Random Access

Mississauga's environmental advisory committee is slowly figuring out what its mandate is going to be — mostly by deciding what it will NOT do, says its chair, George Carlson.
One of the obvious things that residents were expecting the committee to seize upon was a bylaw banning pesticide use on private property. But that isn't on the agenda and isn't likely to be, says the Ward 11 councillor.
"There's no use passing a bylaw that doesn't work," says the chair. While the bylaws passed by numerous other surrounding municipalities such as Oakville and Toronto have stood up in court, Carlson says they aren't working on the ground, where it counts.
A recent investigation on CBC's Marketplace by Wendy Mesley and crew found that despite bans in 135 municipalities, pesticides are freely available almost everywhere. Local retailers are happy to sell the poisons, knowing full well that it is illegal for the homeowner to use them. Halifax, where the first of 135 municipal bans began seven years ago, still has tons of chemically-enhanced useless perfect green lawns.
"Sure, we can pass a feel-good bylaw," says Carlson, "but I think we're going to take a different tack: by encouraging people to voluntarily quit using them and by pushing (Premier Dalton) McGuinty to get this stuff out of the hands of the uninformed homeowner."
Mississauga will push the Liberals for a province-wide ban – similar to its strategy to have a comprehensive smoke ban imposed across all municipalities — and will volunteer to be one of the first pilot sites.
OK, but is that really enough to change anybody's behaviour? The imposition of a bylaw would also offer a chance for extensive public education.
The sad experience of the cooking oil down the sewer and the ducks drenched with it in Lake Wabukayne this week proves once again that loads of people don't understand the basic connection between their own behaviour and environmental degradation. They pour poison on their lawns and wonder why the birds are always feeding on the lawn next door but not on theirs. And they can’t figure out why the drinking water needs all those chemicals in it.
Having a bylaw in your back pocket to deal with the people who just don’t or won't get it, wouldn’t necessarily be such a bad thing.
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Speaking of not getting it, Meadowvale resident Emma Ford wonders why she has to endure Mississauga Transit buses idling and idling at the transit loop at the Meadowvale Town Centre, often with no driver in site. "People are prisoners there, waiting for the bus and inhaling all that crap," she says.
The 65-year-old has suffered from asthma since she was a child. The City launched a highly-publicized anti-idling publicity campaign a few years ago that targeted school bus drivers and Moms and Dads waiting to pick up their kids.
Maybe they should have started with their own Transit fleet.
“Where's Hazel on this?" wonders Ford.
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Anybody else look at the chart in The Toronto Sun this morning that explains how much tax you pay if you own a home assessed at $400,000 in different GTA cities?
Mississauga, at just over $4,000 is almost smack dab in the middle. The glaring number was in Toronto, where residents pay $3,411, thus confirming what Mississauga staff and politicians have been saying for years: Toronto has been undertaxing its homeowners for years and overtaxing its business, driving them into the waiting arms of municipalities like Hazelville.
The highest tax bill, by the way, was in Oshawa at $6,840. Should it really cost twice as much to live there as in downtown Toronto?