BY: DAVID NICKLE
A group of 14 Toronto councillors are petitioning Mayor David Miller for a full
council progress report on the city's Green Lane Landfill purchase. Council
voted last September to purchase the landfill site near London, Ont. as a place
to store Toronto's garbage after 2010, when the city's contract to toss its
trash in Michigan will have expired.
Since then, however, the Oneida Nation of the Thames, a First Nations band
bordering the landfill site, has taken the city and the province to court over
the approval of the landfill. Ward 16 Councillor Karen Stintz (Eglinton-Lawrence)
initiated the petition to have the briefing prior to the completion of
negotiations in March.
"Our perspective is we understood the closing date to be in February, now it's
moved to March and at the time we approved the deal we didn't know about a
judicial review," said Stintz. "There's a lot of questions that have since come
up from the time we first made the decision, and we've asked for an update."
Mayor David Miller was in Ottawa Friday so had not yet seen the petition, said
spokesperson Stuart Green.
Works and Infrastructure Committee Chair Glenn De Baeremaeker said he had no
problem "philosophically" with a full council briefing - but he questioned the
motives of the 14 councillors.
"We have been briefed on this on a couple of occasions," said De Baeremaeker.
"We gave staff instructions to go forward, and there comes a point where you
start interfering with staff and sometimes for nefarious purposes. Given the
track record of some of these councillors I see them not working in the spirit
of co-operation but in simply trying to torpedo anything the mayor does."
Stintz was joined by councillors Mike Del Grande, Mike Feldman, Doug Holyday,
Cliff Jenkins, Denzil Minnan-Wong, Frances Nunziata, Case Ootes, Cesar Palacio,
John Parker, Bill Saundercook, David Shiner, Karen Stintz, Michael Thompson and
Michael Walker.
Of those, only Thompson and Del Grande supported the purchase of the landfill
site.