Ezra Levant exposes Montreal’s recycling deception: 20,000 tons of glass annually sent to landfills or crushed as cover despite claims it’s recycled, citing $1.5B in federal bonuses and 800,000 pay raises since 2015 amid bureaucratic growth from 259K to 357K staff. Carol Maynard calls it "glorified landfills," while Terrazano argues inefficiency persists despite bloated salaries averaging $125K. Levant’s legal fine and listener critiques—including CBC bias and "net zero" skepticism—highlight systemic failures, suggesting performative green rituals and media distrust mirror deeper economic and ideological disillusionment. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I'm going to take a break from huge world events to talk about a very local event.
In fact, it's probably in your street.
And I'm talking about recycling bins.
In Montreal, turns out that half the recycling bins don't actually recycle glass.
They just put it in the landfill.
Are you surprised?
I'll take you through the news.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
It's the video version of this podcast.
It's eight bucks a month, which might not sound like a lot of money to you, but it really adds up for us.
And that's how we pay the bills here because we don't and will never take money from Justin Trudeau.
To become a subscriber and get great video content, go to RebelNewsPlus.com.
And here's today's podcast.
Tonight, you spend all that time sorting your garbage into different bins, and then the government just dumps it all in the same landfill.
It's July 10th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
You know, one of the most immediate differences between the modern wealthy world and the developing world is garbage in the streets.
It's my own experience, at least.
I remember once I went on a Caribbean cruise and we stopped into Port-au-Prince, Haiti for a day.
I had never been to Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere.
Normally, cruise ships and the area around where they dock is a little bubble of tourist unreality.
Everything's a bit Disney-fied to make the wealthy American tourists and Canadians at ease to sell souvenirs and knickknacks and westernized versions of local cuisines, you know, less spicy, less exotic, but not Haiti.
You landed and you walked just a few blocks in and you saw the country for what it is, poor, underdeveloped, and garbage everywhere in the streets.
That's actually my chief memory of Port-au-Prince a decade later.
But the thing is, I think the garbage in the streets really bears little relation to wealth or poverty.
Not little relation.
There's some, but if there's no garbage pickup, I guess if there's no regular service to take the garbage away, I suppose it does take some wealth to remove it.
But I think it's a cultural decision, too.
I mean, littering was much more socially acceptable in Canada, the United States, too, until about 50 years ago.
In 1985, about 40 years ago, one of the most effective anti-littering campaigns of all time was created.
A slogan, don't mess with Texas.
Seriously, did you know that that was an anti-littering campaign?
But it so perfectly captured the spirit of Texas, especially young Texan men who were amongst the biggest litterers just throwing cans on the highway or whatever.
That slogan shared on bumper stickers is credited with reducing littering on Texas highways by 72% in just three years.
I believe it, by the way.
So some of it is social and some of it is cultural.
There's an economic aspect to it too.
Of course there is.
It's a fact that many free market environmentalists make like Bjorn Lomborg.
When people are extremely poor, they're just focused on surviving the day with basics, food, shelter, clothing.
It's only when a country gets wealthy enough that they can start to care about aesthetic things or about a long-term future.
And then they start to spend some money on cleaning up pollution.
You can see that now in China, by the way.
It's reached a level of wealth where clean air, clean water, clean soil actually motivates certain segments of the population now that there are no more famines and even ordinary Chinese people can live in modern apartments.
It's funny because Canada used to ship a lot of our garbage to China.
I know that sounds nuts.
I mean, you would think it would be absurdly wasteful and unenvironmental to take Canadian garbage from the streets of our city, buy garbage truck, and then pack it into one of those big containers, put it on a truck, then put it on a train, and then put that container on a ship and send that across the Pacific to China and then offload it for them to handle.
How on earth does that make sense economically or environmentally?
Well, that's what we did for years.
Remember when we sent a lot of garbage to the Philippines and they actually didn't want it and they sent it back.
Rebel News covered that story.
