August 11, 2010
Jim Wilkes
Volunteers claim Ashley Kirilow raised $20,000, but she says it was less than $5,000.
A fourth, more serious, charge has been levelled against a young woman who faked cancer to collect money for herself.
Ashley Kirilow, 23, was charged Wednesday with fraud over $5,000 during a court appearance. At her request, she remains in custody at Vanier Centre for Women to await a video court appearance on Aug. 19 and possible bail hearing.
Kirilow, of Burlington, was previously charged with three counts of fraud under $5,000.
The new charge related to an alleged incident between Feb. 1 and March 30, 2009, in Burlington. The documents only list the name of Donna Michalowski, a Sutton Group realtor.
Still “angered and hurt and frustrated and shocked,” Michalowski told the Star “a large group of fellow realtors organized a fundraiser to raise more money for Ashley. There were so many people who cared for her and loved her.”
A few friends turned up for Wednesday’s court appearance but no family. Kirilow said only, “Yes” in a barely audible voice when asked if she understood the charges. She sat handcuffed in court wearing a Hunter green sweatshirt and track pants, her hair pulled back in ponytails.
Two of the three charges of fraud under $5,000 involve Janet Care; the third involves Jamie Counsell, according to court documents. All are alleged to have occurred between Aug. 1, 2009 and last April 30.
She has admitted to faking cancer and creating a bogus charity to raise money for her personal use. According to friends and family, Kirilow — who shaved her head and plucked her eyebrows to maintain her ruse — has bilked supporters of more than $13,000 in donations.
On Friday, Kirilow turned herself in to an Oakville police station. She appeared briefly in a Milton courtroom Monday morning.
So far, no one has come forward to post bail for her.
After Ashley’s bail hearing on Monday, Kirilow’s father, Mike, said his estranged daughter called him the night before her bail hearing and pleaded with him to attend.
He said it was a difficult decision but he and his family have agreed not to bail Ashley out. She has lied to them one too many times, he said.
“We all love Ashley, we've never stopped loving Ashley,” Kirilow said quietly. “We're just very hurt and upset that she's put us through all of this.
“Ashley is in the hands of the justice system now,” he said. “I hope when all is said and done, she really understands the seriousness of what she’s done.”
August 07, 2010
Madeleine White
A woman who admits she faked having cancer for a charity scam will spend the weekend in jail after a brief hearing Saturday, police say.
Ashley Anne Kirilow, who is alleged to have raised as much as $20,000 in bogus charity money, was taken to the Vanier Centre for Women, a prison in Milton, after appearing via video link at a Hamilton courtroom.
Kirilow was arrested by Halton fraud investigators after turning herself into the Oakville police station Friday.
Police say the arrest happened without incident and was “dealt with quickly.”
Kirilow was charged with three counts of fraud under $5,000. If convicted, she faces a maximum penalty of two years in jail.
A Star investigation revealed that Kirilow shaved her head, plucked her eyebrows and eyelashes to make herself look like a chemotherapy patient. The ruse included attending charity events in her honour, taking cancer research donations from hundreds of people and accepting a flight to Disney World from a legitimate Toronto-based cancer-awareness organization.
Kirilow told the Star she was sorry and wanted to pay the money back, adding she “can’t possibly give it back to every single person, but I can give it to charity.”
The 23-year-old, who has since blamed her miserable childhood for the situation, started telling people she had cancer and when she had a benign tumour removed from her breast in 2008.
Kirilow will have another court appearance on Monday morning at a Milton courthouse.
They all thought she was dying of cancer — and they all handed her cash.
Ashley Anne Kirilow, a 23-year-old Burlington native, admits she faked cancer, ran a bogus charity and collected thousands of dollars from hundreds of people.
She shaved her head and eyebrows, plucked her eyelashes and starved herself to look like a chemotherapy patient. She told anyone she met she had been disowned by drug-addicted parents, or that they were dead.
Both parents are alive and well, each in separate marriages with three young children. They both say they did all they could to support their troubled child.
