Editor:
Your article about increasingly random waste pickup on the Sunshine Coast made me curious about how much money the contractor was receiving. I looked on the SCRD website and found that the regional district paid Waste Management of Canada Corporation $1,092,407 for its services in 2020.
At that price, I would almost expect Britney Spears to be riding on top of the truck with a sound system, belting and squeaking out her greatest hits to let the neighbourhood know the vehicle is coming and to scare away the bears. I understand she needs to get out more anyway, and it wouldn’t be her weirdest gig.
But at a minimum I would expect it to be entirely the contracting corporation’s problem if, to fulfill its obligations, it had to fork out more of the contract’s bottom line in the form of wages than it had anticipated.
So if the SCRD is in a position to withhold payment when the garbage doesn’t get collected – i.e., to tell the corporation, “You either shell out whatever it takes to have drivers on all those routes or you don’t get paid by us” – I would be interested to hear whether the regional district is planning to do this. And if the SCRD is not in such a position, if the district actually signed something that gives the corporation a force majeure escape in the event that drivers aren’t tempted by the wages it offers, that would seem somewhat newsworthy to me as well.
David Stow, Elphinstone
