Toronto: A City in Peril

Garbage and Pandemic Planning

by Diane Wilson

Toronto's month long civic workers strike that has crippled garbage collection has its tentacles in more services than you know. It even affects pandemic planning. In today's The Toronto Star, renowned microbiologist Allison McGeer warns that Toronto may suffer more H1N1 deaths because of the civic workers' strike. I will say that again: Toronto may suffer more H1N1 deaths because of the civic workers strike. McGeer is head of infection control at Mount Sinai Hospital and a noted authority on pandemic planning. She was also the voice of reason during the SARS outbreak.

Apparently, there are about 1,800 unionized employees from the Toronto Public Health Unit on strike. These individuals were supposed to be spending the summer planning for the second wave of the H1N1 virus, which is scheduled to hit North America in September. During the summer, pandemic management advice should have been going out to institutions and plans for vaccination clinics should have been made.

McGeer's comments are in line with the thinking of the World Health Organization, which has declared a level 6 pandemic -- news that should not have been taken lightly. We are told to wash our hands and all that to prevent the spread of germs. But wouldn't our city be cleaner if we took away these towering hills of aging garbage? I worry about the spread of disease through vermin when you have so much uncollected garbage sitting for weeks on end in our neighbourhoods.

Okay, health's not your thing. How about a sagging economy? When the world is sputtering in a global recession and travel dollars are being squeezed like never before, isn't it a crying shame that Toronto has turned off the lights? The ferries to the island are on strike, leaving places like Centreville closed. Public pools are closed. Builders have been unable to collect building permits and have had to lay off employees. Day camps are closed.

Toronto is a city of contradictions. Torontonians are paying five cents a bag at all stores. The idea was that we would use our cloth sacks to bring home the goods and then we would compost and recycle. We are a noble lot of foolish people! We go to all this trouble and expense and now the strike has us throwing all our waste -- compost and not -- into monstrously large green plastic garbage bags, which are tossed next to our neighbours to rot for weeks on end.

Few of us fully understand the reasons these city workers went out on strike, although I bet some of the reasons are very good. Unfortunately, nothing can top the urgency and importance of a global pandemic and a global recession. We have precious few days to get down to serious planning and confront a future in which sick days will be so consumed that prized sick banks will vanish. This strike has run its course. It is time for the mayor and the premier to lead.