There used to be a joke going around Ontario back in the old days that went something like this: "Capital funding offered by OMMRI to municipalities to start recycling programs, but no money offered for operating costs,  is like the deadbeat who gets the girl pregnant and then leaves town after the baby is born."
If it weren't for the sugar daddy role played by the Province in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there would have been nothing at all to help pay the bills. The revenues from the sale of recyclables, which everyone assured municipalities would cover the costs of recycling, didn't come close.
When the Tories got into power they used their sugar daddy budget to bribe their rural and 905 voters with tax cuts and municipalities were left out in the cold again.
Ontario programs have been trying to collect support payments ever since. Every time they get close, something comes along to muddy the waters or distract everyone's attention and they go back to square one.
Since then, OMMRI, which stood for Ontario Multi-Material Recycling Inc, has evolved into CSR:Corporations Supporting Recycling. It has essentially the same job as its predecessor: delay product stewardship through heavy government lobbying and toss crumbs at municipalities whenever the heat is on.
The largesse which saw industry funding help get local governments pregnant came at a cost--but not to OMMRI's corporate members. The Province agreed to effectively emasculate its deposit/return system by changing the rules and by not enforcing those that remained.
Industry wasted no time. It reorganized the soft drink distribution system and closed dozens of local bottling plants. Pop was then bottled in just a few, much larger plants and then shipped across the province in huge trucks. This was much more efficient. Right.
The transition from OMMRI to CSR put the brakes on capital funding and channeled any dollars through special projects to improve efficiencies. This practice led to the "partnership" idea, through which cash-strapped municipalities signed away their virtue (and tacitly agreed to lay low on stewardship lobbying) in exchange for project funding.

One colourful Toronto councillor once opined at an Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) conference that CSR stood for Con the Suckers Relentlessly, although Crumbs, Stalling and Rhetoric might be closer. 
In the past few years, the stewardship issue has often moved forward to the front burner but it keeps getting pushed to the back again.
(Note: from here on, whenever you see the words "Shh-ting!" followed by an amount, that will be the money that hasn't come to municipalities to offset the cost of recycling, based on the 50/50 funding formula we keep hearing about, and allowing for the $4 million paid annually by the LCBO from 1998 to 2000).
There was the year and a half of hearings and study in the process led by the Recycling Council of Ontario (Shh-ting! $31.5 M).
Then there were six months of  silence from Queen's Park (Shh-ting! $10.5M).
Then there was an announcement that something was going to happen.
Then there were six more months of silence from Queen's Park (Shh-ting! $10.5M).
Then there was an announcement that something really was going to happen.
Then there were six more months of silence from Queen's Park (Shh-ting! $10.5M).
Then there was an announcement that CSR was looking after everything.
Then there were nine months of rushed deadlines and unreasonable schedules to get a report back to the minister and some money for projects, most of which, needless to say,  went to consultants (Shh-ting! $10M).
Then there were three more months of silence from Queen's Park (Shh-ting! $5.25M).
Then there was an announcement that legislation was coming but there would be consultation.
Then there were four more months of silence from Queen's Park (Shh-ting! $8.33M) and then indications that something is coming, to be followed, of course by consultation.
Then, well, who knows?.