Environment Committee on May 6th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Good afternoon, everyone. We're on to our fifth hearing on plastics pollution.

Thank you to our guests with us today.

We have four different groups represented, including the PAC Packaging Consortium with James Downham and Dan Lantz; Éco Entreprises Québec with Geneviève Dionne; Environmental Defence Canada with Keith Brooks and Vito Buonsante; and the Retail Council of Canada with Philippe Cantin and Andrew Telfer.

Welcome to each of the guests.

Before we get to the opening statements, I want to welcome Mr. Clarke to our group today.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

It's an honour to be here.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

I think he's our only guest today.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Lobb is coming.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Okay.

For any of our panellists who haven't been before committee before, we follow a somewhat tight time frame to keep the discussion moving. I have a handy card system. When you have one minute left in your opening statements or in the rounds of questions, which are six minutes, I give the yellow card, and when you run out of time, I'll give you the red card. I don't expect you to stop mid-sentence, but just to wind up the thought you're on so we can move to the next person. That keeps the discussion flowing.

With that, we have a PowerPoint presentation from the Packaging Consortium all teed up, so we'll start with them. Mr. Downham or Mr. Lantz, whoever wants to start, I'll give you 10 minutes.

[James D. Downham, President and Chief Executive Officer, PAC Packaging Consortium]

John, thanks very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, we appreciate being here today to talk about a subject that I assure you is very near and dear to PAC Packaging Consortium's heart.

Let me give you a little snapshot of who we are. We were founded in 1950 as the Packaging Association of Canada. We're a small not-for-profit corporation. Our member base and our corporate members include companies, government, academic institutions and individuals. We have 325 corporate members across the country. We go into the U.S. for membership as well. We have over 2,000 associates.

Or core mandate is to educate, advocate, collaborate and celebrate all safe and sustainable packaging materials and the associated systems. The key word there is “all” packaging. We're not here representing glass or plastic or fibre. We're here to speak on behalf of all packaging today.

We have a very small management team of less than 10 people, full time and part time.

I'm going to flash through our 10 minutes really quickly.

We don't like to think just about plastics and the plastics issue. We're really focused on all things to do with waste. What we mean by that, really, is that there are many non-plastic packaging materials that exist today and are recyclable and/or contain recycled content, but the recovery rates are low.

The single message I want to give you is that things that are already made of 100% recycled material and are collected at curbside are still not being recovered. As an example, folding cartons—cereal boxes—have very low rates in that regard. In fact, they're quite low compared to PET plastic and HDPE plastic. That's what our chart on this slide will quickly show you.

The problem of increasing recycling rates is systematic, including the package design, the consumer behaviour—all of us are consumers, and I call consumers the forgotten stakeholders—recovery and the recycling processes themselves.

The next slide is about plastics and how important they are in terms of the value chain. I'm not going to talk about the economic value of plastics because that has probably been addressed already, but in terms of packaging when it comes to food, what that symbolically tells you is that packaging zucchini takes you from one day on the shelf to five. Packaging of mangoes takes you from 20 days to 40. Fresh swordfish takes you from seven days to 12.

When you think about this in the environmental footprint context and holistically, and you associate everything else with that, packaging has a tremendous role, especially plastics packaging, in terms of the protection of food, and of course there is a great protection of all other products associated with that as well. Without packaging, quite simply, waste and the associated costs would skyrocket. Of course, education is vital to everybody, especially the influencers.

The next slide shows the core issues on our mind with regard to increased recovery of all packaging and plastics. There is a huge cost disparity between going into landfill and recycling. Recycling is a very expensive proposition, and it's a big issue. Package design and innovation are of course critical, because we have to be thinking about that at the front end of the process. We need to be thinking about that, and in our world we call that the “SEEscape design process”, where we think about it as circular. When we sit down and design something, we want to think about what's going to happen to it when it goes off into its next life as well.

A really critical issue is that of confused and disengaged consumers. That's a big one. Again, it's the forgotten stakeholder. Even packaging experts are very challenged when we get into this discussion.

