statism watch

CBC News
Last Updated: Friday, May 2, 2008

The federal Conservatives have quietly killed an access to information registry used by journalists, experts and the public that users say helped hold the government accountable.

The Coordination of Access to Information Requests System, or CAIRS, is an electronic list of nearly every access to information request filed to federal departments and agencies.

Originally created in 1989, it was used as an internal tool to keep track of requests and co-ordinate the government’s response between agencies to potentially sensitive information released.

Now, users mine the database to do statistical studies, fine tune phrasing on new requests and discover obscure documents — often using the information against the government.

“It was really a tool designed to make government more open,” said CBC investigative journalist David McKie.

“Now that it appears as though this is no longer going to be available it is very disappointing indeed and people are really wondering what the real motivation is.”

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Kelly Grant, Globe and Mail
May 2, 2008

New recycling carts work like a dream in the suburbs, but they’re a nightmare in the core

Take Larry Blake’s mammoth new recycling bin – please.

As a resident of one of the steepest streets in the Beaches, Mr. Blake, 46, can’t drag the wheeled cart up the 32 concrete steps in front of his house. He has abandoned the bin, unused, at the foot of his stairs until the city stops picking up the recycling he puts out in clear plastic bags.

“It’s a raving eyesore,” he says. “We’re thinking of putting a ‘take me’ sign on it.”

As acts of civil disobedience go, Mr. Blake’s is minor. But by rejecting the 240-litre recycling bin, a contraption large enough to hold a grown man, Mr. Blake has joined the increasingly noisy revolt against phase one of Mayor David Miller’s new trash regime.

Evidence of the rebellion is sprouting in dense, east-side neighbourhoods like Cabbagetown, Corktown and Riverdale, where city crews have already delivered the new recycling tubs to homes, many of which don’t have laneways, garages or backyards in which to stash them. Residents have been forced to plunk the carts out front like giant plastic weeds on their tidy lawns.

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There is some irony in all this. The recycling-cart delivery was supposed to be the palatable phase of Toronto’s new pay-by-what-you-throw garbage system, which officially launches in the city’s more than 5,000 apartment and condo buildings July 1, and in its 500,000 single-family homes Nov. 1.

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Fade to grey

It remains to be seen how the city will greet the program’s second phase, the delivery of the grey garbage bins whose size determines how much homeowners pay annually to have trash hauled away.

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The new regime is “good for you” in that it’s designed to whip into shape the garbage scofflaws who don’t recycle religiously, with financial incentives serving as the cat-o’-nine tails.

The goal of the program is to divert 70 per cent of Toronto’s garbage from the dump by 2010, a target that Geoff Rathbone, the general manager of the city’s solid-waste department, admits will be tough to meet. (In 2007, Toronto diverted 42 per cent of its waste, unchanged from 2006.)

The system’s financial incentives are straightforward: People who throw more in the trash pay more to have it hauled from the curb.

Full Story | See Also: Bin Brother is watching you