SOME DECISIONS THAT DEFY ALL REASON

Logic is a word that best describes the difference between business and
government. For example, if you make widgets and last July you jacked the
price from $4 a unit to $10, what usually happens is that sales fall off
dramatically particularly when, with little effort, those 'units' can be
had for free.

To survive in business you'd be compelled to drop the price.

In government, at least in the Metro Vancouver Regional District's waste
disposal division, the mindset is just the opposite.

They raised the price to dump a load of garbage, resulting in fewer people
taking their trash to the transfer stations. Their answer? Raise the cost
to dump a further 15 per cent.

The real result: another increase will drive even more people to avoid
using the transfer station. And continuing Metro's logic of increasing
fees every time the flow falls off, it will soon cost more to dump a load
of trash than it does to buy the vehicle you're using to haul it.

Conversely, the volume of "free" roadside dumping will increase
exponentially. For example, the other day there was a guy in a shiny
silver pickup tossing branches and other yard waste onto the side of a
street, within full sight of a little city beautification sign that
proclaims the route has been adopted by a family who has pledged to clean
up litter.

Believe me, earnest as that family may be in picking up crap tossed by
passing motorists, it won't be equipped to bag up a truck-load of
branches. Thus the city will spend a small fortune on crews to clean up
the mess at this location and probably dozens of other impromptu dump sites.

Granted, dumping fees aren't entirely to blame. Scum buckets like the guy
in the pickup will always litter, because they think the stuff they toss
out is 'biodegradable' or because it saves them a buck or two. The
argument to that is, if it is so biodegradable, then let it break down in
your own yard.

As for those who dump bags of garbage, old couches and other detritus on
roadsides, an adequate description defies the rules of what can be said in
a family newspaper.

Back to the beginning of this rant, another of Metro's excuses to raise the
cost of dumping is that it costs more to haul the waste to the Cache Creek
landfill. Logic again asks: if there is less stuff going into the transfer
stations, then shouldn't there be less stuff to haul, thus requiring fewer
trucks resulting in lower transport costs? Unless of course, Metro has
signed a contract to ship so many trucks a day to Cache Creek, regardless
of how full they are.

Logic also doesn't end with how we handle waste.

In the United States, Clayton Rouche pleads guilty to drug trafficking and
gets 30 years. In Canada his father has just listed for sale Clay's
bullet-proof Lincoln Navigator. Shouldn't that be seized under the
provisions of the proceeds of crime act rather than sold to another gangbanger?

And in the Federal Court of Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency was just
spanked by a judge for harassing Rouche's UN gang members about their
sources of income.

If that's not enough to get your stomach churning between Christmas dinner
heartburn and New Year's hangovers, in Saskatchewan last week a judge
decided the wearing of gang colours in public is protected under Canada's
Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In fact, he struck down a provincial law
because it created "deleterious effects on freedom of expression" on
gangsters and thus was unconstitutional.

Dare we hope that the coming decade will return logic to our land?