As for what I want to say here about upgrading recovery facilities and reprocessing challenges, think about this: digital technology is incompatible with analog technology. In the world we live in, where we're seeing packaging design going on and we think it's cutting edge, we don't see the same kind of investment in the back end and the recovery end. That has to be in harmony. Otherwise.... This is a system. It's not just “design it right and the problem will go away”. That's not going to happen. Costs will come down when volume levels increase, so it's a question of scale as well.

What are we doing about it as an industry? The current slide shows you that the significant organizations in the world today that are in consumer packaged goods are really paying attention to this. They all have 2025 commitments with recovery, recycling, reusability.

I was in Walmart in Bentonville about three weeks ago. It was celebrating with a thousand people in the room. It called its initiative “Project Gigaton”. Project Gigaton talks about all things to do with the environment, but a key component is packaging. All of those other companies that you see there on that slide are suppliers to Walmart. What retailers do is that they help to drive the value chain and bring their supply chain along with it, so all of the major actors are involved.

The thing that's important about this, and I want you to understand this, is that global actors are designing for global markets, not just Canada. We shouldn't just be looking for a made in Canada solution. That's an important one. There is a very small market for these global companies, and we're part of it.

There's a huge knowledge, communication and motivation gap between the large organizations that I believe are doing it right, and the small, medium and offshore organizations that walk in your front door with the next greenest package in the world and who, if they haven't done their research, they don't have that capability. They don't have the skills set to talk that way. There's a big gap between what these big powerful organizations are doing and the smaller organizations.

What's PAC doing about it? We're publishing white papers on ocean plastics. The Ocean Wise folks have been in and we collaborated with them on this. We have packaging sustainability checklists that are design guides for people designing packaging. We've got our packaging innovation gateway. We're going to talk a little bit more about that in a couple of minutes. We have educational courses on package circularity.

We partner with CCME and we consult. I'm actually the vice-chair of the National Zero Waste Council from British Columbia, which has been before you. We're working with the City of Toronto on a pretty cool project. We're also heavily engaged with the Conference on Canadian Stewardship.

This is a typical event. By the way, I've given a lot of brochures and information about us to the clerk. There is one for May 30. It's an example of people we're bringing in to talk about disruptive innovation in plastics and packaging. All of our speakers are coming in from the U.S., such as Tom Szaky. If you haven't heard of Tom Szaky, he wasn't actually born in Canada but raised in Canada and now lives in the U.S. But look up Google Loop. It's an amazing initiative.

We've got people who are coming in who are piloting the separation of post-consumer polypropene and they're taking that back. They're turning it back into pure flakes, so it can be used in packing again.

We've got WestRock coming in, one of the largest fibre companies in the world that is now taking in coffee cups, which have been the evil packages of all time to recover and recycle. It's now taking them to eight mills. It's collecting them in eight cities in the U.S. at curbside, and it is taking them back and turning them into good products. The coffee cup solution is there, and we're going to be talking about that in Toronto on May 30.

We're looking at how government can help us. Stronger governance. We want to be part of the solution. We don't want just to be perceived as part of the problem.

When you form committees, don't just call us in like this. Have us sitting on that side of the table with you, so that we can help to collaborate and facilitate solutions. Harmonized policies are absolutely vital to success. Without harmonization across the country, we're not going to get to zero waste, so that we can communicate from province to province, municipality to municipality, and a consistent message to consumers.

Endorse a process that we're going to be starting very soon with the City of Toronto where we want to be a gatekeeper to help screen packages coming into the system. Drive investment. Help us with investments in recycling, in the back end, because that's a big area and big issue. Landfill bans are a big problem.

I have one more thing.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Sure.

[James D. Downham]

Right now we're shipping waste from Ontario into Michigan. Close the border. The government can do that. You can ban what's going into landfill.

So there are significant things that government can do to help us. Our consumer package goods community can design all we want and we can make great things, but if we can't get it through the system and keep it circular, it's very problematic.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Perfect. Thank you for those opening comments.

We'll move next to our guest from Éco Entreprises Québec.

Madame, you have 10 minutes.

[Geneviève Dionne, Director, Eco-conception, Circular Economy, Éco Entreprises Québec]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Éco Entreprises Québec is a private non-profit organization that represents companies in their responsibility to fund the net cost of municipal curbside recycling services. There are organizations like ours in other provinces aside from Quebec.