“What I did was wrong,” Ashley said Thursday night. “I was trying to be noticed. I was trying to get my family back together. I didn’t want to feel like I’m nothing anymore. It went wrong, it spread like crazy, and then it seemed like the whole world knew.”
Over the last year, Ashley endeared herself to the all-ages music and skateboard scenes across the GTA and befriended groups of idealistic and energetic teenagers looking for an outlet for their optimism.
They embraced Ashley’s simple cause — pocket change for cancer research — and were inspired by her heartbreaking story. Teams of volunteers organized benefit concerts in her honour, designed T-shirts and made online tribute videos.
“I thought she was an angel,” said Nikki Jumper, 19. “I wanted to be a friend for her because she didn’t seem to have anyone.”
All donations were made in cash and given directly to Ashley in rolls of coins and stuffed envelopes. Nobody asked for a receipt.
The charity was never registered and consisted of little more than a Facebook page.
Over the course of a year, Ashley convinced local businesses and small-scale music promoters to join the cause. She persuaded a legitimate Toronto-based cancer-awareness organization — led by Newmarket skateboarding heartthrob, Rob Dyer — to fly her to Disney World.
Dyer refused to be interviewed for this story, but his organization, Skate4Cancer, released a statement earlier this week disavowing itself of Ashley and denying any formal or informal affiliation.
“Skate4Cancer’s involvement with Ms. Kirilow was based solely on fulfilling what the organization believed to be a legitimate final wish from a terminally ill individual.”
Her dedicated followers say they are shocked, betrayed and furious.
But Ashley’s parents are not surprised.
They say the latest allegations follow a pattern of behaviour since childhood, and that Ashley is manipulative, desperately craves fame and uses people to get what she wants.
“She loved playing the victim,” said her father, Mike Kirilow, a self-employed home renovator. “Because it gave her control over people.”
***
Late Thursday night, Ashley contacted the Star and admitted to the allegations against her, but disputed the amount of money volunteers say she raised through her charity.
While volunteers claim she raised $20,000, she said it was less than $5,000. She does not dispute the $9,000 raised at a Burlington benefit last September, saying that money was for her personally and not connected to the charity.
“I dug myself a big hole that I couldn’t get out of,” Ashley said. “And there’s nobody to blame but me.”
She said she wants to find a way to give all the money back.
***
In late 2008, Ashley was treated in hospital for a benign lump in one of her breasts. After that procedure, she began telling people she had breast cancer.
She also said she had brain cancer, liver cancer, stomach cancer and ovarian cancer, at various stages and in various combinations. She claimed to have only a few months to live.
In mid-January, Ashley called her father. They had talked only once in the previous four years. She told him she had breast cancer and a brain tumour, and that she needed a bone-marrow transplant or she would be dead within six months.
“At this stage I thought this was another story, but I went along,” said an exasperated Kirilow.
The next day, Kirilow tried calling his daughter to find out her oncologist’s name, but she wouldn’t answer his calls.
After 10 days of trying to reach Ashley, he said he called and left a message on her cellphone saying that if she did not call back he would call the police, tell them she had collapsed and they could knock down the door.
He said Ashley called him back right away and told him: “Stay the f--- out of my life.”
Kirilow did not hear from his daughter again for more than a year.
In the meantime, Ashley’s father and stepmother called the hospitals where Ashley said she had been treated for cancer, but they had no record of her.
In April 2009, Ashley called her biological mother — with whom she has had little contact since she was 14 — to say she had cancer and needed money for chemotherapy.
“The only thing she ever wanted from me was money, and I couldn’t ever give it to her,” said Cindy Edwards, a former school bus driver who now lives in Brantford.
Edwards said she told Ashley that chemo was fully covered in Canada and she could not give her any money. “I was crying, I didn’t know what was going on, I tried to tell her she was beautiful,” Edwards said, adding that Ashley responded: “Well, I’m just calling right now to tell you, before I die, that you’re the worst mother in the world.”
When Adam Catley, 22, heard Ashley was broke, alone and dying of cancer, he found her a place to live rent-free with some of his friends.
