[Filip]

Those things have already been brought up and some are being studied. Major issue like poor transit, infrastructure and gun crime can't be solved in council meetings alone, you know?

And city council is usually busy when it convenes- it's just that the contentious issues are the only ones that pop up in the news, leading to the oh-so-familiar idea that councillors do nothing at all all day at city hall.

Heheh.. Kinda like declaring Toronto to be a 'nuclear free zone'? Damn.. There goes my dream of having a nuclear reactor in the garage.

 

[jje1000]

Heheh.. Kinda like declaring Toronto to be a 'nuclear free zone'? Damn.. There goes my dream of having a nuclear reactor in the garage.

Those are minor things that get brought up and passed with little hassle. Kind of like a bag of chips that goes in the grocery basket along with the bread and ham.

Ford's done that, most recently being his proposal to rename the ferry terminal after Jack Layton.

 

[James]

I'm not so much concerned about the elimination of plastic bags at the grocery store as I am about the way this entire nickel tax issue has been handled in the first place. What's going on down there?!

 

[typezed]

What's going on down there?!

Voters elected a moron for Mayor.

 

[Jonny5]

If anyone wants to print up some reusable grocery bags bearing Rob Ford's ugly mug and the quote "IT'S THE PEOPLE'S FAULT", I will gladly carry my purchases home in one.

I really want this to happen.

 

[k10ery]

Q: How long have you been concerned about plastic bags and the environment?

A: “I didn’t consider the issue of plastic bags until yesterday’s debate at council . . . I never liked to pay for (bags); I hate to see them in the rivers and streams. We had a chance to do something yesterday. We had a chance to make a difference in the lives of people that live in the city of Toronto and provide direction for the rest of the country, and to show that it works in big cities, it can work in smaller municipalities …â€

-David Shiner (not the clown)

 

[adma]

I guarantee that the paper bags your regular grocery stores will provide will be similar to this:

Good luck walking out of the store with two of those.

Uh, it ain't the 1950s no more. To actually frame that as a shopping-bag standard in 2012 is like using lisping limp-wristed interior-decorator types as a Pride-participant standard in 2012...

 

[Electrify]

Hate to say it, but this piece from the National Post fully expresses my view on the situation:

Chris Selley: Toronto plastic bag ban isn’t nearly as bad as council treating the city like a model parliament

Chris Selley Jun 7, 2012 – 5:52 PM ET

Assuming Toronto’s surprise plastic bag ban comes to pass in 2013, I’m sure we’ll learn to live with it. I imagine it will proceed much as the LCBO’s transition from free plastic bags to a choice between $1 vinyl bags and free paper bags that break after a 10-minute walk and melt instantly in the rain proceeded. Personally, if I plan to go liquor-shopping (or grocery shopping for that matter), I take a bag. And if I pop in to the LCBO unexpectedly … well, I’ve owned a ton of those $1 vinyl bags in my time.

People who drive to do their grocery shopping, which I don’t, shouldn’t have much of a problem: They’ll just stow their eco-bags in the trunk, as most already do, and if they forget to now and again, they’ll make do with paper. And if their store is “bagless,” as some already are … well, I guess they’ll turn around and go home again, and then come back.

People will buy more plastic bags, for their garbage and green bin and dog mess — so that will eat into the total savings of plastic going into landfill. And of course people will consume more paper bags. And if you ask me, it’s just flat-out illogical to prohibit the sale of a product in increments of one, but allow it in increments of 100. (“Don’t give them ideas!” someone responded when I Tweeteed that last night.) But in the end, this ban will probably accomplish its goal: Fewer plastic bags will go in the garbage.

Of course, the 5¢ plastic bag fee was already accomplishing that goal. Mayor Rob Ford acknowledged as much. I never understood why a staunch capitalist couldn’t just see it at as stores selling bags for 5¢, the same way they sell chocolate bars for $1.50 and milk for $3.95. But the fee annoyed people, the Mayor insisted, so it had to go. (Others complained that retailers weren’t obliged to donate the proceeds to environmental concerns — yet another example of the perfect beating the good to a bloody pulp at City Hall.) Mr. Ford could not leave well enough alone. So he brought it to Council. And then one of his own staunchest allies, David Shiner, proposed an outright ban out of the blue — no study, no consultation, no nothing. And poof, it was done.

