Idle Free Zone Conspiracy - Form Letter

Use this form letter if you simply want to ask Tim Horton's about their role in striking down the Idle Free Zone website for five months, and having much of the information on the site changed when it did finally go back up.

You could adapt this and send it instead (or additionally) to Lisa Raitt, who is the current Minister of Natural Resources Canada. The point would be to ask why then-minister Gary Lunn would change the Idle Free Zone website based on one unpublished study, and maybe, ask her to change it back.

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Paul D. House
Chairman Tim Horton's Inc
874 Sinclair Rd.
Oakville, Ontario L6K 2Y1

March 23, 2009

Dear Sir:

Since August 2008, when CBC Radio and CBC Online covered Tim Horton's involvement in striking down the Idle Free Zone website hosted by Natural Resources Canada, I have been struggling with whether or not your company's role in this matter was that of an ethically responsible corporate citizen. I would very much appreciate it if you could read over my understanding of this affair, and explain to me why it isn't equatable to tactics of tobacco companies throughout much of the 20th century, when they consistently paid for research and advertising which denied that smoking caused cancer, despite persuasively strong evidence to the contrary.

The facts as I understand them are as follows. I have largely drawn my information from CBC Radio stories from August 2008, and from an August 11, 2008 article on CBC Online titled Feds revamp stance on idling after meeting with drive-thru group.

a) In order to warn Canadians about the dangers of idling, Natural Resources Canada hosts a website called the Idle Free Zone. Along with images of children coughing due to plumes of vehicle emissions, there is information regarding the effects of vehicle emissions on personal health, and a recommendation that Canadians should only idle their cars for 10 seconds.

b) Concerned that information on the Idle Free Zone website might lead Canadians to think twice about using a drive-through, Tim Horton's begins searching for a way to convince Natural Resources Canada that information on the site should be changed.

c) Tim Horton's contracts with RWDI Consultants in Guelph. Tim Horton's asks RWDI to run a study to determine which is worse for the environment - idling in the drive-through line, or parking your car, walking into the restaurant, and restarting your car again upon leaving.

d) RWDI's Tim Horton's funded study finds that it is better for the environment to idle your car than it is to park and walk into the restaurant.

e) Tim Horton's gives this study to the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association and sends them to meet with Natural Resources Canada about the Idle Free Zone website.

f) The CRFA meets with Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn on Feb. 7, 2008.

g) On Feb. 8, Lunn sends out an email asking his staff to take down the Idle Free Zone website.

h) Five months later, a watered down version of the website is put back up, without any of the strong language / images /stats that had been used previously (and the "its safe to idle" timeframe was raised from 10 seconds to 60 seconds).


Given this chain of events, I fail to see why the lesson learned should not be that a government website meant to protect my health, was brought down unfairly by your company.

In a Feb. 15, 2008 Toronto Star article titled Drive-Through Ban Eyed for City Vehicles, your spokesperson Nick Javor stated that the RWDI study would be peer-reviewed and published that spring (ie spring 2008, a year ago now). I've been in touch with RWDI, and a year later, this study is not published, it has not gone through the peer-review process, and it is not available to the public.

I happen to be aware that a university student who bases an essay around an unpublished study (peer-reviewed or not) will receive a failing grade. I also happen to be aware that in the world of academic research, a body of evidence, drawn from dozens, if not hundreds, of different studies, must be available before consensus is formed on specific issues. I am therefore extremely confused by the ability of one single unpublished study to strike down a federal Canadian website.

While it is common for researchers to keep their studies private before publication, in this case I think RWDI's study should be available to the public. I would be very interested in RWDI's methodology. For example, what time of day was the study run? What types of cars were used to calculate the emissions caused by idling? Was the study done at a Tim Horton's location with ample parking or with insufficient parking? Was the study done at a Tim Horton's location where the Tim Horton's lot is quite large, or was it run at locations like those in Oshawa where the drive-through line spills onto city streets delaying traffic and causing non-Tim Horton's traffic to be forced to idle as well?

I have at my disposal any number of articles regarding the effect of vehicle emissions on human health. In 2007 for example, Toronto Public Health published Air Pollution Burden of Illness from Traffic in Toronto. They found that vehicle emissions alone (not general smog which could also come from factories) cause 440 deaths per year in Toronto, with an additional 1700 hospitalizations, and 1200 acute bronchitis episodes suffered by children. The air pollution stakes are very high, and it startles me that the Idle Free Zone website, which had recommended that vehicles only idle for 10 seconds, ups that recommendation all the way to 60 seconds on the basis of an unpublished study.

And so, I would be very grateful if your office could explain Tim Horton's role in striking down the Idle Free Zone website. At present, it strikes one as both suspicious and un-Canadian.

Yours truly,