Three days after a private company began collecting garbage between Yonge St. and the Humber River, its chief executive clashed with Mayor Rob Ford’s administration and the city’s waste chief over how long it should be forgiven for missing pickup deadlines.

It will take four to six weeks for Green for Life Environmental Corp. to start meeting the 6 p.m. daily deadline in its seven-year contract, said CEO Patrick Dovigi.

“We’ve talked about the four weeks. We’ve gotta get things done by four weeks. He’s giving himself a bit of leeway there,” Harnum said in an interview.

Dovigi was unrepentant when told of Harnum’s comments. “The city can do what they want. I don’t make decisions for the city,” he said in a text message.

The friction emerged on GFL’s third day of work west of Yonge and east of Etobicoke. GFL trucks continued to rumble down residential streets past 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In an interview earlier in the day, Dovigi said the city always knew it would take GFL as long as six weeks to get up to speed. “Of course,” he said.

“Privatization is not a new concept. The city of Hamilton, which is larger — 180,000 homes versus 165,000 we’re collecting from here — this is exactly the thing we went through there. In Hamilton we weren’t getting off the street until after 11 . . . and then it becomes really efficient. Our guys are done between 2 and 4.”

Harnum also emphasized that hiccups are normal in the early days of a major transition. But Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, the public works committee chair and Ford’s point man on the garbage file, said he did not expect delays of such length.

“We didn’t hear any of these reasons and any of the excuses — all these things that occurred this week were not presented by GFL. They didn’t tell us that these delays would be occurring,” Minnan-Wong. “So I think the public is being very generous and understanding with a company coming in with new routes, and we all want them to succeed, but the patience and goodwill of the residents in District 2 is not limitless.”

Under the $142 million contract, the city can force GFL to pay $150 per day in damages for each truck that fails to finish on time.

Harnum said the city would “reassess” the situation after two weeks and demand “serious” changes from GFL if the company was still far from meeting the deadline. Fines could begin after a month, he said, as Minnan-Wong advocated.

“What that does is gets their attention,” Harnum said. “If we let them go for six or eight or 10 weeks, of course they’re going to take advantage of that. If, after four weeks, we say, ‘You know what, you need to do this or we’re going to impose liquidated damages,’ then they’ll make sure they’ve got enough resources.”

GFL has collected household waste in Etobicoke since late last year with no significant issues. Dovigi said GFL generally improves by an hour per week in a new territory. And despite his tough talk on delays, Harnum was generally optimistic on Thursday, saying GFL’s crews had already picked up the pace noticeably.

“I think we’ve turned the ship around today. I think we’re heading in the right direction now,” he said.

The contract with GFL is expected to save the city $11 million per year, and Ford views the deal as one of his key accomplishments. GFL’s long-term performance will affect both his political fortunes and the fate of his push for more outsourcing.

Dovigi claimed to the Globe and Mail that union workers at a city dumping station had deliberately slowed down GFL crews on their first day.

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Harnum said Thursday that this was “absolutely untrue.” GFL workers, he said, had mistakenly believed they had been “hard done by” when station workers correctly allowed car-driving residents to skip a line they had been sharing with GFL trucks.

Dovigi did not sound convinced.