Toronto Mayor will abolish plastic bag tax: reports

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford will abolish the city’s five-cent plastic bag fee, according to media reports.

Both the National Post and the CBC have reported that Ford plans to scrap the fee, but do not say when he plans to tackle the issue.

“All of a sudden the five cents is really becoming a sticking point with people and it wasn’t really before, so I want to get rid of it,” Ford told the National Post.

Ford, voted into office in October, will require the support of the majority of Toronto’s 44-member council in order to scrap the fee.

The city’s plastic bag bylaw, which went into effect on June 1, 2009, requires retailers to charge a nickel for every single-use plastic retail shopping bag requested by customers.

The bylaw was the first of its kind in a large Canadian city and was passed with the goal of reducing the amount of plastic being sent to landfills.