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Environmental madness continues to sweep across the province of Quebec. A completely senseless measure is now being used to force you to reduce your consumption — by tracking your garbage.

For the past few years, some municipalities have quietly adopted a system that has largely gone unnoticed: garbage collection monitored through RFID chips or barcodes attached to your bins.

The result? The city tracks every time you put your bin out — and charges you extra if you do it too often.

Let’s take a concrete example: The Town of Lorraine in the Lower Laurentians, not far from Montreal. There, the garbage pickup included in your municipal taxes? Just 12 collections per year — roughly once a month.

Yet municipal taxes haven’t gone down to reflect this reduced service. Quite the opposite. If you need more frequent pickups — which is normal for families with children, regular grocery shopping, and everyday life — you can have them… but you’ll pay extra.

Pricing is progressive and punitive. The 13th to 17th pickup is about $7.50 each. Then it jumps to $15 — and eventually $30 by the 28th additional pickup. If your household puts the bin out weekly, that can easily add $460 per year — on top of your taxes.

You might ask: Why charge more if the trucks are already driving the route anyway? Workers are already paid; the roads are already there.

The answer? They call it “incentive-based pricing” — a way to force you to reduce food waste and consumption.

In reality, it’s anti-family. It penalizes larger households, families with teenagers, or roommates sharing expenses to survive rising living costs. Vulnerable people living together to make ends meet are the ones hit hardest.

And in the summer? A once-a-month pickup in the heat means odors, flies, rats, and vermin. We’ll likely see an increase in illegal dumping — bags left behind grocery stores or near apartment buildings. We’re already seeing this in parts of Montreal where garbage collection has been reduced.

With these barcodes, municipalities can track how much waste your household produces and how often. It’s control — plain and simple — dressed up as environmental virtue. They want to bend you to their green ideology, and it’s taxpayers, families, and the most vulnerable who end up footing the bill.

This isn’t isolated to Lorraine. Other cities are testing or closely studying this model. It could be coming to a neighborhood near you.