Like some Halloween ghoul, eco fees may yet rise from the dead, the Ontario Tories warn

By Antonella Artuso, Queen's Park Bureau Chief

Conservative MPP Peter Shurman said the environment ministry’s plan From Waste To Worth still calls for future eco fees on automobiles, mattresses, furniture and small household items such as toys.

“When Dalton McGuinty and Environment Minister John Wilkinson said they want the eco tax program to be simpler and easier for families, it just means they want it buried and hidden so that families don’t know they are being dinged again,” Shurman said Wednesday.

Grahame River, a spokesman for Environment Minister John Wilkinson, says that those ideas for additional eco fees are truly gone.

“We are not introducing eco fees on automobiles or any other products,” Rivers said. “The ‘Waste to Worth’ was a discussion paper, under the former (environment) minister, for consultations with industry and environmental groups. As mentioned, we are not expanding eco fees.”

The Liberal government has established a pattern of promising not to raise taxes, and then reversing course after an election, Shurman said.

One auto manufacturing organization is warning that an eco fee could add up to $1,000 to the cost of each vehicle, he said.

Wilkinson announced Tuesday that he would not reintroduce eco fees brought in over the summer on thousands of common household items.
Pre-existing eco fees on batteries, paint, tires and electronic equipment would stay in place, he said.

PC Leader Tim Hudak had promised to scrap the July 1 eco fees, but has so far committed only to reviewing the earlier ones to determine if those programs are effective.

It was the former government of Mike Harris, which included Hudak, that ushered in the waste diversion legislation that created the possibility of charging eco fees to industries.

Arguing that companies which produce hazardous products should share the cost of disposing them, the Conservatives set up a legislative framework to charge fees to the manufacturers.

“The funding stream is the centrepiece of this piece of legislation,” Tory MPP Julia Munro said at the time.

Under the Dalton McGuinty government, a series of new fees were introduced and, in some cases, directly added to the price consumers paid for those goods.

When in opposition, the Liberals were critical of the bill, arguing that the industry-run program should be kept on a far shorter leash.

“We want a system that is government-controlled and that the government supervises on behalf of all the people of Ontario, not a system where the government wants to set all the rules but then have the rules and regulations somehow administered by the industry itself, and that’s really what’s happening here. That is really a total abdication of responsibilities.” said John Gerretsen, then opposition MPP and later the environment minister who oversaw the eco fee program.