I found it almost offensive that any company, especially a supplier of garbage bags, could somehow think making their product available for free in the streets of Toronto, would some how help remedy the impact the strike is having city wide. If they were handing out daycare subsidies or offering private garbage collection at home – they would have a point, but handing out free garbage bags and calling it rescuing the city from a thirty day municipal strike is laughable.

I am not in the loop on the supply chain management of garbage bag demand, but I highly doubt there has been a run on the stores, and unless the folks at Glad who make the bags are planning a strike, I don’t see how supplying bags for free in the streets does anything for anyone.

There never has been an issue in accessing garbage bags. The issue is getting people to pick them up and properly store our waste. This strike will certainly become more annoying to me if other companies follow suit, missing the impact and seriousness completely in the name of self promotion of their product.

What’s more Glad seems to have decided the six hundred thousand people in Scarborough don’t need free garbage bags and don’t seem to go east of Broadview in their distribution. As someone who is proud of his Scarborough roots, I find that to be awfully lame as well.

You will also see solar panels on the roof of Centennial Arena – this is something I will talk about more later, as I am generally a fan of the Centennial Rec complex and the use of solar energy to offset the need of traditional fuel sources for water heating. 

Confederation Park is home to Centennial Arena and Rec Centre and is located at 1967 Ellesmere Avenue. – Anyone notice the planning that took place in the old City of Scarborough as it relates to this site? 

This is the view of the Centennial dump site from the access point drivers would approach. 

This is a view of one of the rows of garbage currently in place at Centennial.

It’s a very long line of garbage, but has been well placed within the parking lot. 

Here is another picture of the dump site with an impressive solar installation in the background and some of the larger condo projects in Scarborough. 

A better perspective of the extent of current garbage at the site. 

Hey look! It’s a basketball court not filled with garbage, and there are kids who don’t have access to municipal recreation programming playing on it! Too bad the kids in Moss Park can’t as well. 

Scarborough the Green. This is a great example of the potential of solar installations to help limit the use of carbon emitting sources of energy when it comes to water heating. This project alone results in 28 fewer tonnes of carbon being emitted by this building. This is something I will talk more about later.  

‘A city within a park’ has become ‘dump sites within our parks’.

As you can tell – someone REALLY wasn’t thinking when they located this temporary dump site. What an image of our city – a ten foot tall mountain of garbage, surrounded by grass – and the skyline in the background. 

This is not the image Toronto needs to be presenting to the world. 

It’d be difficult to play a game of basketball when garbage is stacked in two eight foot tall walls from net to net. This was such an inappropriate decision for whomever made it.

This is such a waste of a viable youth activity that could have been enjoyed during a municipal strike. There was absolutely no justification to use a basketball court as a temporary dump site for household garbage. It deprives youth, who already are unable to use indoor municipal services the ability to use this outdoor equipment. 

Especially when the Armoury right next door to the park has a paved, empty space that would be far better suited, if a temporary dump site was necessary in Moss Park. 

It seems to me like using this location, especially with the armoury having another driveway entrance would have made far more sense, if a dump site was necessary at this park at all. Using this long, publicly owned, lightly used lane way would have had a far smaller impact on the host community, who it appears were not considered at all in site selection. 

David Miller is as defiant about re-opening his own entitlement to a pay increase as he is about refusing to budge in negotiations with workers.

The City’s position will not withstand arbitration, and the Mayor knows it. His strategy at this point can best be described as a ‘starve them out’ approach to labour relations. By allowing the strike to go on indefinitely, the Mayor and Council hurt all Torontonians, especially the vulnerable. They hurt the workers who lose 2% of their annual income with each passing week (4% has already been lost).

The Mayor has ruled out asking for ‘back to work legislation’ – his out if he seriously wanted the strike to end. He doesn’t. That’s the problem. Back to work legislation would mean the City losing on the sick pay issue. His Council’s ability to find $400 million in less than 24 hours, totally discredits the argument that $250 million being paid out over 20 years would somehow harm the City’s financial position.

There isn’t an arbitrator in the Ministry of Labour that would side with the City’s position. The Mayor knows it, so do the workers. Ladies and Gentleman this Mayor, and this Council have brought you a summer without pools, day camps, trips to Centre Island, garbage pick up, or access to all the municipal services covered by the doubling of the land transfer tax, promise breaking property tax increases and new fees like the vehicle registration. You’re paying the bills and getting nothing for it.

I agree with David Miller that ‘enough is enough’. He can end the strike.

He needs to pull the sick pay issue off the table; strike a three year collective agreement and form a working group made up of union reps and city officials to explore alternatives to the sick pay issue over the course of the three year collective agreement with the aim of introducing an alternative both sides agree to in advance for the next round of talks.

That would end the strike, get workers back to work, get garbage out of our parks, and parking lots and go a long way to finding a financially sustainable solution that works for both management and workers. That should the the Mayor’s priority. Unfortunately – he and his Council peers have decided to effectively ‘strike’ in solidarity with their workers – canceling all of their responsibilities until workers go back.

Boy are they lucky they have a four year term, otherwise it is my belief many heads would roll this fall – who knows, next fall could still see the same result.

For folks who find themselves holding garbage with no where to put it, do what I did yesterday with a Starbucks cup – I found another Starbucks, stopped in and put it in their garbage. My rationale is that it is really their garbage anyways, and it saved me having to both bring it home or add to one of these ‘garbage jenga’ bins or what I am sure is soon to become some kind of modern urban art. Plus, what are they going to say, honestly? Try it with your next cup of Tim Hortons or Starbucks, it will help keep the streets cleaner, I’m sure. 

I also want to note that the dude who threw out a bike tire – that never was meant for one of these bins, same goes for whoever threw the bags of gas soaked dirt near City Hall. I find the black garbage bags mysteriously out of place. That isn’t strike related, it’s littering. Same goes for the lady who abandoned her flip flops.