Toronto’s waste chief urged patience on Tuesday as the company that took over garbage collection from city workers missed its pickup deadline.

The company, Pickering-based Green for Life (GFL) Environmental Corp., has a seven-year agreement to collect the waste of 165,000 households between Yonge St. and the Humber River. Though it is contractually obliged to collect all waste by 6 p.m., bins remained untouched on some North York streets past 7 p.m. Tuesday evening.

GFL has collected Etobicoke’s household waste since late 2011 without any significant problems. Waste services general manager Jim Harnum had warned of “growing pains” delays this week and next as the company’s workers grapple with unfamiliar streets to the east.

“It’s just new. Everything is new,” Harnum said Tuesday afternoon. “There are new operators, new trucks. We cautioned everybody that when you take on 165,000 new houses, it’s not done easily. We knew that it would be slow, and we’ll get better each day — the contractor will get better each day. But it was to be expected, and we didn’t want anyone to have any false hopes that Day 1 would be exactly the same as the last day of in-house operation.”

The city’s experience with GFL will provide ammunition for either proponents or opponents of further outsourcing. Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, chair of the public works committee, said Mayor Rob Ford’s administration will not push to expand privatized waste collection until GFL has demonstrated that service is the same or better when provided by a contractor.

“We’ve made the financial case. And now we have to prove to the residents of the city of Toronto that we can make this happen,” Minnan-Wong said at a morning news conference.

The city expects to save about $11 million per year through its agreement with GFL, which beat its nearest competitor by $2.5 million per year. Council’s 32-13 vote to approve the outsourcing was one of Ford’s most significant victories in his ongoing drive to cut costs.

Ford campaigned on a pledge to privatize waste collection throughout the city. But he said in May that he will seek outsourcing east of Yonge only “when” he is re-elected, positioning himself to again use garbage as a campaign wedge issue.

Harnum said there was a “little bit of a learning curve” for GFL workers on Tuesday with mechanical pickup in the suburbs. Minnan-Wong said the workers had started their days about an hour later than they normally will, partly on account of a first-day “pep talk,” and that they had been taking pains to delicately return bins to the curb.

“GFL is focusing on customer service excellence. They could be a little too excellent today,” he said.

“The world will not end after the first day of the contract. There will be a second day. Now, if this becomes more of an issue, a trend, then we have to figure out what to do about that, and certainly there are financial penalties — provisions of the contract that address it.”

Even opponents of privatization were forgiving. “It’s the first day,” said Councillor Mike Layton, whose Trinity-Spadina ward is in GFL’s new district. “They came in with such a low bid that this is what we would expect. However, it’s the first day.”

Harnum said GFL brought in extra trucks in the afternoon. It collected from about 40,000 households, both downtown and in North York, under the city’s multi-day pickup plan.

Residents can still call 311 with any complaints. Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 416, which represents city waste collectors and opposes the outsourcing, has also set up a complaints hotline. Local 416 president Mark Ferguson called Tuesday “a bad day for all residents of Toronto and a sad day for working people across this city.”

“For quality, value and effective control, the best way to deal with Toronto’s waste is in-house. That’s not an opinion. That’s fact. And we’re confident that it will be demonstrated time and time again in the weeks and months and years to come,” Ferguson said at his own news conference.

Ford was absent from the morning news conference. His spokesperson said he had a stomach ailment.

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GFL also handles waste collection in Hamilton. At the news conference, chief executive Patrick Dovigi dismissed the concerns of left-leaning councillors, like Layton, who believe the company cannot deliver at the price it is charging. “We know what our costs are,” he said.

With files from Paul Moloney

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