Canadian Money Pits: Green Programs

CANADIANS ARE PRACTICAL.

Buy the right tool once. Winter tires are a way of sorting the practical from the dull-witted. Canadians are always looking for a deal because we realize that there is a limited amount of money in the account. That is why Canadians get so upset when the government, at any level, does not take our practicality with money into account.

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THE GREEN BIN PROGRAM: A COMPOSTABLE MONEY PIT

Here is a classic example. Here in Ottawa, Canada's capital, we have been forced by the municipal and provincial government to recycle kitchen waste. We are told that this is to slow down the filling of our local landfill. Now, ignore the fact that less than 5% of our garbage is pork chop bones and coffee grinds. Ignore fact that the only true biodegradable garbage is kitchen waste and it actually aids in the breakdown process in the landfill. Forget that the people of our city have been trapped into a multimillion-dollar, 20 year contract to dispose of  kitchen scraps, with a quota (by volume) that we cannot possibly meet. Forget that the city is paying 20 times the disposal rate for yard waste by blending both wastes and they still cannot reach that quota. Go back to the initial reason for the project: we want to keep our landfill from filling up. Here is the problem: the landfill takes shipments from other cities! The Councillors answer: cut back on garbage pickup, and without even cutting the fees to citizens.

PRACTICAL ISN'T POLITICAL.

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Our roads are goat paths; our premier tourist area is filthy and full of drug addicts; we are flooding our sewage directly into our water supply; and we are still spending tens of millions on recycling pork chop bones? We have an obtrusive bike lane recently painted into the core of downtown--a lane that two thousand taxpayers signed a petition to get rid of--and the only thing I heard a Councillor respond with, “I like riding my bike there.” What?! Do you know how hard it is to get two thousand people to sign anything? This bike lane has caused traffic problems and safety issues, and is putting businesses along the street in peril because customers can't park, yet City Hall refuses to deal with the petition. I would say Ottawa is upset, and no one is listening!

Living in this city is like living in a house with a caved-in roof, and your spouse spends the roof money on a new Porsche. And worse yet, s/he doesn’t see what the problem is! If the Councillors would just face the real issues, move the money from their money-sucking projects and spend it wisely, our city would be sparkling for the 150^th anniversary of Canada. We could be a place that the people of the world would remember and come back to. In my city, it seems the remains of pork chops are more important. 

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