HALDIMAND—It’s been just under a month since Haldimand County announced a temporary pause in the acceptance of used tires at the Canborough Waste Management Facility.
The current restriction applies to all types of tires.
“Under Ontario’s Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) framework, Haldimand County participates in the provincial tire recycling system through a Producer Responsibility Organization that coordinates the collection, transportation, and processing of end-of-life tires. In recent months, municipalities across Ontario have experienced delays in tire collection, creating a growing backlog within the provincial system,” read Haldimand County’s press release on the pause, issued July 30, 2026.
—Haldimand Press archive photo by Mike Renzella.
The release said that due to the delays, tire inventories in Canborough have grown to the point they are limiting available storage capacity at the site.
The pause was issued to “protect public safety, maintain regulatory compliance, and support continued operations at the facility.”
A month later, the pause remains in effect.
County spokesperson Kyra Hayes said the County first began experiencing collection delays in May, noting at that time “the Province lowered tire recovery targets from 85% to 65%.”
Hayes said Haldimand has received no further update in the time since on when collection might resume and that Haldimand has attempted to raise the issue with provincial regulators “several times with no success.”
“In April, the Ontario Government proposed amendments to the current tire regulation. The amendments are to ensure tires are collected and processed in a more timely manner,” Hayes continued. “Until this comes into effect, and the current backlog of tires at the Canborough site are removed, there will be no change to the current restrictions. It is hoped these amendments to the regulation will come into effect sometime in the fall, but there is no guarantee at this point.”
“Once all the tires have been collected and the County is being assured that there will be no further delays in collection, the County will re-evaluate if we will participate in this program,” she added.
The Press spoke with Hagersville-based Tim’s Tirecraft owner Tim Otterman and Dunnville-based Lloyd’s Value Tire owner Lloyd Thomas about the issue.
Otterman is most frustrated about the government continuing to collect a scrap tire disposal fee of $6 per tire despite the pause.
“The customer has to pay us for it. We are billed for that fee when we get a tire in the door. And the customer’s good about it, and we take the money from the customer, but when we need to get rid of the scrap in the last six months, which is submitted to the government, then the government has cut all these scrap tire recycling people back,” said Otterman.
Thomas is also confused about the continued government collection fee.
“What’s being done with that? We don’t know. That’s not fair,” he said. “Every time we buy tires from our suppliers, we have to pay the $6 a tire, and then we have to collect it back off the customer.”
Prior to this pause, Otterman said his business had no previous issues with collection of used tires as far back as 2011.
“Now a lot of the suppliers, or a lot of the recycling people that we have had, are not even any longer in business,” he said. “So that puts the stress on more of the bigger guys that are in business, and they can’t keep up.”
Thomas said prior to the collection pause, used tires were picked up from the shop around once a month on average, but noted his usual pickup contact is currently out of work due to the pause.
“We’re overrun with tires,” said Thomas. “Nobody seems to know what the timeline is or when they’re going to start picking them up or nothing…. You know as much about it or more as I do.”
With ample storage space onsite, Lloyd’s is weathering the moment for now.
“We’re still okay now, but this is intensifying, and we’re going to get in trouble if something isn’t done because eventually we’re going to run out of room,” he said. “But for now we’re all right. We can still carry on as normal.”
Otterman has taken to storing tires inside fleet vehicles on his lot to help clear up space.
“It’s clogging up our property, and so on and so forth. It looks terrible,” he said. “I try to keep our place neat and tidy, and to stack them up, and it’s a fire hazard. We all know the hazards of tire fire, right?”
The Hagersville Tire Fire notoriously burned from February 12 to March 1, 1990, with 14 million scrap rubber tires releasing pollutants into the air, soil, and water. Hundreds of people had to be evacuated during containment efforts.
Neither Otterman nor Thomas have been given new directions or a sense of when disposal service might return.
“I have no clue…. There are no explanations handed out to anybody – nothing,” said Otterman.
Thomas added, “Nobody seems to know. I’ve asked everybody I know, and I’ve talked to a lot of different tire guys, and nobody seems to know. There’s no timeline given or nothing.”
Otterman said his business has contacted the office of MPP Bobbi Ann Brady “probably once a week” since the pause took effect, but they “never really get anything, nothing back.”
Thomas concurred his own attempts to contact the local government have yielded no tangible results or information.
Otterman shared his concern should the situation continue into the foreseeable future.
“The problem is … somebody’s going to load up all these tires and dump them somewhere else. The fees are only going to increase too. If they take them to one of our back mud roads or whatever, and they dump them all off, then you got to pay the County guys to go clean them up. So that just increases the government cost again,” he said. “It’s only going to get worse, and then they’re never going to catch up. That’s going to be the problem. They won’t catch up.”
Thomas added, “They’ve had, what, three or four months or whatever, or longer, to get it cleared up. They should be started by now.”
The Haldimand Press reached out to the Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks for comment, but did not receive a response prior to press deadline. The Press will provide an update on this story in a future edition.
