Montrealers are more exasperated than ever by the trained trash cans and unhealthiness, if we base ourselves on the explosion of calls made in 311 compared to past years.
“As soon as there is a trash can, there is a training phenomenon, people say they can also deposit it and we end up with complete mountains,” denounces Benoît Chamontin.
Benoît Chamontin addressed multiple times on 311 concerning a recurrent problem of illegal waste deposit in this alley on rue Robin, in the district of Ville-Marie.
Photo Anek Lebel
He called on multiple times in the city concerning a recurrent problem of illegal waste deposit in the alley overlooking Robin Street, in the district of Ville-Marie.
“It’s recurring. There is food, ripped bags, mattresses. We see everything and it obstructs the passage, ”underlines her neighbor Christelle Lemmonie.
Illegal waste deposits on Robin Street, in the Ville-Marie district, in Montreal.
Photo provided by Benoît Chamontin
In 2024, the city received a total of 44,817 reports in connection with the Malpropreté, nearly 7,700 more than the previous year.
This includes 27,961 reports for the illegal waste deposit on public and private property and 16,856 for cleaning the public domain (see below).
Call campaign
For more than forty street sections, the city has received at least 50 reports in the past year.
Robin Street is part of the top 10 places where there are the most reports with 95 calls (see card). But there have been complaints almost everywhere on the island.
Waste in an alley behind Ontario Street, in the district of Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, in Montreal.
Photo provided by Renaud Dumouchel
“It’s not surprising,” believes Renaud Dumouchel, member of Ligue 33.
This group of citizens of Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve believes that the spacing of the collection every two weeks in the district has accentuated the problem of unhealthiness already present.
He made awareness campaigns to encourage people to report the trained bins at 311.
“We wonder why we deserve to have such dirty streets. In other easier districts, the pilot project would not have passed. We see that it does not work. There are garbage cans everywhere, ”castigates Mr. Dumouchel.
Awareness
The city of Montreal refused to give us an interview.
“The rise in requests can be explained, in part, by the success of the citizen awareness operation carried out by the city, which prompted Montrealers to accentuate their efforts to point out the importance of going to recover this waste,” notes in an email the relationist Hugo Bourgoin.
He underlines that in the district of Ville-Marie, the number of inspections has quadrupled in recent years, going from 3210, in 2022, to 12,544, in 2024. For the same period, the number of observations given with fines to be paid almost tripled, going from 251 to 622.
He adds that the data must be interpreted with caution, since “a request is not necessarily a complaint and that only one and the same situation may have been reported in several different requests”.
With the collaboration of Dominique Cambron-Goulet, office of investigation
Requests made at 311 for illegal deposits
- 2016: 11 951
- 2017: 13 286
- 2018: 13 800
- 2019: 13 751
- 2020: 13 125
- 2021: 17 730
- 2022: 22 148
- 2023: 24 386
- 2024: 27 961
Requests made at 311 for cleaning the public domain
- 2021: 11 517
- 2022: 11 065
- 2023: 12 733
- 2024: 16 856
Total for 2024: 44,817
Source: City of Montreal