Evidence of meeting #27 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was materials.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
Thank you.
We'll move now to Ms. Leslie for seven minutes, please.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Megan Leslie NDP Halifax, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for your testimony.
I have a few questions.
I would like to start with Mr. Hargreave regarding the Ontario Waste Management Association. My questions aren't really of a federal nature. I'm just curious, because you're an association, and I admire the policy advice and the advocacy that you do around waste management. I appreciate that your association is there to push back a little bit on those who oppose more environmental plans for waste management. I think that's great work. I'm just curious about how your association functions. You have a whole bunch of members, so how can you take a unilateral action as part of the association? Do you need each one of your members to buy in? Are there any problems with different companies saying, yes, they support this or that? I know it's not a federal question, but I'm just curious about how your association actually works with all these member organizations.
4:05 p.m.
Director, Policy, Ontario Waste Management Association
Certainly, as I said at the beginning, we have organizations that are from the private sector, and we represent roughly 70 municipalities as well. So there are certainly differences in perspectives depending on where those members are coming from. We have folks on our board who own landfills and folks who are primarily in the recycling business.
Generally everything goes to the board. There's very rarely, I would say, dissent in the board. The board has the ability to make the final decision. We have committees that are set up and that bring advice to that board. I would say, too, there's been a large amount of agreement. All of the decisions we've brought forward about supporting different types of policy tools—like disposal bans, disposal levies, extended producer responsibility—have all moved forward with unanimous consent.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
4:05 p.m.
Director, Policy, Ontario Waste Management Association
I think the industry as a whole understands that it needs to change, and it wants to change, and it's about getting those right conditions in place to make sure things can move forward in a sustainable manner.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Megan Leslie NDP Halifax, NS
Thanks for that.
My next question is for everyone. It's a broader policy question for us here at the federal level.
Maybe, Mr. Hargreave, you could start. What are some of the risks we need to know about when it comes to the management of waste with regard to, for example, combustion or gasification or dangerous material? What are some of the risks that we, as federal policy-makers, need to know about? Where is the opportunity there for us? Is it in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and the regulation of toxins? How can we be helpful there?
4:10 p.m.
Director, Policy, Ontario Waste Management Association
When you're managing any type of waste, whether it's dealing with recyclable materials or disposing of hazardous materials, there's obviously risk associated with it. There are always risks involved with that waste. That's why we always talk about the need for rigorous environmental standards. Usually those standards are provincial in nature. They have the jurisdiction to put those standards in place, but certainly there is a role for the federal government. We are looking at potentially the federal EPA or other types of areas like that. I know that Environment Canada has certainly been looking at extended producer-responsibility types of models from a federal perspective, but there are certainly ways for the federal government to deal with it that way. Obviously, you have a large role when it comes to import-export rules and management of hazardous materials and the flow of those materials.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Megan Leslie NDP Halifax, NS
That's great.
Would any of the other witnesses like to contribute to that?
4:10 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Emterra Group
I'd like to.
In terms of ways, I believe you have a whole host of regulations to deal with what you call toxic hazardous materials already. What I feel you do not have much of is regulations for general waste, our “benign waste” that needs to be disposed of. We feel that if all of this general waste is put into the landfills or it is burned though incineration, then we are burning our resources. We need to change our mindset to look at waste not as waste but as a resource. I believe that there is not much waste.
4:10 p.m.
President, Renewable Energy Management
My comment on that is that in the facility we're proposing at this time we are accepting non-hazardous waste, so our waste stream into our facility would be municipal solid waste and IC&I. Our process very much adheres to the strict Ontario Ministry of Environment regulations. I see the government's role, both federally and provincially, as providing those regulations for the general public.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Megan Leslie NDP Halifax, NS
I'll stick with Mr. Starr and Mr. Staats.
I have a technical question about your business.
I'm from Nova Scotia. The majority of our electricity is produced by coal-fired power plants, and we are almost at a maximum in terms of bringing traditional renewables like wind or solar online, because we don't have a good load-follower. When the wind has collapsed, you can't just flick on the power in a coal plant. You can open up a dam, so hydro is a natural load-follower to something intermittent like wind.
Is this use of biomass a suitable companion for wind and solar the way I'm describing it? I don't understand your technology well enough to know.
