TORONTO — A waste collector in Halton Region has been fired after being seen on video shovelling snow into a garbage truck, which city staff believe may have been done to add weight to the vehicle in an attempt to increase profits.
Miller Waste Systems confirmed to Newstalk1010 that the employee had been fired Wednesday morning and offered no further comment.
Anna O’Sullivan told Global News she thought the employee was doing her a favour by shovelling snow off of her Milton, Ont. property on Monday.
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“The garbage man came and I expected him to pick up my recyclables and leave, but the truck stayed there. So I thought, ‘That’s kind of strange,'” she told Global News.
“I saw the gentleman shoveling the pile of snow that was right in front of my curb into the truck, and I’d never seen that before. My first thought was, ‘Well isn’t that nice? He’s taking my snow away too.'”
O’Sullivan then posted a video of the incident on Facebook because she loved “seeing when people do something nice,” but the video soon racked up thousands of views and had numerous people comment on the post questioning the validity of the employees actions.
“Then I started to get comments saying, ‘Wait a minute. That is not supposed to happen.’ And I had no clue about the can of worms I had kind of opened up,” she said.
“People suffer consequences for their actions, and if it’s a dishonest action then well he needs to be punished.”
There were allegations following the incident that the driver was possibly trying to pad the weight of his vehicle — as Miller is paid by the weight of trash collected.
The issue was whether he was doing this on purpose — trying to score bonus money, either for himself, for Miller, or for both at the expense of ratepayers.
Halton Region has launched an investigation as Miller is paid by the tonne under a contract with the region.
Jim Harnum, the commissioner of public works for Halton Region, said this is not a new occurrence.
“It’s pretty evident on the video that we’re adding weight to a vehicle. So we’ll be using that and telling the contractor that they’ve broken our rules and we’ll assess some penalties to that,” he said.
“This is something that’s happened in the industry, it was fairly prevalent back in the early days in the 70s and 80s. … It’s a known thing to us, but it’s very rare and we feel this is an extremely isolated incident.”
Harnum said the city had not paid for the loads the truck had brought in on the day of the incident and officials were looking over history and weights of trucks to determine if there had been any anomalies.
“We’ll be investigating and if those anomalies are prevalent with that truck and with that driver we’ll be taking action with the contractor,” he said.
“Their reputation is on the line as well and they’re taking this very seriously as well. We’ll constantly be vigilant. In the short term we’ve stepped up inspections of trucks and we’ve stepped up on-road activity with our supervisors.”
Harnum said the company could be fined from $1,000 to $10,000 and depending on the extent of the allegations it could lead to a termination of the company’s contract.
He added that Miller Waste Systems had successfully won a bid for a new contract with Halton Region that begins in April.
With files from The Canadian Press
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