Garbage privatization: Councillor looks at fast-tracking east of Yonge St.

Councillor and potential mayor candidate Denzil Minnan-Wong has suggested city council could vote to expand private garbage collection in Toronto before the next election, undercutting a key plank in Mayor Rob Ford’s re-election campaign.

Outsourcing waste removal west of Yonge St. was a central part of Ford’s 2010 mayoralty campaign, in the wake of an unpopular garbage strike a year earlier.

Ford has consistently said the outsourcing of waste collection east of Yonge St. will be a central part of his 2014 platform.

“It’s an election issue,” he reiterated Monday.

Both he and Minnan-Wong, who said last month he is seriously considering a run for the mayor’s job next year, appeared at a news conference at city hall and agreed that privatization west of Yonge has been a big success.

Green For Life, a private company, won the city contract and has been hauling west-side garbage since late 2011.

Taxpayers save $11 million annually, complaints have declined and there have been no health or safety issues, Minnan-Wong said. The city’s fair wage policies and labour laws have also been followed.

Minnan-Wong, chair of the public works and infrastructure committee, said he has asked the general manager of the solid waste department to prepare a report on “options” of expanding eastward, taking into account the benefits, costs and risks involved. He asked that the report be ready for the committee next June.

“I don’t want to wait until 2015. I think a decision point is needed at the earliest possible opportunity,” he told reporters.

But he did say he will wait to see the report before endorsing expansion. If it’s favourable, council could then make a decision by next summer.

Ford said his mind is already made up.

“I’ll be very, very, very shocked if this report says that we should keep it in-house,” he said.

Ford said he will introduce his own motion that city staff report back on solid waste outsourcing by January 2015 “at the latest.”

“I just (want) to make sure if it doesn’t carry in the spring that it will be debated as a mayor’s issue going into the next election,” Ford said.

Dave Hewitt, vice-president of Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 416, which represents city garbage workers, sees electioneering at play.

Hewitt called the privatization timetable “disturbing,” in light of the union’s deal with the city to try to find in-house efficiencies and cost savings. He also suggested the cost-savings might not be as significant as claimed by politicians.

The union, he said, is doing its own cost-analysis on privatization, which will be ready in the new year.