Privatizing Toronto's garbage collection: What we can learn from Hamilton

During Toronto’s 2010 mayoral election, everyone seemed to want to talk trash.

Like, literal trash. Waste collection. After the fun times of the 2009 municipal workers strike — and the associated garbage mountains in city parks — voters were ready for a change in the way the city handled their garbage business.

You know the rest. After Rob Ford’s victory, city council awarded a contract to a private company to pick up residential waste in a district west of Yonge Street. The city’s auditor says the move saved about $10.8-million per year.

Four years later, garbage isn’t the hot topic that it once was, but it’s still an issue worth considering as Toronto heads to the polls.

Mayoral hopeful Olivia Chow has stood alone on most debate stages as the only candidate not eager to further contract out the city’s solid-waste collection.

John Tory and Doug Ford are all for letting the private sector handle 100 per cent of the city’s trash.

At a glance, they’d seem to have a slam-dunk case. Money saved. Fewer strikes. What’s not to like?

It doesn’t help that Chow’s arguments on the topic can come off as a bit muddled, what with her talk of garbage monopolies.

When she explained her views in a Metro interview earlier this year, she said, “I believe in competition; I don’t believe in monopoly. Monopoly is not a good way to go if you want to have markets decide.”

But here’s the thing: Though it might seem counterintuitive, Chow has a worthwhile point.

For evidence, let’s look to the City of Hamilton. Like Toronto, our friends in the Hammer have half their garbage picked up by public workers and half by private companies. Unlike Toronto, however, they’ve got no plans to change that.

Officials say that maintaining public involvement in waste collection has kept both private and public costs down. And reports back them up: In 2012, the public side actually bested the private side on the metric of per-household cost.

There’s some logic to that.

The private presence keeps the public workers on their toes. And the public presence gives the city a stronger negotiating position with private bidders, because they have some capability to in-source service — something that wouldn’t be true if a municipality contracted out all their waste collection and sold off trucks and equipment. Is that reason enough to hold the line on Toronto’s garbage status quo? Maybe. Or maybe not.

The lesson from Hamilton would seem to be that things work better when there’s some mix of public and private waste collection — the percentages of each can and should be debated.

Regardless, it’s something well worth considering before any politician moves too quickly to take out the city’s trash.