Remember, we even sent a reporter to Manila to cover it.
Here's a bit of a flashback to that.
I have made it to the Philippines.
I'm out in Manila, which is the capital city of the Philippines, and I'm just taking a walk up and down the Manila, the beautiful Manila Bay walk.
And I, as I said before, I am a very proud Canadian, but this entire mess of a garbage ship has got to be one of the most ridiculous stories in recent years.
We have been hearing a lot about this, and we all know how Canada's environment minister, Catherine McKenna, is extremely excited to be reunited with our disgusting six-year-old garbage.
But what I want to know most is how the people of the Philippines feel about this entire mess.
After all, they were the unlucky ones to have received our garbage and had to open up these containers and actually discover leaking garbage juice.
So let's go have a chat with some people out there today.
How do you feel about Canada sending over their garbage to the Philippines?
Yeah, I've been awful that Canada sent their garbage here.
So I feel bad about that because our government is trying hard to clean up our garbage.
So some country like Canada, Singapore, I'm in Hong Kong, is sending garbage here in the Philippines.
So it is not good for us that our country is, maybe they're thinking that our country is like garbage dump.
How do you feel about Canada sending the garbage?
I feel so degraded.
As a Filipino, we are not at a dumping site.
So it's not easy for us to have said that a Canadian government sent us garbage.
Because as far as I know, you are a developed country.
So why don't you just recycle your own garbage and dump it in a proper place?
Why bring it to the Philippines, right?
I think it's embarrassing, you know.
Embarrassing for Canada or for the Philippines?
For the Philippines, because they like to accept those garbage from Canada, which is only garbage that nothing can.
You cannot use this for nothing.
This is for nothing.
That was such a strange thing.
But a few years ago, China announced they didn't want the West's garbage anymore.
They just didn't want it.
Here's a story from five years ago.
China is no longer the world's dumping ground, but cleaning up its own backyard is proving to be a challenge.
China has banned 24 kinds of waste from abroad in an effort to tackle growing environmental disaster.
Now, don't get me wrong, China is still by far the world's largest polluter of every sort, from the air to junk in water to adulterated food and medicine.
When I visited China about 15 years ago, the big news was China was making toothpaste and sweetening it with antifreeze.
I kid you not.
They have a long way to go before things are healthy and safe there.
But apparently, they've grown up beyond being our garbage collectors.
And so the question became: where would Canada's recycled garbage go?
If not to China.
Here's another story from the CBC state broadcaster.
Canadian municipalities struggling to find place for recyclables after China restricts foreign waste.
Now, I don't think we ever got a good answer to the question.
I mean, a lot of garbage that was going to be recycled was really just being stacked up in warehouses.
And don't think that the Chinese actually recycled it.
They probably burned it.
And the reason is pretty obvious.
It is uneconomic to recycle most things.
Paper, plastic, glass, et cetera.
Only some metal really has enough intrinsic value that it makes sense to recycle it.
Most other things are a net cost to recycle, as in it's actually environmentally unsound to try and recycle old versions.
It takes more energy than just to make a new version of the thing.
That's not environmental, and that's not economic at all.
But that news I just showed you is five years old.
Check this out, five hours old.
It's another story in the state broadcaster.
Glass meant to be recycled in eight Montreal boroughs going to landfill.
Most glass recycled in Quebec is ground into powder instead of being re-blown.
Oh, you don't say.
Here, I'm going to read a few paragraphs.
Bear with me.
Nearly half of Montreal's 19 boroughs aren't recycling glass, despite telling residents on the city website they can put it in their blue bin or bag.
Recycling in eight boroughs is taken to the sorting center in the city's Saint-Michel neighborhood, which is managed by the company Recova.
The 11 other boroughs recycling goes to the new $47 million facility in Lachine, operated by another company contracted by the city, Societe Via.
Both sorting centers have had trouble separating glass from other recyclables, as well as cleaning it.
But the Saint-Michel Center is the latest to have come under scrutiny for not even trying.
