Hanes: A clean sweep for Montreal?

As the snow recedes, Montreal’s dirty secrets are gradually being exposed.

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Cigarette butts are reappearing, dog excrement is re-emerging, old food wrappers are blowing around, and contorted plastic bottles are encumbering the sidewalks, not to mention the coating of leftover abrasives underfoot.

This detritus has been frozen under blankets of white stuff for the past few months. As it thaws, Montreal always turns grey and grimy before the trees bud and the grass turns green. The start of spring is never the city’s finest moment.

Along with the potholes that lurk on every block is all the trash that was thoughtlessly tossed out or poorly contained over the winter. Many corners, back alleys, public squares and parks are a shambles once the ice recedes. The field of debris left behind along Notre-Dame St. E. resembles a de facto dump, as Le Journal de Montréal reported last week.

Montreal is in desperate need of a clean sweep.

As the annual spring-cleaning blitz was launched Monday, the administration of Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada is raising expectations for how immaculately the city will be made to shine in the coming months.

Executive committee chair Claude Pinard vowed that Montreal will be “cleaner than ever” after the city deploys more teams much earlier and for a longer period than has typically been done the in past. Street sweepers and sprayers will be out starting this week, rather than waiting until April 1 as usual, and $2 million is being set aside to tidy up homeless encampments.

Cleanliness is, after all, one of the new mayor’s top priorities. It’s something Martinez Ferrada campaigned on in last fall’s election, tapping into growing sentiment that Montreal has descended into filth in recent years.

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So far her administration has gotten a couple of things right in its approach to neatness: a well-kept city will depend on giving people plenty of opportunities to dispose of their waste.

Martinez Ferrada wisely reversed a move by her predecessor to pick up garbage every other week in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, which residents complained was impractical for those living in small apartments and resulted in reeking, rubbish-strewn streets during the hot summer months.

Pinard announced Monday that a pilot project has been cancelled that would have removed some 80 trash cans from La Fontaine Park. Visitors would have been required to carry their refuse, whether from a picnic or picking up after their pet, to the outskirts of the popular park. The plan was panned as unrealistic.

Now the administration is putting its money where its mouth is with a plan to spruce up the streets after the long winter. The intentions are commendable. But they’re going to need the cooperation of some key stakeholders to fulfil the promise that Montrealers will soon start to see a noticeable difference in the cleanliness of the city.

First, blue-collar workers are going to be in charge of sprucing things up, boosting the amount of time they devote to cleaning by 25 per cent by improving efficiency.

On Monday, the blue-collar workers were already grumbling about broken equipment and other tasks they would have to be put aside to focus on scrubbing down the city. It sounded a lot like they were trying to lower the bar on anticipated results — just like they did when they complained busted pothole-patching machinery was hampering the effort to smooth out roads and snowplows in disrepair were preventing the prompt clearing of streets and sidewalks.

There may be truth to these grievances, but the blue-collar unions, who are in the midst of contract negotiations, can’t have it both ways. They simultaneously want the city give them more work and contract out less, while offering up endless excuses about why they can’t get the job done.

Meanwhile, Montrealers will need to do their part to keep the city spic and span. Pinard called for a change in mentality so the general public sees cleanliness as a “collective effort” and takes pride in the results.

Citizens and community groups will be out picking up refuse in their neighbourhoods and local parks in the coming weeks.

But let’s face it, there are a lot of litterbugs who chuck their cigarette butts wherever they want, spit their gum on the métro platform, fail to remove trash that spills from their household bins or don’t bother to stoop and scoop when they walk their dogs. The junk being revealed since the snow melted didn’t get there by accident.

The administration is setting the tone for a clean sweep. Will Montrealers follow the lead?

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Hanes: A clean sweep for Montreal?

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