Ontario vs. Michigan, NAFTA vs. NIMBY

The

mad cow export crisis was

shrugged off as a Prairie beef. The softwood lumber dispute only stumped B. C.’ s forest industry. But when a U.S. border obstacle threatens Toronto, well, the feds take notice.

In a country where hating Toronto is a national passion, imagine the hinterland’s glee in learning that a borderviolation of NAFTA could soon bury the Ontario capital in — tee hee — garbage.

That’s got Frank McKenna’s attention. Our ambassador to Washington has written a diplomatic harrumph to U.S. officials and called Ontario’s premier to warn that the Americans are serious about literally trashing Toronto. Ditto for Jim Peterson, the Minister of International Trade and a Toronto MP, who wrote to his American counterpart this week to weigh in with his concerns.

At issue is legislation working its way through the U.S. Congress which would allow states to close their border to foreign garbage, of which Ontario exports four million tons per year.

And state politicians in Michigan are so keen to turn back the 400 garbage trucks crossing at Windsor every day, they’ve already voted 105-3 in favor of legislation enabling the border to be sealed 90 days after getting the goahead from D. C.

This would appear to violate NAFTA, which lists garbage as a trading commodity. But as we’ve learned from the softwood lumber dispute, Americans only heed sections of free trade agreements that suit their own purposes. And all that bellyaching from a very miffed Michigan, which has had its fill of Toronto trash, is being heard in Washington.

OK, I know what you’re thinking. How is it possible a province the size of France with so much wide open space has nowhere to dump its garbage?

Good question. Blame it on a combination of the two most deadly political sins: BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone) and NIMTO ( Not in My Term of Office).

Successive Ontario governments and footdragging municipalities have opted to export the problem instead of dealing domestically with their waste. And landfill builders hoping to increase dump capacity face a 10-year-long and costly process to clear environmental hoops while enduring the never- ending NIMBY (Not in my Back Yard) public backlash that greets every potential landfill site.

That’s why Toronto could be just six months away from having its daily discharge turned back at the border with no alternative dumping ground in Ontario.

OK, so I exaggerate. Slightly. Metro Toronto does have enough surplus storage capacity to last exactly two days. After that, the province must resort to emergency landfill top-ups and rushed expansion approvals which, after cramming every spare nook with residential and industrial trash, gives the city just 28.5 weeks of emergency dump space before all capacity is exhausted, according to a copy of a private analysis which arrived in my email.

The possibilities for a truce between the province and its stateside dumping ground do not appear promising, despite McKenna’s and Peterson’s interventions.

I visited Michigan’s laughablynamed Carleton Farms a couple summers ago. Above the former farm fields rises a literal pile of garbage known unaffectionately as Mount Trashmore. On the upper ridges, a steady convoy of Toronto trucks disgorge their olfactoryCanadian export, which bulldozers rush to bury ahead of the seagull multitude.

The locals here are angry, vocal and influential. They see the truck traffic as a safety issue, the pounding of 18- wheelers as a road- ruining problem and the waste itself as another safety issue. They have campaigned so effectively, blocking foreign waste has become a top priority for Michigan’s governor, one Vancouverborn Jennifer Granholm, who faces re-election next year.

So NAFTA or noFTA, a day of reeking reckoning is coming. Which makes you wonder about our world’s longest undefended border.

When Prime Minister Paul Martin stands in front of American bluechippers in New York to denounce the White House’s conduct on the softwood lumber file as a “ breach of faith” and “ nonsense,” the border looks less friendly and more defended by the day.

Even easy-going Jim Peterson sounds increasingly tense as border disputes pile up. “ The U.S. must recognize that international trade obligations must be respected, including when it is trade in waste,” he told me in an interview on Wednesday. But the day Toronto’s parks become makeshift dumps thanks to an American blockade at the border, NAFTA is trash.