I love that.
I love that.
The 20,000 tons of glass Recova collects in Montreal ends up in landfills or is ground into powder and used as landfill cover as a replacement for sand.
Landfill cover is spread over garbage at the end of each day to minimize odors, flyaways, and prevent animals from getting into it.
It's basically glorified landfills, said recycling advocate Carol Maynard of using glass powder as landfill cover.
Maynard said the Quebec government has allowed the practice as a stopgap until it can implement better glass recycling measures.
The government never limited the thickness of that cover, meaning it may often be higher than needed, he explained.
So they're not recycling it.
But not because they're evil.
I mean, sure, they're scamming the city and they're scamming taxpayers and the cities in on the scam, but they're doing it because it's too expensive.
It's too hard.
It's too labor-intensive.
It's too energy-intensive.
Imagine washing your garbage.
Recycling's Fake Scam00:04:15
It makes no sense.
And by the way, glass is harmless.
It's inert.
It's just glass.
Why not grind it up and do something useful with it?
But of course, they didn't tell anybody that.
They claimed it's being recycled.
You don't think every single person in the garbage chain of operations knows the scam?
From the garbage man to the recycling experts to the people working in these million-dollar facilities to the city.
Do you think this was a secret?
Well, it's certainly not a secret now, is it?
But do you doubt that they'll keep insisting that you sort your garbage into three, four, five different bins, even though they're going to the same place?
Why?
Because it's a belief system.
It's a religious ritual.
We used to have real religious rituals, you know, but that's gone.
So the pagan superstitions of the green cult have taken up the space that our real religions used to fill in our lives.
The ceremony, the pageantry.
It's a belief system.
It's how to feel righteous and holy.
Maybe not closer to God, but closer to Greta.
We have a lot of things like this, airport security theater.
It's a belief system.
I don't think they've ever caught a terrorist in 22 years.
COVID masks.
First, they were for them, then they were against them, and now they admit that they didn't work.
But it's just for show.
It's theater.
And of course, recycling is the same way.
Even the language is that of the task, not the result.
The work is the point.
Climate action, combating climate change.
Not actually changing the climate.
You can't do that.
I don't even think the crazies on the left would say, if you pay this carbon tax, you will change the weather.
That's not the point.
The point is that you commit yourself to the cult and you do the work combating climate action.
Not that you actually achieve the result, but do the work back to Haiti, the most garbage-filled place that I have ever set foot.
Look, as we got wealthier, as we decided to value cleanliness and orderliness in life, we touched garbage less because we were wealthier.
We didn't have to live like in Port-au-Prince.
But the green cult wants us to go backwards, to live poorer, to live like we're in Haiti, to touch our garbage more, to spend time sorting and composting.
Some of them even talk about not flushing your toilet, if it's a number one.
They say that's about saving water.
And not unrelated, they want us to eat bugs.
This new cult wants us to wallow in the mire, in our garbage, to spend time with garbage instead of higher things.
The new religion seeks to replace our old religions.
But while the old religions asked you to look up at the heavens, the Sistine Chapel painted on the roof of the church, and to listen to the most beautiful music ever written, and to gaze upon the most beautiful architecture ever built and delight in the most beautiful sculptures and paintings ever made,
the new pagan religion asks you to spend an hour a day handling your garbage, not flushing your toilet, eating bugs, turning off your air conditioning in the summer, turning down your heat in the winter.
That's the new religion.
This news today in the CBC that recycling is a scam won't change any of that, will it?
In fact, I think it'll make it more meaningful to the cultists because the meaning is in the suffering and the denial.
Continuing to recycle and to punish people who don't recycle will be even more of a proof of your holiness now that we all know it's a fake scam.
Stay with us for more.
Bureaucrats and Bonuses00:11:27
I see in the news today that the Bank of Canada is considering raising interest rates again.
In fact, as I record this, they may well have done so already.
This means owning a home is even harder for young people to reach.
Well, people of any age, really.
