Stricter penalties, rules needed to combat copper wire theft, telecoms tell senators

[Castanet News]

Canadian telecommunications companies are calling for stiffer penalties targeting copper wire theft and new rules that would limit the vandals' ability to...

[Fase]

Great Idea....

[24689603]

Its not difficult, if you don’t have an electrical trades or plumbing ticket, then you can’t sell scrap copper, or all scrap wire has to go back to the wholesaler where the trades hold their account, cut out the shady scrap metal merchants.
This might inconvenience some home renovators but tough.

[twobits]

Too simplistic. Think building demolition. You need a pluming or electricians ticket to recycle. C'mon people......the problem is the buyers. They are the ones running the underground market and demand, Come down hard on these buyers as well as the buyers from these buyers.

[featfan]

Years ago while doing a building layout at McCurdy place near the Harley dealership some group pulled up a few hundred feet of copper wire from the new subdivision.
It hadn't been installed for long and none of the pads had transformers on them, just a piece of plywood.
Very simple to get it out and they stripped it on site.

Another site I was working on downtown had some exposed copper wire while they were digging the hole for foundation.
I asked what they were going to do with it.
The supervisor said take it if you want.
I pulled over 1500 lbs out of that site in less than a week, would of got more but the excavator operator decided it was his.
Know Mountain Metal could not believe they were just getting rid of it.
It was number 1 copper dated 1958 on a small strip of plastic that was in the core
I timed how long it took to strip off the plastic and metal wound around the three big strands of copper inside and it worked out I was making $10 per minute.
Nice free little payday.