“Obviously I wanted to do what I could to help her,” Catley said.
On Sept. 27, Catley and a group of friends organized a benefit for Ashley at The Queen’s Head, Catley’s father’s pub in downtown Burlington.
They charged a $20 cover, bands travelled in from out of town at their own expense, Labatt donated the beer, staff donated all of their tips, and the bar itself donated the night’s profits.
Proceeds totalled almost $9,000, Catley said, and he gave the cash to Ashley in an envelope the next day.
Photos from the event show Ashley completely hairless, with a scarf around her head. “She’s good, I’ll tell you that,” said Catley. “She had me 100 per cent.”
Weeks after the benefit at The Queen’s Head, Ashley started a Facebook group to announce a charity she was starting called Change for a Cure.
“Together we can ‘Change’ the world one penny at a time! ?” reads the tagline. In two days, the group amassed 1,000 members. Within a few months, it had more than 4,000.
Ashley claimed she was raising money to donate to the University of Alberta’s research into dichloroacetate, or DCA, a prospective cancer treatment. She said she would walk from Burlington to Edmonton — starting April 29, her 23rd birthday — to deliver the money to the university in person and petition Canadians along the way.
On Tuesday, a communications associate for the university’s Faculty of Medicine said they were not affiliated with Ashley in any way. But on Thursday, the director of communications for the faculty said they could not confirm, one way or the other, whether Ashley had ever made a donation.
Ashley set up Change for a Cure booths at all-ages concerts across the GTA and collected coins in glass jars.
A performer and promoter in Newmarket, Jamie Counsell organized two benefit concerts for Ashley at the Sharon Hall in January and March, raising a total of $1,550 from the $10 cover charge and cash donations. He handed the cash directly to Ashley.
Counsell, 17, said Ashley told him an accountant was handling the money.
“We figured that if she’s got an accountant dealing with it, we don’t need to worry about it.”
The group’s core volunteers say at least $20,000 was raised in the name of Change for a Cure, based on coins rolled by volunteers, individual donations and benefit concerts — in addition to the nearly $9,000 given to Ashley personally from The Queen’s Head benefit.
During this time Ashley was also using four credit cards and running up massive personal debts.
Last summer, Ashley flew to Australia “to live out her last days in paradise,” according to friends. She returned two weeks later, saying she had contracted an infection and was surely to die soon.
By the end of 2009, Ashley had accumulated $30,803 in credit card and bank debts, including a $15,950 personal loan from TD Canada Trust. She declared bankruptcy in January with $1,000 in reported assets.
“I was told she had cancer,” said Mahmood Chagani, Ashley’s bankruptcy trustee. Chagani said Ashley did not mention Change for a Cure or any money she had received in the previous months.
***
Ashley was born in Burlington on April 29, 1987.
Her parents admit their marriage quickly turned dysfunctional, and after their second child was born — less than two years after Ashley — they separated.
A bitter custody dispute followed. Police were often called to enforce visitations.
Ashley ended up growing up with her mother and had little contact with her father.
Ashley’s mother, Cindy Edwards, said Ashley was a sweet child, but desperate for attention.
“She always wanted to be the princess.”
Edwards said Ashley became greedier in adolescence.
“She just wanted more and more, no matter what I gave her.”
After disappearing for three days after her Grade 8 graduation, Ashley came home said she didn’t want to live under her mother’s rules anymore.
She briefly lived with her maternal grandparents in Paris, Ont., before moving in with her dad and stepmother, where she stayed until she was 16. When she didn’t like her father’s rules, she moved in with a friend’s family for three months and then back with her grandparents for a year.
“You couldn’t trust anything she was saying,” said Mary Edwards, Ashley’s grandmother.
Ashley then lived with a boyfriend’s family before moving back in with her father and stepmother.
“She made this house a living hell,” said France, Ashley’s stepmother, citing constant lying, stealing from her siblings and flagrant disobedience.
