As a recovering government bureaucrat, much like a former cult member, I am constantly faced with disturbing flashbacks and reminders of my former life. My latest bits of flagrant recall are triggered by my voluntary involvement in the 2006 Proposed Amendments to the Yukon Beverage Container Regulations.
Government consultations are usually carefully structured and managed so that public comment is contained. This is especially true of consultations under the Environment Act. Containment is achieved by constructing a tiered consultative process so that affected stakeholders — usually industry and government — provide advice from their self-interested viewpoints prior to regulatory drafting.
This means that when the public process begins, only the dry stuff like the proposed regulatory amendments will be on the table — not the bigger, broader issues that really matter to the public.
The big issues surrounding the Yukon Beverage Container Regulations, are not how a beverage or a dealer is defined, but how the Recycling Fund operates. There’s a garbage pile full of recycling fund issues with its system of surcharges, refunds, partial refunds, exclusions, and inclusions with over $2 million dollars, rolling in, out and through, cascading over smashed glass and crushed cans, while paper takeout cups litter our parks and roadways.
So while the advisory group is hashing out “what is a beverage”, I’m not sure who will be exploring new and better ways to reduce litter and promote recycling. I’m not sure who is going to examine the blue box systems in Quebec and Manitoba, instead of ensuring comparability to Alberta and BC models.
Speaking of comparability I wonder when Tim Horton’s or Starbucks is going to follow Midnight Sun Coffee Roaster’s fine example with their 25-cent reduction in the price of coffee when you use your own cup. That’s the equivalent of 25-cent non-refundable surcharge on the cost of a paper cup. Why not? (A woman at the Yukon Theatre today brought a bowl and four cups for her family’s popcorn and drinks, even though she would have paid the same price as the people who left their cups in the parking lot on the way out.)
But instead of encouraging reusable coffee cups, Yukon has a system where beer drinkers get the best deal. They get their full deposit surcharge refunded — 10-cents refund on a 10-cent surcharge. In comparison, parents providing their children with a healthy lunch with juice in a tetrapak only get a 50% refund on their deposit surcharge — 5-cents refund on a 10-cent surcharge.
It’s like the advantage the beer drinkers get with transportation costs subsidized to Yukon communities — liquor is the same price in Dawson, Mayo and Watson Lake as Whitehorse — even though the cost of food and milk is 10-25% higher.
And one of the largest expenses to the Recycling Fund’s operations (nearly $100,000 in 2004), is the return transport of those same liquor bottles back to Whitehorse.
Other things don’t make sense as well. The basic operating premise of the Recycling Fund means that the more people recycle, the less money the fund has to operate. This means that people who don’t recycle support the system the most. Unfortunately, the people that can’t recycle are single parents, poor people and seniors who don’t have cars to return their bottles, but have to pay the surcharge when they buy their food. So are poor people supporting the better-off in assauging their consumptive guilt?
And then there’s the whole underlying philosophical question of whether the surcharge and refund system is an incentive program or a sin tax. If it’s not a sin tax, then why is milk excluded? If it’s a needed incentive, then why do Manitobans recycle without it?
As a first tier industry stakeholder I’m involved because I think it’s absurd to require a small business manufacturer of a healthy beverage to remit 10-cents on every bottle to the Yukon’s department of Finance on a monthly basis. In turn, I pass on this 10-cents to every retailer who passes it on to each consumer with GST charged on 5-cents of each of those 10-cents. It’s a nightmare of paper and penny-counting.
Everybody has their issues.
But for now — I’m not convinced any of these issues are going to make the public discussion round. The department will have a 60-day consultation period on the draft amended regulations intended to ensure the wording in the regulations is consistent with the wording in the Act. The 2006 Proposed Amendments will become the 2007 Proposed Amendments and the container regulation consultations will be contained.
Governments know that big issues are messy, and landfills are close to full. They also know how to watch their step.
An excellent, thought-provoking post indeed. The bureaucrats basically don’t trust that “the great unwashed” have the ability to collectively come to an agreement on the underlying issues. Everybody else has “an agenda”, so the real decisions will continue to be made at a level where the agendas come from an upper middle class perspective – which of course makes them not feel like agendas at all.