few years.

Toronto has an ambitious diversion plan underpinned, ironically, by its purchase of a landfill near St. Thomas, Ont. – an investment that clarified for city officials how important it is to keep waste in check.

“If we simply continue to use (the St. Thomas landfill) at the current rate, it will fill up by 2024,” said solid-waste manager Geoff Rathbone. With the new diversion plan, the city can use the landfill it bought for $220 million for another 10 years, until 2034.

That’s why the city wanted to add high-volume polystyrene and bags to its program in the first place. “We’re given a certain number of million cubic metres to fill, and then it’s full,” Rathbone said.

The city is also introducing a pay-as-you-go plan that will force residents who put out bigger volumes of garbage to pay more. It plans to build two new processing centres for organics, six new reuse centres and a mixed-waste processing plant. The project, still in its infancy, would treat waste to reduce it before it goes to landfill.

Not everyone is ready to follow. Durham officials considered building a mixed-waste processing plant, but a tour of a Dutch operation convinced them otherwise.

“Think of breaking open bags of garbage and then spinning them around, trying to extract the odd bits and pieces that might be recyclable,” said works commissioner Clifford Curtis. “It’s almost an inhuman place to work. We went in and we might as well have thrown our clothes away when we got out. The smell got in everything.”

Curtis also has had doubts about adding plastic bags and foam to Durham’s blue box program.

“There are just some things that we can’t recycle because there is no market for it, such as plastic film and polystyrene foam,” he said. The bags are used to make plastic lumber, but “it’s a really, really thin market and it’s not stable,” he said.

The two items are also difficult to sort at the recycling plant. Foam breaks up easily and often clings to other material because of its static properties, while bags fly around and are difficult to pull manually from fast-moving conveyor belts.

Though Peel has been taking plastic bags for years, the region is starting a campaign to persuade residents not to put loose bags into the box. In plants with automated machinery, the bags get wrapped around anything that is spinning, so they’re a constant maintenance issue, said Pollack, who would like to see retailers collect bags instead.

Despite the challenges, Curtis thinks the next two years will be “a time of great opportunity.”

“People are finally grasping the concept that we can’t keep throwing our garbage into the ground and they are trying to divert to save resources. And people are willing to pay a premium to do that,” he said.

“They are trying to do the right thing. I think that’s very encouraging.”

RECYCLING ACROSS THE GTA: PLANS BY REGION

Peel Region

Has a 20-year contract with Algonquin Power in Brampton, the only residential waste incinerator in the province. The privately owned company incinerates half its garbage, with the remainder currently going to the Pine Tree Acres landfill in Michigan. Once that’s closed, the region’s garbage will go to Warwick Landfill near Sarnia, Ont. An environmental assessment approved the landfill’s expansion. Its use is still waiting on a certificate of approval, which should come in the next two years.

Halton Region

Hopes to reach 60 per cent diversion by 2010. Increased diversion rates will extend the life of the Milton landfill by seven years, until 2030.

In April, it will add a green cart program for food waste. Blue box collection will change from every two weeks to weekly. Garbage collection will change from weekly to every other week.

Durham Region

The region wants to build an energy-from-waste facility, similar to Algonquin Power in Brampton, which incinerates half of Peel’s garbage and creates electricity. The proposal, slated for a site in Clarington, Ont., near Oshawa, is undergoing environmental assessment. “It’s theoretically possible, if everything goes right, to be ready by 2010,” says Clifford Curtis, works commissioner in Durham Region.

York Region

The region is building a plant in Vaughan that will turn garbage into energy pellets, which Andy Campbell, York’s director of waste management, says look like dense goose droppings. The pellets can be burned in boilers, approved for use in Ontario greenhouses.

The region is also investing in Durham Region’s proposal for an energy-from-waste plant.

Written by Patti Winsa of the Toronto Star

The following post is by Mike Cluett. Please visit Mike Cluett’s Milton blog site here:

As many of you know, its about this time of year when the Town of Milton council sits down and decides how much money they need to pay for the services they provide. It’s also a well known fact that Milton has one of the lower tax rates in the GTA, which is what makes Milton a choice for many people to live.

Last week on December 10th and 11th, the council sat down to hammer out the town staff’s proposal for the budget. What came out of it was rather shocking.

After “long deliberations” the council had decided on a 6.6% increase in our taxes for 2008. This means a homeowner with a property value of $ 300,000 will have an increase on their bill of over $45 for residential and roughly $37 for rural.

Keep in mind the rate of inflation is hovering at 2.5% for this year.

Why such a huge increase? In recent articles appearing in the Milton Canadian Champion, you will see the highlights (or low-lights if you so choose) of the budget deliberations on the 10th and 11th.

The budget initially had an increase of 4 full time firefighters for the Milton Fire Department but Ward 2 Councillor Greg Nelson made a case for just one more saying “Four says we got the message — five says we care.”

A little on the dramatic side and it worked as the changes were approved…

To continue reading this column, go to Mike Cluett’s Milton Blog.

The following post is by Mike Cluett. Please visit Mike Cluett’s Milton blog site here:

I was getting ready to go to the last official meeting of the Milton 150th Anniversary committee around 6:30pm when I heard some weird sounds and then a smash.

“Oh no, not again” I thought and hoped for the best as I made my way to the front porch.

So much for hoping.

There was another accident at Yates Drive and March Crossing last night between 2 vehicles. One coming out of March Crossing turning east towards Bennett and the other travelling on Yates towards Bennett. One driver was taking her family to the Hawthorne Village PS Holiday sing-a-long when, according to her, the car came through the stop sign and hit her on the drivers side front wheel, causing some significant damage….

To continue reading this column, go to Mike Cluett’s Milton Blog.