In a word, it’s infuriating — not the result so much as the process, or rather the complete lack thereof. This is a place that studies everything to within an inch of its life, and throws most of the studies in a pile in the corner until the next time someone wants the issue studied. Here is something that will really affect people’s day-to-day lives — not cataclysmically, but palpably — and they vote it in with a casual wave of their hands. It is not Mr. Ford’s fault. Foolishly making oneself vulnerable to attack does not justify attack. This slapdash ban is the fault of the people who voted for it.

Yet it was interesting to notice how many people charged to Council’s defence afterward, on grounds that they liked the idea of banning plastic bags. I doubt most of them would have appreciated it if a similarly casual vote had, say, ordered every bike lane in the city painted over, or a downtown bypass highway built across the Toronto Islands, or turned Yonge and Bay Streets into complimentary one-way thoroughfares.

Mr. Ford warns darkly that plastic-banning councillors will pay with their jobs when the next election comes around. That’s up to the voters; as I say, I suspect we’ll learn to deal with it. Personally, I’m far less dismayed by the prospect of bagless shopping than by knowing how many councillors were willing to treat Torontonians like the fictional constituents of a model parliament.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/0...il-treating-the-city-like-a-model-parliament/

 

[Electrify]

I really want this to happen.

Send the idea to Spacing...

 

[Palma]

Before plastic bags, did grocery stores not bag the groceries with paper bags or boxes? Whatever they did people had no problem till the introduction of plastic i getting their groceries home.

 

[Red October]

Before plastic bags, did grocery stores not bag the groceries with paper bags or boxes? Whatever they did people had no problem till the introduction of plastic i getting their groceries home.

Everybody knew how to juggle back then.

 

[adma]

And they didn't know how to verbalize a problem--plus, one presumes, there wasn't the same kind of mega-shopping as now, or the bags would have been wheeled to the car, etc...

 

[Riverdale Rink Rat]

Hate to say it, but this piece from the National Post fully expresses my view on the situation

The thing is, can you think of a mayor in your lifetime who could not control even the tiniest of meaningless agendas? To say, "just 'cause the mayor's incompetent, we should roll over and let him have his way" is getting the hold situation ass-backwards. Selley is mad because people are taking advantage of a mayor that threatens them EVERY DAY. What would you do if you had some idiot screwing up your life every day? I'd take revenge, too.

It's the Mayor's fault. No one else's.

 

[Electrify]

The thing is, can you think of a mayor in your lifetime who could not control even the tiniest of meaningless agendas? To say, "just 'cause the mayor's incompetent, we should roll over and let him have his way" is getting the hold situation ass-backwards. Selley is mad because people are taking advantage of a mayor that threatens them EVERY DAY. What would you do if you had some idiot screwing up your life every day? I'd take revenge, too.

It's the Mayor's fault. No one else's.

I was referring to the fact that they pushed this through so casually, more than who's fault it is.

 

[ShonTron]

I'll certainly cope, and probably even appreciate the bag ban (I bought a shopping bag pannier that works great for small to medium grocery runs with my bike, and may buy a second), though I would have preferred the status quo or an increase to 10 cents/bag. The misinformation about the regulated price floor for plastic shopping bags (and that's exactly what this was, a price floor) as a tax on "hard working taxpayers" was hard to stomach, and at least that's no longer the case.

But one of the few good points raised by the opposition to the ban was the sudden and unexpected amendment to institute a ban, because we have seen this before from Ford allies who, with last minute amendments and motions yanked money from projects such as the Fort York Bridge, and eliminated bike lanes. The shoe's on the other foot this time around, but it's still an issue that doesn't sit well with me.