Today we break our usual rule of no more than one article per day to let you know that we missed an environment-related initiative in this week’s Federal budget.

In the budget the government announced that the Government will:

• End “pay to pay” policies, so customers won’t pay extra to receive paper bills.

These programs, under which people pay an amount, often $2.00, to receive a paper bill instead of an electronic bill, are designed to encourage acceptance of electronic bills, saving the environmental impacts of paper making and postal delivery. The pulp and paper industry has been lobbying hard against electronic communications, (see, for example, http://www.twosides.us/President-and-CEO-of-Canada-Post-is-committed-to-stopping-misleading-environmental-claims-about-paper ) and seems to have won at least a partial victory for more paper use (or is it paper waste?) in this year’s Throne Speech.

While taking your time by presenting an extra article today, GallonDaily notes that we had hoped to present a summary of the environmental, and environment business, aspects of the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement  either today or Monday. However, the federal government and the EU have not yet released the text of the Agreement and we are not expecting it for some time. Instead, the Government of Canada has released a pile of propaganda in support of CETA with no discussion of the environmental aspects or of any downsides (see http://www.actionplan.gc.ca/en/content/ceta-aecg/canada-eu-trade-agreement for the propaganda). We will publish a summary of the environmental and sustainability implications of the Agreement, as we see them, as quickly as possible once the actual text of the agreement is made available.