Ashley’s parents and stepmother say although she saw a number of therapists and psychiatrists, Ashley has never been formally diagnosed with any mental illness.
“She has lived in a fantasy world as long as we’ve known her, where she’s a princess and everyone adores her,” said her stepmother.
***
Toward the end of 2009, friends say, Ashley started becoming distant. She stopped returning phone calls and would cancel plans at the last minute.
In March, she posted on Change for a Cure’s Facebook page that her cancer had come back — she had told people, at various times, that she was in remission — and that this would be her last post.
Events were still being held in her name at this time, but she would rarely attend.
Ashley’s father had been following the Facebook page, saw the post, looked at the pictures of his hairless daughter, and wondered if perhaps she was telling the truth. He said he called Ashley and she admitted she had faked having cancer.
“I said flat out: ‘You don’t have cancer, do you?’ There was silence on the phone and she very quietly responded: ‘No.’ ”
Kirilow said she admitted shaving her head and plucking her eyebrows, and said she wanted to come clean and turn her life around — but she needed time. She asked to move back home for a few days.
At this point, Kirilow said although he knew Ashley had faked having cancer, he thought the charity itself was legitimate.
“We didn’t think that she had full control of the money.”
When she got home she was evasive and jittery. But Kirilow said he believes she was faking that, too.
“She started to use this anxiety issue and really started playing that up.”
He said he admitted her to the local hospital’s psychiatric ward on April 27 because of the anxiety she was exhibiting. She stayed there for about three weeks.
“They saw no reason why she should be staying,” Kirilow said. “At that point I pretty much felt I’d figured out what she was up to.”
On the Saturday of the Victoria Day long weekend, Kirilow said, Ashley abruptly left a family barbecue to go camping with a guy she met while she was in hospital. She was gone for three days.
When she came back, he confronted her:
“ ‘You have to do this walk to deliver the money. But you don’t have it, do you? You spent it. Now you need a place to hide, so you came here. ’ ”
Kirilow told Ashley she had 30 days to come clean or he would tell everyone the truth.
She left May 28, and Kirilow hasn’t heard from his daughter since.
Halton Police confirmed that a uniformed officer received a complaint on June 28 from three volunteers about an alleged fraud run by Ashley, but the complaint has not yet been forwarded to the fraud unit.
***
Ashley’s parents say they hope she is caught.
“This is so embarrassing to all of us,” said Ashley’s mother.
“The only way she’s going to straighten out the rest of her life is if she gets caught,” her father said. “I just hope she does the right thing.”
Most people have learned — some the hard way — that the Internet's memory makes elephants look forgetful by comparison, with the skeletons in our online closets having bones so sharp as to impale careers, marriages and certainly reputations.
Almost overnight, these challenges have given rise to an entire cottage industry of businesses that manage people's Internet images for them. There are even cyber scholars that foresee a time, not far from now, in which "reputation brokers" will aggregate our e-activities into an annual score that gauges our value as employees, friends and life partners.
Think credit reports, but for morals instead of money.
"The Internet makes everyone a public figure," says Michael Fertik, CEO of the online image management firm ReputationDefender, of which an estimated 97 per cent of clients are ordinary citizens.
"Even if you don't put a lot of stuff about yourself online, someone else is doing it for you . . . So you either do something about it, or learn to live with it."
Fertik's customers pay his company anywhere from $4 per month to $1,000 per year to help manage personal Google search results, remove their names from corporate databases, perform online damage-control, and closely monitor their Internet footprints.
Because someone, somewhere, will be following that same electronic trail in deciding whether they want those people as co-workers, students, or even Saturday-night dates.
A recent survey by Microsoft, for instance, finds fully three-quarters of American recruiters and human resources professionals perform online searches into the activities of potential employees.
The Internet startup Klout will analyze a person's social influence and authority based on their Twitter account. Pipl scours online photos, public records, court documents, academic journals and forum postings to reveal a person's "deep-web" history.
Even a basic Facebook search can turn up surprisingly intimate results, with many users having inadvertently left parts, or all, of their personal profiles open to the public.
