Looks like those are used to dispense of snow after it is removed from surfaces. It doesn't seem to perform the removal function itself.
Snow has met its match in Trecan Combustion’s snowmelters. For more than 30 years, the Nova Scotia company has been designing and manufacturing machines that can melt up to 1,000 tonnes of snow an hour. “Most often, snow is transported by trucks to a snow dump in an outlying area. Melting snow is a much better method,” said President David Burnett. “You’re not driving it somewhere so it’s better for the environment, and you’re not contaminating the land with road salt and debris. It’s also the fastest way to get rid of a large volume of snow.”
The company’s portable snowmelters look like a mix between a garbage truck and a tractor trailer. They use combustion technology to create an internal hot water tank that melts the snow, and the resulting water is released through a pipe and flows to a nearby sewer.