NEWS

TORONTO - After years of free service, churches, shelters, charities and non-profit organizations could be on the hook as the City of Toronto plans to start charging a fee for trash pickup.

The city has said there will be no increase for homeowners in terms of their garbage pickup, but parishioners may be asked to give a little bit to help offset the new fees for churches, said Neil MacCarthy, director of communications for the archdiocese of Toronto.

“So really, you’re just going back to the same people to ask for more to support this change,” he said.

The proposal is one of the items on the table as the city works on its 2012 budget. A long list of cuts and increased service fees are on tap as the city struggles to find ways to balance its budget.

MacCarthy said while he understands the city is looking for ways to realize some cost efficiencies, the new proposal is going to have significant implications on the roughly 125 parishes within city limits in the archdiocese of Toronto.

“It really depends on the frequency of pickup at a church for garbage and… the number of bins they might have at a church,” he said. “So if it’s weekly with a bin, they’re talking about $800 a year.”

But it’s difficult to say how many parishes would be affected by this as some use city services while others use private garbage collection, said MacCarthy.

The city wants to start charging a fee for this service “in order to make the system fair overall and to prompt those new to the fee system to improve their waste diversion efforts,” according to a document sent to non-residential customers.

For a curbside bin emptied bi-weekly, the cost is $403, weekly is $806 and twice weekly is $1,612.

The changes would be phased in, with a yearly 25-per-cent increase effective July 1, 2012 and full trash pickup fees effective Jan. 1, 2015.

St. Francis Table, a ministry that provides meals for the less fortunate in Parkdale, would be one of the agenices affected by the trash pickup fee. Br. John Frampton, who runs St. Francis Table, said it’s a crime that charities and church groups are being singled out to pick up the city’s costs.

“We try to keep it to a minimum,” he said. “We compost, we take care of the paper and plastics. We comply with garbage bag content and I just think it’s another money grab to pay for services that are costing too much.”

The poor are getting poorer, he said.

“We are feeding the hungry here six days a week,” said Frampton. “And other groups are doing justice amidst injustice that’s being done by the government that should be responsible to these people.

“St. Francis Table is responsible for feeding the hungry of Toronto and this is the appreciation we get.”

The proposal also includes charging transfer station tipping fees of $100 per tonne of waste to previously exempt non-profits, including the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.

“With the collection, we get a lot of really generous donors that are really careful about what they donate, but we also get a lot of stuff that’s just not usable at all and it has to go to the dump,” said Louise Coutu, executive director of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Toronto.

“For years, the Society has had an arrangement with the city where we don’t pay tipping fees because it’s realized that this stuff is our responsibility, but if it weren’t going to us to be sorted, there would probably be more going directly to the dump,” she said.

Coutu estimates this will cost an additional $20,000 on its annual budget.

“It’s not just the tipping fee we’re paying, it’s our truck out there, our guys,” she said. “So it is expensive for us. We’ve seen it as part of our service. You can’t look in everyone’s bag when they’re donating to you.”

TORONTO - Our Lady of Mercy is back in Toronto, gleaming and armed with the latest technology while making room for families, children and newborn babies.

St. Joseph's Health Centre blessed its new, four-story patient care wing Dec. 5. The new wing carries on the name of the old Our Lady of Mercy Hospital. The original Our Lady of Mercy merged with St. Joseph's in 1980 and finally closed in 1998.

The new $73-million, 130,000-square-foot wing adds a neonatal intensive care unit, a family birthing centre, a pediatric unit with six surgical day care beds and six medical day care beds, 92 more adult inpatient beds and a child and adolescent mental health unit which includes a full-time classroom.

CALGARY - Sam Flynn is literally taking a stance against pornography. Since the spring, he’s gathered a group of friends for his ministry Prayer at the Porn Shop.

The group prays for an end to pornography outside a Calgary porn shop, the latest prayer vigil taking place Dec. 10.

“I think there aren’t enough people saying this isn’t good for your health or your relationship, this isn’t love,” said Flynn, a 25-year-old Mount Royal University business student.

OTTAWA - The Canadian Catholic Aboriginal Council has focused its annual message for the National Day of Prayer for Aboriginal Peoples on a young woman named Rose Prince.

Each year, Catholics remember aboriginal peoples on Dec. 12, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The aboriginal council, an advisory body of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops composed of seven aboriginal members and two bishops, raises awareness of little known aboriginal Canadians who were known for their holiness, like Prince, who was born in 1915 to a devout Catholic family at Nak’asdli, a First Nations community near Fort St. James in northern British Columbia.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission looking into Canada’s 130-year history of residential schools for native children may not have enough money to finish the job.

The commission was set up in 2008 with a five-year mandate and a $60-million budget. After an initial false start, the commission is now scheduled to produce a final report by 2014.

“The original amount set aside in the Settlement Agreement may need to be revisited,” said the commission’s most recent annual departmental performance report to the Treasury Board.

GATINEAU, QUE. - In a celebration fraught with historic and symbolic significance, Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher was installed as the second archbishop of Gatineau Nov. 30, on the Feast of St. Andrew.

More than 800 people packed St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Gatineau’s Hull district, including 46 bishops from across Canada and Montreal Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte. Durocher’s parents and many siblings, nieces, nephews and friends joined the faithful of Gatineau for the joyous occasion.

Apostolic nuncio Archbishop Pedro Lopez Quintana represented the Holy Father at the installation and, after reading the papal announcement, led Durocher to his cathedral chair.

VATICAN CITY - A Vatican official deplored the growing violence in Syria, and called on political leaders there to enact "real reforms."

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi made the remarks Dec. 2 to a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, which was discussing the Syrian crackdown on regime opponents that has left an estimated 4,000 people dead in recent months.

Archbishop Tomasi, the Vatican's representative to U.N. and other agencies in Geneva, said the Vatican was following "with great concern the dramatic and growing episodes of violence in Syria, which have caused many victims and grave suffering."

KARACHI, Pakistan - The Catholic Church's justice and peace commission organized a protest condemning a NATO airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

The Asian church news agency UCA News said that, holding pro-army banners and national flags, more than 50 protesters from several Catholic institutions gathered outside the press club in Karachi Dec. 2. They shouted slogans, prayed and lit candles for the "faithful martyrs."

The protesters -- including two priests and 10 friars -- expressed outrage at what they called an attack on their country's sovereignty and demanded justice for the affected families.

WASHINGTON - A White House spokesman said the Obama administration is working to "strike the right balance between expanding coverage of preventive services and respecting religious beliefs" as it decides on a religious exemption to the mandate that all U.S. health plans cover contraceptives and sterilizations by Jan. 1, 2013.

"This decision has not yet been made," said Jay Carney, press secretary, in response to a question at the Nov. 29 White House press briefing.

Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, announced an interim final rule Aug. 1 that would require all health plans to cover contraceptives — including some that can cause abortions — and sterilizations free of charge.

MIDLAND, ONT. - Midland Town Council has 5,500 letters to read and ponder before its Dec. 7 meeting, at which it is scheduled to look again at its decision to green light an outdoor waste recycling business next door to the Martyrs' Shrine and Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons.

Forty protesters walked through falling snow Nov. 30 from Martyrs' Shrine to Midland Town Hall to deliver boxes containing at least 5,500 letters to Mayor Gord McKay. It was the last day for written submissions before the Dec. 7 council meeting.

The letters came from local Midland residents, Toronto parishes that make annual pilgrimages to the shrine and from as far away as the Vatican.