Add to that, a million new migrants a year.
I don't know how a young person can own a home in Vancouver or Toronto or for that matter, other cities either.
It's very hard to make a go of it.
I think by some measurements, you could say Canada is in a recession.
Bringing in 3% of the country in new people every year obscures that fact.
If you increase the population by 3% and you have 2% economic growth, well, that means that on a steady-state basis, the economy is actually shrinking.
A definition of a recession, I think it is difficult out there.
And I'm worried about our near future, inflation and interest rates and housing crisis.
I don't know how it's going to end.
But that's only for people who live in the real world, people who live in the private sector who have to work for a living.
But what if you are one of the lucky few to work for the government of Canada?
Then you are in a perfect simulacrum of reality where what happens in the real world doesn't really affect you.
Sure, housing prices are a problem, but it is boom times in Trudeau's Ottawa.
I have a new press release in front of me from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation headline, turn off the hiring machine.
Trudeau adds 98,000 bureaucrats to payroll.
And joining us now, Vice Guide from the nation's capital is our friend Franco Terrazano from the Taxpayers Federation.
Franco, great to see you again.
Thanks for having me on.
You know, it's not just the 98,000 new bureaucrats.
It's the percentage of growth since Trudeau took office.
I mean, really, he came into power really in 2016.
He was elected in 2015.
And they were just over a quarter million bureaucrats then.
That's a lot.
But to go from 259,000 to 357,000 is such a staggering proportionate increase.
I think that's 40%.
What do you make of that?
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, look, was there a bureaucrat shortage in Ottawa before Trudeau came to power?
Of course not, right?
And let's just look at the last year, right?
We talk about the more than 98,000 bureaucrats added to the federal payroll since Trudeau took office.
But just look at last year.
About 21,000 bureaucrats were added last year.
Now, if you go down Main Street in any large or medium or even small town and you ask people what they need, they're going to say, well, hey, I'd like some relief so I could actually afford to gas up my truck.
You know, I'd like some relief so I could actually afford to put ground beef in my grocery cart.
You know, I'm worried about my mortgage payments.
I could definitely use some relief there.
You know what you're not going to hear from Canadians outside of Ottawa?
I really wish I had an extra 21,000 bureaucrat mouths to feed.
I don't understand what they're doing.
Help me out because we're, you know, you don't, we're not doing 40% more things in government, or maybe we are.
I don't think we're getting 40% more value.
I'm talking about since 2016.
I know the population in this country, while it's growing quickly, is not 40% larger.
I think of the ways that the government affects our lives, getting us passports on time, airports and managing those.
You know, they're not directly involved in healthcare, but they do a lot of funding.
Our military, for the first time in memory, Canada was unable to send a single soldier to NATO exercises.
The things Ottawa should be doing, it's failing at.
What are these 98,000 bureaucrats actually doing every day?
Well, we're not getting more value out of it, Ezra.
You, me, and the rest of the taxpaying public in the private sector.
That's for sure.
But the government sure is taxing more.
The government sure is regulating more.
The government sure is handing out more corporate welfare, right?
Billions and billions of dollars to multinational corporations.
So us in the private sector, yeah, we get more taxes.
Yeah, we have to deal with more red tape.
But I mean, certainly the government is increasing taxes, increasing regulations, increasing the buckets of cash that it's giving to big businesses.
Now, what's so crazy about all of this is, as you mentioned, 98,000 more bureaucrats added since the Trudeau government took power.
All these bureaucrats in Ottawa, and they still can't meet half of their own performance targets.
And then, Ezra, on top of this, right?
They've also handed out 800,000 pay raises over the last couple of years, 2020 through 2022.
And they've also added $1.5 billion in bonuses since 2015.
So get this, folks.
You're paying for hundreds of thousands of pay raises, hundreds of millions in bonuses, and for tens of thousands of extra bureaucrats, and they still can't meet half of their own performance targets.
Do we have any indication of where these bureaucrats are?
Do we know a breakdown by department or by region?
