Thank you for being here, and thank you for the work you're doing on this very important topic.
Over the last five months, two of my colleagues in the NDP have introduced a motion and a bill. I won't go through them all, but on December 5, the House of Commons unanimously agreed to a motion by Mr. Gord Johns that “the government should work with the provinces, municipalities, and indigenous communities to develop a national strategy to combat plastic pollution”. It looked at two parts: regulations and “permanent, dedicated, and annual funding”. There was more breakdown below that.
Then, on February 20, 2019, MP Nathan Cullen introduced Bill C-429, an act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which was a private member's bill looking to reduce plastic waste entering the environment by requiring all packaging sold in Canada to be recyclable or compostable.
I was regional manager with the Ministry of Environment back in my home riding of Kootenay—Columbia, and one of the things we always wrestled with was the appropriate balance between regulations and voluntary best management practices by industries and companies. I see that the ocean plastics charter talks about recycling, reusing and recovering plastics. I'm wondering where you think regulation is most appropriate in any of those three elements, or just in general related to plastics, versus requiring or asking industry to follow some best management practices.
