Time to wake up and smell the garbage

Montreal’s integrity watchdog has detected the whiff of corruption emanating from a contract for garbage collection in the borough of Verdun.

If the possibility of fraud wasn’t alarming enough, the investigation by the Bureau de l’inspecteur général (BIG) has also uncovered a larger and equally worrisome problem: The city doesn’t have a good-enough handle on what’s happening to all the waste being picked up from its streets. And that lack of scrutiny could have the makings of an environmental mess, as well as a financial and administrative one.

Inspector general Denis Gallant has prepared a damning report, detailing an investigation into Services Environnementaux Richelieu (SER). Among its findings are: that the waste-management firm was charging Montreal for trash it was hauling away from other municipalities; that commercial garbage was also being mixed in with Verdun’s residential waste at the city’s (and its taxpayers’) expense; and that on at least one occasion when the bureau was conducting surveillance, recyclable materials were being lumped in with the rubbish.

This preliminary evidence is so scandalous that the $32-million contract has been rescinded, the Unité permanente anti-corruption has been alerted and the Autorité des marchés financiers, which vets companies bidding on public contracts, has been called in. But equally outrageous is the exposure of a lack of proper oversight by the borough itself — despite multiple means at its disposal.

The scale to weigh garbage trucks in order to ensure they were starting their routes in Verdun empty often seemed to be broken. No one bothered to keep tabs on the GPS co-ordinates of the vehicles, which were available for municipal administrators to verify. And no one took time to reconcile any of this data with the bills coming in from SER. The only positive is that it was an alert from Verdun itself that prompted the BIG to uncover the potential fraud — along with the borough’s own lack of rigour.

The inspector general’s report blames these failures in part on the fact that boroughs are in charge of waste management. The fragmentation of responsibility, the creation of silos of information and varying procedures are all factors that can contribute to corruption. And the Verdun case certainly raises the question about whether this kind of scheme could be occurring elsewhere — or whether other boroughs have similarly lax controls over garbage contracts.

Waste collection — including trash, recyclables and organics — is big business and one of the most essential services that municipalities provide. But there is more than the possibility of corruption at stake here.

The findings are perhaps a symptom of a larger problem: The amount of waste we are generating as a disposable society, where even some avocados come clad in packaging, is increasingly a challenge for even the most well-intentioned programs.

Quebec has had recycling programs for more than 25 years now and has set ambitious targets to divert more trash from landfills by recycling and repurposing reusable materials. But a 2015 report from Recyc- Québec found that the overall rate of materials being recycled in Quebec has dipped slightly to 54 per cent from 59 per cent in 2012, largely due to difficulties with glass.

Glass can be recycled easily enough in theory, however the way it is collected (tossed in with cans and cardboard to make it simpler for households) leads to breakage that renders it useless and contaminates other streams of material. There has been a push on to introduce a returns program for wine bottles in Quebec, much like that which exists for beer bottles, where refunds are offered as an incentive. But the Société des alcools du Québec has balked at the costs and logistics. So the idea has stalled since no other solution for collecting bottles has presented itself.

Now China is closing its doors to much of the recyclable waste it has taken in from many locales the world over, including Montreal. After Montreal lost the Chinese market for recycled paper, thousands of bundles piled up in a Montreal transition centre, increasing the risk of rotting and becoming unusable. New buyers were found in India, Korea and Indonesia. But the writing is on the wall for Montreal and municipalities around the globe: They need new places to ship waste.

The city is years behind in the rollout of its organic-waste collection program. The deadline for full implementation has now been pushed back to 2020, once several contracts for treatment centres on the island are awarded and the facilities are operational.

Part of the delay was due to former mayor Denis Coderre cancelling plans for a St-Michel organics depot after the 2013 election, meaning Montreal had to wait until limited space opened up at off-island facilities to expand its program. A 2016 update showed that though the rate of composting was steadily rising, it had hit only 20 per cent, far from its target of 60 per cent.

Citizens have to think about reducing the amount of rubbish they generate in the first place and they need all levels of government to provide programs that are reliable, viable — and carefully monitored for results.

The stench of corruption should wake us up to the fact it’s time to get serious about waste.

The findings are perhaps a symptom of a larger problem: The amount of waste we are generating as a disposable society.