Former business associate of Kiss’s Gene Simmons is now collecting Toronto’s garbage

Kiss bass player Gene Simmons has made it into the coverage of Rob Ford’s push for garbage privatization (it’s about time, right?). Allow us to explain: the Globe and Mail has a story on the background of Green For Life Environmental, the firm that will now be hauling Toronto’s trash between Yonge Street and the Humber River. Apparently, company president Patrick Dovigi once sat on the board of “a YouTube music and celebrity channel fronted by Mr. Simmons” (it eventually company went bankrupt). The Globe also reports that Dovigi served as the president of Waste Excellence, a company embroiled in a dispute with the City of Vaughan over, among other things, bounced checks. (For his part, Dovigi says he left the company before the dispute.) And there’s more! GFL’s managing partner started his own trash collection company, landed a contract in New York, then threatened to stop serving unprofitable routes. Now, the Globe hasn’t unearthed a massive scandal—but there does appear to be reason for pause here. After all, Rob Ford has professed a rabid devotion to customer service. It seems that vetting GFL a little more closely might have been a good place to start. Read the entire story [Globe and Mail] »