Will, Kate to visit Canada in the fall
OTTAWA — The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will pay a visit to Canada this fall — their second since getting married five years ago.
Prince William and his wife, Kate, will visit British Columbia and Yukon later this year, Gov. Gen. David Johnston announced Wednesday.
“Our true Canadian pride and spirit will shine and be at the very heart of this visit so they can feel at home,” Johnston said in a statement.
It’s the royal couple’s second visit to Canada. Their first, following the 2011 wedding, took them to Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Charlottetown, Summerside, Yellowknife, Calgary and Slave Lake after that community was ravaged by a forest fire.
The then-newlyweds drew large crowds wherever they went, including a packed Canada Day gathering on Parliament Hill.
The visit was also seen as a way to engage young Canadians with the monarchy, given the perception of waning interest compared to that of older Canadians.
In a statement, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the visit will present a chance for Canadians of all background to meet with the Duke and Duchess “and learn more about our heritage, traditions, and institutions.”
B.C. Premier Christy Clark likened the upcoming visit to other milestone events hosted by the province.
“Like the Olympics, Women’s World Cup, Expo 86 and other international events, the royal tour will focus global attention on B.C. and showcase everything British Columbians take pride in, from our unmatched natural beauty to our thriving, diverse communities,” Clark said in a statement.
The federal government is to release more details of the tour at a later date.
There was also no immediate word whether the couple’s children, George and Charlotte, would accompany them to Canada.
CALGARY — The long-running “flushable wipes” controversy has turned into an ongoing war of words in Canada, with manufacturers insisting their moist towelettes are more sewer-friendly than ever as municipalities urge citizens to put them in the garbage, not down the toilet.
More than a dozen lawsuits have been launched in the United States against manufacturers, claiming damages to individual or municipal sewer systems, but in Canada the fight is so far a public relations battle.
Metro Vancouver, for instance, is spending $200,000 on an “Adult Toilet Training” program this summer, using humorous videos and ads in pink port-a-potties to bring the message to its 2.5 million system users that it’s not OK to flush “flushable” wipes — or anything else other than “pee, poo and toilet paper.”
In Fredericton, the city warns: “If you did not eat it first, you should find another way to dispose of it,” on its website.
Toronto’s wastewater division advises residents not to flush any wipes — “even those that say flushable can cause a problem.”
The industry, however, is unrepentant. Lynn Matheus, senior research and engineering manager for Kimberly-Clark, the company that manufactures popular Cottonelle wipes, insists that flushable wipes are just that.
“We continue to stand firmly behind our claims that our wipes are flushable and they are safe for sewer and septic systems,” she said, adding the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in June closed without action an investigation into whether Kimberly-Clark’s marketing of flushable wipes is misleading.
Matheus estimated Canada’s flushable wipes market at about $20 million, up about 10 per cent from 2015.
Darrell Mussatto, Metro Vancouver utilities chairman, is just as convinced that the wipes are a problem, pointing out that utility workers were able to use remote cameras to count flushable wipes travelling through the sewer system during a pilot project last year to test its toilet training campaign.
“It cost us $100,000 in 2015 to declog the pumps in the sewer system to remove flushable wipes,” he said. “We’ve identified them. The pumps get so full with them they just stop running and we have to go in and declog them.”
A wastewater expert with the Municipal Enforcement Sewer Use Group, comprised of 29 Ontario communities, says he stands by his rough estimate of $250 million per year in clog cleanup costs for Canadian utilities because of flushable wipes.
Barry Orr said municipalities are on the hook for more than $1 billion in additional capital costs to build more robust pumps, grinders and coarse screening systems to deal with flushable wipes, but bristled at the suggestion Canada’s sewer systems are part of the problem.
“The system was never, ever designed to handle garbage. It was designed to handle human waste and toilet paper. That’s it,” Orr said.
“I’ve been in this industry for 20 years and 20 years ago, I didn’t have to go and install grinders into things — we didn’t have the garbage coming. Now we have so much garbage because consumers are confused about what the toilet is used for.”
Orr has been working with the Geneva-based International Standards Organization to develop a flushability standard for wipes but he said wastewater experts and manufacturers working on the project disagree about what constitutes “dispersability” — how long it takes for the product to fall apart in water.
He said establishing a standard might take until 2018 or longer.
Municipalities hoping for federal help have turned to the Competition Bureau, which is responsible for Canada’s consumer packaging act governing false or misleading labelling. Spokesman Phil Norris said in an e-mail he can’t say whether the bureau is looking into flushable wipes because its investigations must be kept confidential.
Dave Rouse, president of the Association of Nonwoven Fabrics Industry, also known as INDA, said the industry is fighting 14 lawsuits in the United States brought by individuals or municipalities claiming flushable wipes harmed their sewage systems.
“A flushable wipe that passes our flushability assessment test is incapable of causing harm to a pump,” he said.
“It is too weak. A six-month-old baby could rip apart our flushable wipes.”