And as more and more of these reputation queries are performed, experts say the greater the likelihood companies will seek a one-stop shopping source for aggregated information — think eBay star ratings, social media activities, old blog entries, comments made in online discussion groups, and cached documents.
This possibility is so likely, in fact, that there's already speculation about how the system could be legally navigated. Harvard cyberlaw professor Jonathan Zittrain, for one, supports the idea of being able to declare "reputation bankruptcy," wiping clean the digital slate to start fresh every 10 years or so.
The hollow spot in one's history would be the price paid — and a high one at that, according to a Canadian Internet scholar.
"We don't trust people who are blank slates these days," says Sidneyeve Matrix, professor of media at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. "It's like that saying, 'If you don't show up on Google, you don't exist.'"
But she isn't convinced such a tidy approach could be implemented anyway, noting that knowledge — particularly of others — is power.
"The problem with reputation reformatting, or a digital reset, is that information about us exists on privately owned and corporate servers," says Matrix. "So we can never really erase everything."
For now, she believes the best defence is a good offence. That is, being proactive about online image management and making sure that one's own voice is the loudest in the digital din.
"If I'm very active online, one bad piece of information is probably going to be buried; that's just the nature of Google algorithms," explains Matrix. "But if I'm not very active online and the only thing that comes up about me is something terrible, that matters hugely because it can really shut down opportunities."
WASHINGTON — BP's long and halting effort to shut down its infamous Gulf well crossed a key threshold Tuesday night when the well was packed with enough heavy drilling mud to overcome the upward thrust of oil and gas.
Officials were not ready to declare the renegade offshore well dead, but called their ability to jam the well full of mud "a very significant step."
"We have reached a static condition in the well that allows us to have high confidence that there will be no oil leaking into the environment," retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man on the spill, said Wednesday at a White House press briefing.
Although the BP well in the Gulf of Mexico was corked with a mechanical cap in mid-July and has not leaked since then, it remained full of oil and gas pushing upward from miles beneath the seabed. Tuesday's successful mud-pumping operation shoved the oil downward, essentially wresting control of the well from nature more than three months after it unleashed one of the world's largest spills.
Allen continued to emphasize, however, that the battle to permanently seal the well would not be over until one of two relief wells have bored into it sometime in mid-August. "We have significantly improved our chances to finally kill the well with the relief wells when that does occur."
BP announced the achievement as the government released a report indicating that roughly half of the huge volume of oil released during the disaster had evaporated, dissolved or was burned, skimmed or collected.
The other half — roughly 100 million gallons — dispersed into Gulf of Mexico in the form of tiny droplets, drifted around the gulf as tar balls and surface slicks, washed ashore or is buried in sand and ocean sediment.
The report, which made no assessment of the spill's long-term impact on the gulf, noted that the oil is rapidly degrading in the warm gulf environment, which is rich in oil-munching bacteria.
"There's not much oil that is visible," Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said at the White House briefing.
Still, she conceded that diluted oil remains beneath the gulf surface. "Diluted and out of sight doesn't necessarily mean benign. We remain concerned about the long-term impacts."
More than 200 million gallons of oil were released by the deep-sea well 50 miles off the Louisiana coast before it was capped last month.
In trying to figure where it all went, federal scientists concluded that a quarter of it was skimmed, burned or collected and funneled to oil-processing ships. Another 25 per cent evaporated or dissolved. About 24 per cent was dispersed into droplets, either naturally or by chemical dispersants that were extensively used against the spill. The rest, 26 per cent, is "either on or just below the surface as light sheen and weathered tar balls, has washed ashore or been collected from the shore, or is buried in sand and sediments," the report concluded.
With the well stuffed with mud, the government and BP will now decide if they want to shoot cement through the top of the well to finally seal it, or do that with a relief well slated for completion in mid-August.
Even if concrete is pumped into the well from the top, Allen has repeatedly said he will not declare the BP well dead until engineers can check the bottom conditions when a relief well bores into it later this month.
