Montreal City Weblog

Kate 16:18 on 2026-05-03 Permalink Reply  

• Joey 17:07 on 2026-05-03 Permalink

  Just yesterday we picked up a filthy pillow (not in a garbage bag) and some long tracks (like for a sliding door or something) that someone left for garbage next to our place – we are adjacent to an alley so we get a lot of dumped trash near us. I suppose we were prescient, though it hardly seems fair to penalize people who live near where others dump their trash…

• Kate 18:42 on 2026-05-03 Permalink

  Maybe email or call 311 and alert them to this dumping, so if you’re unlucky enough to be fined, you’ll have established an attempt to deal with it responsibly?

• Joey 09:16 on 2026-05-04 Permalink

  Honestly that seems like overkill, since this kind of thing happens frequently. It’s more the idea that the city will be a-ok fining people for garbage dumped adjacent to their homes without any proof that they were the dumpers. If the garbage is equidistant between two homes, will they issue two fines? If it’s a dense block will everyone in the plex get a ticket or just the ground floor?

• dhomas 11:00 on 2026-05-04 Permalink

  About the “who gets the ticket” part, I’m pretty sure I have the answer. I got a warning a couple of years ago because my tenant threw out compostable items in his regular garbage (it was a whole, stale baguette that poked a hole out of his garbage bag). From what the warning said, the fine goes to the building owner, who needs to sort it out with his tenants.
  It can be difficult managing this sort of thing. One of my tenants separates nothing at all: garbage, recycling compost, they all go in the same bag for him. I at least got him to only put out his garbage bags on pickup day; previously, he would leave his bags on my front lawn, regardless of the day. It would leave yellow spots on my lawn unless I would pick it up and put it in my bin, which was annoying Small victories, I guess.

• Joey 11:41 on 2026-05-04 Permalink

  “Depuis quelques mois, la méthode des inspecteurs n’est plus tout à fait la même dans certains arrondissements montréalais. Avant, pour donner une amende, il leur fallait fouiller dans un sac de poubelle pour trouver une facture ou un document permettant d’identifier la personne. La tâche était non seulement fastidieuse, mais surtout longue et très peu efficace la plupart du temps. Dorénavant, s’ils jugent qu’il y a infraction, les employés municipaux peuvent directement donner un constat au propriétaire de la maison ou du commerce. Dans certains cas, plus d’une amende peut même être donnée afin de sensibiliser les voisins immédiats à la nécessité de nettoyer un minimum les trottoirs et le devant de leur résidence.”

  So we have a somewhat vague rule that is being interpreted differently by different inspectors, potentially even within a single borough – literally ‘deux poids, deux mesures’. You could take off for a weekend and come home to find that (a) someone dumped their trash in front of your house and (b) you have to pay a fine for it.

  Anyway, the city and the boroughs need to be a little more attentive to the rhythm of public life – everyone knows that many out-of-town McGill students move out at the end of April. Maybe Ville-Marie could deploy some extra resources to Milton-Parc during the first week of May rather than bemoan the asshole students who have already left the city. Maybe the first street-sweeping operation of the spring does more than just pass the useless vacuum and instead picks up all the dead leaves left to rot since fall. Maybe we send people with sticks to clear storm drains during the winter/spring thaw so there aren’t huge puddles all over the place (since we missed the leaves).

• Mozai 12:18 on 2026-05-04 Permalink

  Not looking forward to getting tickets because there’s a fire hydrant in front of my house: that means no parked cars, so it seems like a good idea leave trash bags there for pick-up. If only my neighbours could remember which day is trash day, and to put bags out not before 19h00 the preceding night. Also in the evening after trash day I end up finding other people’s bins in front of my place so I have to read them to see if they wrote an address, then walk the bins back to where they were thismorning, so it’s not just residents putting stuff in front of my house but city workers too.

• Kevin 16:09 on 2026-05-04 Permalink

  Whenever I get new tenants I go through all the city rules, bit by bit, in writing with a book that is kept in their apartment. I tell them about composting, recyling, trash, breaking down boxes and cartons, etc… I send them reminder emails with links to the city’s website if I’m putting stuff on the sidewalk and I can tell it’s not sorted properly.

  About two-thirds of my tenants have correctly handled trash.

  The other third easily produce 10 times as much waste as the larger group, and they don’t understand or don’t care about sorting it. They just fill all the bins (and more) with whatever is closest. Plastic bags and styrofoam in compost. Food in recycling bins. Garbage can lids go hiding.

  I’m going to have to add a clause to my lease agreement that the tenant is responsible for any fines.