4:10 p.m.
Executive Vice-President, Renewable Energy Management
I'll take a minute to answer that.
Our system, our process, is based on where you designate it as baseload, so we are going to be providing 24-hour power, 24/7. The waste comes in, and obviously during business hours we'll have...[Inaudible--Editor]...waste, but we are going to continue to produce power 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
It's just one little sort of tweak to set.... It's not specific for biomass. It would be specific to municipal solid waste or household waste. It's probably easier to call it household waste and, as Lewis mentioned a minute ago, IC&I waste, which is basically the waste we generate at our business. So with the non-hazardous...[Inaudible--Editor]...we'll be processing that waste and providing power 24/7.
4:15 p.m.
NDP
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
Thank you.
We'll move to Mr. Sopuck, please, for seven minutes.
June 5th, 2014 / 4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
Ms. Leung, I was very interested in your Manitoba roots in particular, and the fact that you started by recycling old newspapers, cardboard, and so on. You're probably familiar with the Pine Falls Paper Mill just outside of Winnipeg. I used to work there and was part of operating the de-inking plant there.
Just to follow up on the issue of old newsprint, old magazines, cardboard, and so on, given that paper use in our society has gone down significantly, what do you see as the future for a market for old newsprint, old magazines, and so on? Where do you market this material?
4:15 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Emterra Group
You really hit it home. As a matter of fact, we shipped to Pine Falls in the old days, until they closed their doors. As you mentioned, the readership or the use of a newspaper continues to go down thanks to the computer and all these emails. The important thing is that this trend continues to go up, in the sense that the consumption of newspapers will go down. That is why there has been a tremendous consolidation in the last 10 years to now. Most of the paper mills are closed. Only the efficient paper mills have stayed.
One good thing is that in the undeveloped world, they still do not have what you call the Internet and whatnot. They still read some papers. At the same time, the packaging and the exports have continued to go.... So the newsprint market, as a general statement, is going downhill because of the consumption, but they are in the third world countries, and a lot of paper mills also have converted the newsprint mills into boxboard mills. They are making paperboard for packaging material.
What you say is correct.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
That's helpful.
Mr. Hargreave, you made the point there's a wide differential between the cost of disposal versus the cost of diversion, and I think that tells me that there's still a cost advantage to landfilling. It may be artificial, but there is a reason that materials go into landfills. What incentives or policies does government need to put into place to deal with this cost differential?
4:15 p.m.
Director, Policy, Ontario Waste Management Association
There are lots of different types of approaches to dealing with the issue of that price differential. It may very well depend on the type of material you're talking about.
Let me give you an example: 99% of the vehicles in Ontario are recycled. The problem with vehicles is there's no environmental standard around how they're recycled, so often scrapyards will crush cars without draining the hazardous liquids in those vehicles. You need an environmental standard to deal with that issue. For other materials there's a price issue, and with certain materials there's a larger price differential than with other materials.
You need to look at things, and that's why we've certainly been expanding our policy papers to deal with things: how would you put in place a disposal ban, disposal levies, or extended producer responsibility programs? Again, for every material the tool might be somewhat different. Again, we need to understand. That's why data is so important to understand before you jump in with a tool.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
Mr. Hargreave, some materials are extremely difficult to recycle and are of extremely low value. How do you deal with them? Do we recycle at any cost?
4:15 p.m.
Director, Policy, Ontario Waste Management Association
That's a government decision. We've certainly been trying to put forward research to look at the economic opportunity with recycling those materials. Again, I think as you look at each material, and how far you want to recycle it, the government needs to weigh that, based on that economic case, to ask at what point does it not make sense to recycle this material? How far do we want to go into the system?
If you look at the Conference Board report, if you look at reports that have been done throughout the U.S. and in Ontario and across the country, I think all of those reports tell you that we're clearly not recycling and diverting materials that we should be diverting, and that would be good for the overall economy. That's from a position of net employment opportunity and net GDP impact.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
Mr. Starr, I think you said your community operates an energy plant. Have you thought of using wood as a fuel source? Going back to my question to Ms. Leung regarding the decline in the production of newsprint because people aren't reading newspapers, they're on the Internet, there's a lot of surplus wood out there that's not being harvested anymore. Is there a potential for the use of wood for energy production in your facility and others?