As progress was being made on permanently sealing the BP well, lawmakers on Capitol Hill warned of the need to monitor for lingering effects from of the widespread use of chemical dispersants during the spill.
"We are by no means through this disaster," said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.
BP has stopped applying the dispersants, which were sprayed on the ocean surface and also near the leaking well nearly a mile below to break the oil up and keep it from washing ashore.
"The subsurface application of the dispersants is why we are seeing less oil on the surface of the gulf than we expected," Whitehouse said at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing. "However, it is unclear if this will limit the damage or cause even greater harm."
(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)
Democratic senators are considering new regulations governing dispersants as part of legislation drawn up in response to the spill. The legislation, which would impose new environmental safeguards on offshore drilling, has been postponed until the Senate returns from its summer recess in September.
Republican senators, wary of new regulation, said the use of dispersants prevented more widespread environmental damage. Senator James Inhofe, R-Okla., called dispersants "the lesser of two evils."
Paul Anastas, assistant administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency's office of research and development, told the committee that the dispersants are less toxic than oil. But he and other experts said that more study is needed on their effects.
"When considering dispersant use, we are faced with environmental tradeoffs," Anastas said. "The long-term effects on aquatic life are still significantly unknown, and BP has used over 1.8 million gallons of dispersant, a volume never before used in the United States."
Whenever we misplace or lose something, we repeatedly search for it in all the same locations as if it will somehow be magically conjured up. At some point though, we usually suddenly remember where we put it. This breakthrough comes when we ease the tension by giving up. That brief ensuing moment of release delivers the Eureka experience. The same technique will work wonders now for unravelling a confusing dilemma. Take a brief break today and let the stars do the rest.
The inclination to reject a proposition that is being presented is based on a suspicion that doesn’t have legs. Life would be dull if you didn’t have tough decisions or judgements to make, so don’t get worried over this quandary. Your befuddlement will soon end as Mercury’s inspiration reaches you and provides you with the acuity of mind to make the right choice. You’ll be amazed by how rapidly everything changes for the better.
Even with the best intentions at heart, it may not be possible to see eye-to-eye with a certain person. It’s not in your nature to suffer fools gladly, but considering the circumstance you find yourself in, it would certainly be better to approach it all with a joke and a laugh. You’ll be glad you did.
A challenging array of planetary alignments is affecting us all on a global scale. The best remedy now is to be prudent and anticipate adversity as a precaution. Serendipity, however, will make a personal visit to you. Be ready to seize the opportunities that arise.
There is a slim hope. There is a possibility. There is a chance. The level of unpredictability is such, right now, that intuition is your best adviser. If an intriguing prospect you are considering feels good. It needs to be further explored. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Shrugging your shoulders and walking away from stressful situations is sometimes the best policy to adopt. A display of anger right now would be very damaging, so hold your wild horses. All you need to do is to be firm and subdued. An easing of tension is close at hand.
In life, just as in chess, we sometimes make a gambit or sacrifice for the sake of a better gain. Oft times this gambit is a calculated and deliberate act. Other times, though, it seems like a mistake. But then, there are no mistakes in life. The cosmos is leading you through what now seems like a series of blunders. It won’t be long before you realize they’ve actually bumped you onto a fast road to success.
The process you are going through is not a pointless exercise in futility. Rather, it is testing your willpower and how serious you are about what you wish to achieve. Rather than considering yourself plagued by bad luck, you ought really to consider yourself very fortunate. Your situation is not as bad as you might think, especially considering how it could have developed. There is plenty to be grateful for.
Bowing to growing pressure from consumers and Canadian Tire over its eco-fee scheme, the Ontario government is killing the latest round of controversial charges on potentially toxic household products and going back to the drawing board.
Sources said Environment Minister John Gerretsen will announce Tuesday that the policy is being retooled — less than three weeks after the fees from embattled recycling agency Stewardship Ontario kicked in on thousands of household items from cleaners to fire extinguishers.
“The government will be looking at solutions to the concerns heard from Ontarians about the program that would ensure household hazardous waste continues to be diverted from our landfills, while ensuring that Ontario consumers are protected,” said a government source.