Like literally, what are they doing every day?
Well, Ezra, unfortunately, the numbers that we got from the Treasury Board, they're just the top-line figures.
I haven't seen the department by department breakdown.
So unfortunately, all that we know is the top-line figure, which is the 80 or sorry, 98,000 plus bureaucrats added since 2015 and about 21,000 extra bureaucrats added over the last year.
And folks, also the cost of the bureaucracy, right, because you're adding more bureaucrats, you're giving them bigger pay has ballooned by about 31% over two years.
You know, you could make the case, and I wouldn't agree with it, but one could make the case that the government ought to have expanded to handle COVID-19.
I don't think so.
I think COVID-19 was overblown.
I think it was a severe case of the flu, not much more.
That's my political opinion.
There was a lot of government spending to stimulate the economy and basically to pay people not to work.
I get it.
I disagree with it, but I understand that.
Okay, so that was 2021 and part of 2022.
We're in 2023 and the government has not shrunk.
So you had this huge crisis where the government deployed in a way never before seen, but that is over.
There's no more CERB payments.
There's no more special payments of any sort.
There's no more purchasing of vaccines at the height of the market.
All that's over now, Franco.
And yet, everyone hired during 2020, 2021, 2022.
And I'm just looking at the math here.
That's about 50,000 people hired in those three years.
You could possibly say that's to handle COVID.
They're all still there.
And then some, they're all still there.
And then add an extra 21,000 on top of it.
Now, Ezra, let me just poke some holes in some of the claims.
I know you're playing devil's advocate and you're trying to be as lenient as possible, but let me just poke some holes.
Okay, so first, folks, let's remember this is the federal government.
We're not talking about all these extra nurses or doctors, right?
Because that's provincial, by and large, right?
That's provincial.
So we're not talking about that.
And then, okay, let's say you add a bunch of CRA bureaucrats to get these COVID-19 subsidies out the door.
Well, they won't even fully investigate those pandemic subsidies now.
And then also, too, right?
In the real world, if you have a problem, let's say you have a legitimate problem, right?
You got to fix your leaky roof.
Then you fix the leaky roof.
You don't take a credit card out and blow a bunch of money you don't have on a couple BMWs and a flat screen TV, right?
So the problem is that this government has never prioritized.
It's just borrow more money, spend more money on everything forever.
And what happens?
Well, you rack up all this debt and you just have these bureaucrats that are hanging around, hanging around and providing no extra value really to taxpayers, at least at what I can see.
But, Ezra, let me just make one extra point.
Maybe, maybe somebody makes the case for adding more bureaucrats.
But how can you make the case that you are going to take more money from people in the private sector who may have lost their job, right?
Who may have taken pay cuts, who may have had to take out an extra line of credit just to keep their businesses' lights open or lights on, to give bureaucrats pay raises and bonuses during the pandemic.
I don't think you can make a case at all for those, that type of spending.
You know, I was just looking at your article that I mentioned, and there's one line that sticks out for me.
This really simplifies him.
The average annual compensation for a full-time federal bureaucrat is $125,300 when paid pension and other perks are accountable.
The average, you know, that's almost doctor's salary for being a bureaucrat.
I find that stunning, and I find that out of sync with the state of the economy.
Is anyone ringing the alarm about this?
How about the NDP that claims to be for the working man?
How about is are the conservatives even raising the alarm?
Who's questioning this in Ottawa other than you guys at the Taxpayers Federation?
Well, that's what's really so unique about the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, at least here in Ottawa, is that we're really the only ones who are ringing the bell about all this.
And look, the bureaucracy makes up such a huge amount of just government spending, right?
It's about half of all operating spending is going to bureaucrats.
So, how can you be a champion of fiscal responsibility and not talk about some of this egregious stuff that's going on in the bureaucracy, right?
Remember the Peace Act strike that happened not so long ago?
Now, we don't know what the full details are of the actual agreement, but we do know that those union bosses were pushing for more money to work past 4 p.m.
