January 6, 2025
SHARE
CANADALAND
#1084 Waste Management: Sh*t’s Complicated
This is one shitty story. Is Canada’s sewage infrastructure ready to be flushed?
Leora Schertzer
Jesse Brown
Host & Publisher
Caleb Thompson
Audio Editor
Tristan Capacchione
Audio Editor & Technical Producer
Bruce Thorson
Senior Producer
max collins
Director of Audio

We don’t like to think about sewage. And when it’s all working fine, we don’t have to.  But if we don’t get comfortable talking about shit, we could soon be headed for serious trouble if our infrastructure collapses.  And given that recent reports say 30 percent of Canadian water and wastewater infrastructure has either reached or passed the end of its lifespan, that failure feels more like a when than an if.

Reporter Leora Schertzer digs into he problems of one small Ontario town where they’ve spent decades trying to sort their shit out.

But solving it will mean untangling a mess of political, environmental, engineering, and frankly, personal interests. Because shit is complicated.

Host: Jesse Brown

Credits: Reported by: Leora Schertzer

Tristan Capacchione (Audio Editor and Technical Producer)

Caleb Thompson (Post Production)

Bruce Thorson (Senior Producer)

max collins (Production Manager)

Jesse Brown (Editor and Publisher)

Additional music by Audio Network

Further reading:

Be part of the solution to Canada’s journalism crisis. Go to https://canadaland.com/join to become a Canadaland Supporter today.

You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music—included with Prime.

More from this series
 Dan Aykroyd blew in from Ottawa.  Andrea Martin came in from Maine and Joe Flaherty came in from Pittsburgh. Paul Schaffer came in from Thunder Bay. Marty Short and Eugene Levy and I came in from Hamilton. We congregated (in Toronto) because we had similar comic sensibilities.
May 26, 2025
“ It was hot girls having a blast. There's nothing wrong with that. I thought it was aspirational. I did not yet realize that we were in fact shooting porn and that that was actually happening in the back room of the bus that we were living on.” - Courtney Kocak, former Girls Gone Wild “Merch Girl”
May 19, 2025
“ My brother, first and foremost, was a good person. He was very bright, he was educated, and he was autistic. And I think had he not met the creeper hunter, I think he would still be alive today.” -Brother of “John Doe #1”
May 12, 2025
“We need to start dis-entangling from the United States as quickly as possible, economically, politically, socially, militarily, and culturally.” -Stephen Marche, author of The Next Civil War
May 5, 2025
Jesse Brown is an ideological slut. Well, so he says. His past votes have jumped, in no particular order, from the Conservatives to the NDP “....maybe there was a fringe party or Parti Québécois vote in there somewhere, I can’t even remember who I’ve thrown in with over the years — I have no loyalty, I’m politically promiscuous.”
April 28, 2025
“I'm just watching the great powers in between me and down there and over there and it's almost like a bad nightmare.” - Larry Audlaluk
April 21, 2025
“ Here is what I would've done if I was Mark Carney, right? Just let it be out there. If you really have nothing to hide, don't hide.” - Professor Partha Mohanram
April 14, 2025
“...the tentacles of party discipline and party control have completely grabbed a hold of everybody and they have a really hard time breaking free. We just no longer have politicians who can speak their minds, politicians who can stand up on behalf of their constituents.” -Alex Marland, author of Whipped: Party Discipline in Canada
April 7, 2025
all podcasts arrow All Podcasts
CANADALAND