It was unclear whether retailers and manufacturers would still have to pay the eco fees to Stewardship Ontario — or whether they would get the same break as consumers.
The move came after senior government officials spent the weekend looking at options from banning the fees outright, scrapping and retooling them, or taking the responsibility away from the independent but government-regulated Stewardship Ontario and running the program directly, another source said.
No time line was set for revamping the fees, which took consumers by surprise when they kicked in July 1 along with the new 13 per cent Harmonized Sales Tax. Some retailers faced difficulty in calculating the fees and applying them to products, resulting in some shoppers being overcharged.
“The only question is what does the fix look like?” said one industry representative.
The government’s about-face comes after Canadian Tire announced Monday that it was scrapping eco fees on 8,700 items in its stores, saying the recycling charge is too confusing for customers.
“We are pleased Canadian Tire has made this decision,” Gerretsen’s office said in an email to the Star.
The move from one of the country’s leading retailers “is just further proof of the chaos at cash registers across the province and that Dalton McGuinty’s eco tax plan has been a disaster,” said Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak, who has pledged that a Tory government would kill the fees outright.
Canadian Tire had asked Stewardship Ontario and Gerretsen to take the controversial eco fee program back to the drawing board and come up with a replacement that makes more sense.
“Safely recycling toxic materials like rust remover or camping fuel is important so we don’t have toxic waste seeping into our landfills and environment,” Mike Arnett, president of Canadian Tire Retail, said in a letter to customers Monday.
But the company “can no longer support passing along a recycling fee to customers that has inconsistencies between products and is difficult to explain.”
For example, different bottles of bleach can have different eco fees depending on their ingredients and Ph level. And the rules required the eco fee on a boater safety kit including a bailer, whistle and waterproof flashlight be based on the total weight of the kit, not just the flashlight and its batteries to which it actually applied, Arnett added in an interview.
“We’ve come across some things that don’t seem to make sense,” he said. “Because these eco fees are based on ‘materials’ instead of ‘products,’ it means that two similar brands of cleaning products could have two different eco fees depending on slight variations in their ingredients.”
After Canadian Tire’s announcement, Stewardship Ontario said it will require “prior disclosure” under which companies making or importing products subject to the eco fees provide the agency with information on the fees they’re charging for validation and display on the Stewardship Ontario website.
Canadian Tire’s decision ratcheted up pressure over the program that has some retailers adding eco fees of up to $6.66 to the price of some products — such as hand sanitizers, fertilizer, bleach and fire extinguishers — to defray the costs of disposing them at the end of their life cycle.
The company last week apologized to customers for mistakenly charging higher than authorized eco fees because of difficulties translating the Stewardship Ontario regulations to actual products.
Those problems proved a lightning rod for complaints about the eco fees, which increasingly became a political headache for Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals, who earlier this year scrapped a controversial new sex education curriculum and pulled it back for a revamping as well.
Stewardship Ontario apologized to consumers on Friday for confusion over the eco fees but shot back at Gerretsen for publicly “tarnishing” the agency with a letter earlier in the week demanding an audit and compliance program for retailers when that is beyond the agency’s scope.
Information technology staff at Canadian Tire were working overnight and into Tuesday to eliminate the fees from computer systems at the company’s stores across the province.
Star readers have also written about confusion with the new fees, such as C. Powell of West Hill, who pleaded in a letter to the editor on Saturday: “Mr. McGuinty, if as you say eco fees are to encourage recycling, please advise me how do I recycle fertilizer after spreading it on the lawn?”
Along with Home Depot, Canadian Tire has been one of few big retailers charging the fee, with others like Wal-Mart Canada Corp., Loblaw Cos. Ltd. and Shoppers Drug Mart absorbing it for now instead of passing the cost on to consumers.
For example, Shoppers has been assessing the fees while Loblaw stores were charging them only on compact fluorescent light bulbs and tubes.
Home Depot and Wal-Mart officials did not return calls from the Star on Monday.