They wanted $17,000 and an education fund for laid-off employees, overtime, a double time, two weeks of paid time off.
Well, and they didn't want to be in the office either.
They were enjoying their staycations too much.
And Ezra, maybe I missed something, but I didn't, I don't remember hearing a peep from any of the opposition about this, right?
Maybe the conservatives have said something about it, but I don't recall hearing a peep from them when the Peace Act was striking or even now.
You know, and you make a good point.
This is just salaries.
And by the way, not salaries for nurses, doctors, or teachers, which is at the provincial level.
Franco, I'm so glad you guys at the Taxpayers Federation are fighting like heck every day on this.
Thanks, Ezra.
Hey, before we go, tell us how people can learn more about the Tax Pay Federation and maybe even get involved.
Would Ask More Questions00:03:58
What's the website?
Well, head over to taxpayer.com, check our newsroom, check out some petitions.
I'm sure you'll like some of the stuff that you see over there.
Oh, I'm sure of it too.
You are one of the only independent voices because you don't take money from the government.
And I would encourage rebel news viewers who have not yet supported the Taxpayers Federation to do so.
We need Franco and his team because they're the only guys you can trust because they're not taking dough from Ottawa.
Talk to you soon, Franco.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me on Lincoln's court case.
DeJong says, Glad to see that all is not lost.
Unfortunately, like Ezra said, thousands of dollars were likely wasted trying to politically persecute Lincoln.
It may sound boring to some, but I'd sincerely like to see the transcript of that trial.
Even better, I'd like to hear from the flies on the wall of that police station and prosecutor's office.
Even better than that would be hearing from the one in Justin Castro's office.
Well, we have requested whatever form of transcript there is.
It might actually just be an audio recording.
We have requested it.
When we get it, I promise I'll share it with you because not only was it a win in terms of getting Lincoln off the hook for that $1,500 fine, but if the judge made a statement about the importance of freedom of speech and the rebel in particular, I want to hear it.
Someone nicknamed Salty Duke said, I support Premier Smith, but so far I'm not impressed.
The way she laid down on the CBC judicial interference story without demanding a full retraction sent a message of weakness, as well as her recent language using net zero terminology, when we all know that isn't possible without completely new energy technology, which currently doesn't exist, expecting more from her.
You know, I would like her to have been tougher on the CBC as well.
She had threatened them a defamation suit.
I don't know if she actually filed it.
A defamation suit could result in a victory at the end of the day.
Sounds like they lied and made things up so Danielle Smith probably would have won.
But more important than the vindication, I think, would be seeing the internal chatter at the CBC about getting Danielle Smith.
I would bet my life that if that trial would have proceeded, the defamation trial against the CBC, you would have seen all sorts of outrageous comments and conduct by the CBC reporters who were doing that hit job.
On the Rebel News poll, LifeSearch says, I would suggest one of the reasons that the ethnic community follows Rebel News is because many have fled from oppressive countries and they can see that our governments and their paid media propaganda are beginning to behave in a similar fashion to those of which they fled.
They can see that only Rebel News provides all the news and holds governments more accountable than the mainstream media.
Hey, that is a really good point.
And I'm glad you brought that to my attention.
And I do hear that.
I also noticed when I went to protests against vaccine mandates and lockdowns that there were a lot of people who came from countries that used to be authoritarian.
For example, there were a lot of people from Eastern Europe.
And of course, remember that the Berlin Wall only fell, I guess, 34 years ago, if my math is right.
So for many people, that is very much in their minds.
And also from authoritarian regimes in Asia and Africa and other places.
So I think you're right.
I think you're right.
You know, every time you ask a question with legend, it's another thousand bucks.
So we spent $6,000 on that poll.
If I had more of a budget, I would have asked more questions.
I would have asked more comparative questions between us and the CBC, for example.
But I thought it was a very illuminating poll.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, it was my monologue the other day.
And you can see the poll in question at rebelpoll.com.