According to today’s paper, the City of Toronto plans to announce a deal to impose a five-cent tax on plastic bags at a news conference today with Loblaws, Sobeys, Metro, and their lobby group, the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors. Missing in action?

The news conference is not expected to include representatives of the Retail Council of Canada, independent grocers, or the plastics industry, all of whom question the city’s legal authority to require specific action by retailers.

This is just delaying the inevitable. If the city doesn’t have the authority, the province does, and is likely to take the same step itself sometime in the not-so-distant future. So what exactly, then, is the point of pissing off city officials, and not bothering to work out some kind of deal that might be more beneficial for small retailers than a version imposed without consultation now?