Ontario Hansard - 18-October2005

WASTE DISPOSAL

Ms. Laurie Scott (Haliburton-Victoria-Brock): My question is to the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of the Environment. Yesterday you said, "We have an amazing plan" for dealing with garbage disposal for Toronto and area if the border closes. Just a minute ago you talked about reduce, reuse and recycle. There has to be more to this amazing plan than reduce, reuse and recycle. Could you please share more of the plan with us?

Mr. John Wilkinson (Perth-Middlesex): I want to say to the member opposite, my friend from Haliburton-Victoria-Brock, congratulations on being appointed the critic for the environment by your leader.
I'd be more than happy to share with all the members about this. I want you to know that from the day this government was formed, we've been telling those municipalities that ship their waste across an international border that this was not a viable, long-term solution. Given the recent events in the US, the minister met with those communities involved and made it clear that they need to develop a viable, long-term solution to deal with their waste.

Further, I can share that this past Friday the Premier asked the ministry to meet with those municipalities again to get a status report, to get an update on the development of their plans, and those meetings will take place. Finally, I want to assure the member that when municipalities submit their final plans, we will review them at the Ministry of the Environment expeditiously to ensure they meet our very high environmental standards.

Ms. Scott: More meetings -- we need to get the border working.
We checked the Environmental Bill of Rights postings. There's no evidence of your amazing plan. We checked the Ministry of the Environment Web site -- no evidence of your amazing plan. We checked in every newspaper. There's no announcement of your amazing plan.

Yesterday the Premier said that "should the hauler be unable to deliver that garbage to the landfill site in question, it has an ensuing responsibility to deliver it to yet another landfill site." It turns out the Premier was amazingly wrong on this point. According to the chair of the Toronto Works committee, if the border closes, the responsibility rests with you, the government, and the municipalities to find an alternative, not the Michigan landfill site. Where exactly does your amazing plan put the Toronto area garbage, should the border close? Can you say? Is it going to Simcoe, Halton, Peel or London?
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Mr. Wilkinson: I want you to know that we on this side of the House listen to the mayor of the city of Toronto in regard to what is the status of their contract, and not other people. The mayor has been very clear on this point.

The second thing I want you to know -- I recall that in the throne speech, and I know the member was listening intently, we talked about the need to reform the environmental assessment process. The previous government came up with the idea of going to scoped environmental assessments, and what that did was divert all of these environmental assessments into the courts. That made sure, actually, that it was not clear, that it was not efficient, that it was not transparent. So it's important for us to achieve that, and I look forward to the minister making an announcement shortly about our change in the process of environmental assessment that will make it clear, transparent and efficient.