The mandate of Éco Entreprises Québec falls under the principle of extended producer responsibility and, for 13 years, our organization has been redoubling its efforts to push the limits of circularity in the recycling system.

We have submitted a brief for today's meeting, in which we address certain concerns and make recommendations on the four points of discussion. I will try to summarize them.

The first point raised is that of restrictions targeting certain single-use non-recyclable plastics and the industry's use of additives in the masterbatch. The use of additives, ink, mineral fillers and other products in plastic packaging is clearly problematic for their recyclability because there is a lack of transparency on that packaging's composition. The masterbatch is at the core of protection of packaged products, so the industry's use of additives in the manufacturing of packaging is not innocuous. There is also the whole issue of colour, as any pigmented plastic resin will be difficult to recycle or its mechanical recyclability will be limited.

We mustn't also forget the difficulties related to production costs and to the properties of plastic, which is a multi-use material. However, every polymer recycling cycle comes with a drop in quality of the resin in terms of its technical and aesthetic properties.

That is one of the reasons why Éco Entreprises Québec organized in early February, in Paris, a forum on plastic solutions with Citeo, our counterpart organization in France. That forum brought together more than 400 participants, including industry leaders, packaging manufacturers, businesses that market packaged products, recyclers, sorting centres and processors. To use the words of Mr. Downham, the objective was to bring all the system stakeholders to the same table to find solutions for plastics recycling, starting with the packaging design stage.

Encouraging businesses to use recycled content in plastic packaging would help stimulate local economies by creating local opportunities for plastic resins, while reducing the exporting of those materials. The use of recycled content presupposes access to quality materials that are recycled at a good price and whose supply is stable. As long as virgin material remains less expensive than recycled material, businesses will use virgin material, especially since recycled material has not yet become popular in people's minds.

I want to point out that, in 2009, Éco Entreprises Québec was the first environmental organization in the world to implement a credit for the recycled content of certain types of printed materials and certain types of plastic packaging, including PET and HDPE.

The issue we are discussing today is plastic, but I want to tell you that our organization is also interested in other materials. As Mr. Downham pointed out, fibre or glass packaging also presents challenges, and so the system should be addressed as a whole, with all its complexity.

Éco Entreprises Québec is very involved in innovation. About 40 individuals are supporting packaging ecodesign businesses, and we are providing training and personalized support. We are helping municipalities achieve a good PE—performance, effectiveness—factor for their activities of collection, sorting, and recycling of recyclable materials. We are also investing in sorting centres to improve their technology, in addition to supporting the creation of local opportunities.

In order to reduce the presence of ink and additives in packaging, a better job must be done of targeting businesses that design them. We have to start by reviewing the protection provided by that packaging, while avoiding its weakening by eliminating certain important additives, which could lead to more food waste or product breakage.

When it comes to the last point, innovation, it is important to encourage knowledge transfer and to build bridges between provinces and various administrations. I know that the federal government already has experience with providing training.

Let's take the example of plastic microbeads. We are supporting many businesses in that process. Similar programs should be developed. It is not enough to focus on single-use plastic packaging. The problem related to plastics is much more complex. The circularity of plastics must be understood. Plastic used for the first time in packaging can have a second life as a textile or a sustainable product, such as street furniture.

We should consider the system with open loops and determine whether recycled resin can supply other activity sectors, especially in packaging. It should be understood that some health and safety issues are involved. Polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, is the only resin that is currently subject to a no-objection letter regarding its use in the manufacturing of packaging in contact with food. So it is impossible to integrate recycled content into food packaging composed of other types of plastic resins.

We recommend that this innovation be financially supported. Mr. Downham provided some examples earlier. In the area of molecular recycling, businesses are starting up. There are some great ones in Canada that are performing very well on the global stage, and it is important to support them. After all, molecular and chemical recycling has been a promising option that has complemented the mechanical recycling of plastics for a number of years.

I agree with Mr. Downham that things must be considered in a global context, at least for the North American market, as material movement goes beyond Canadian borders.

Those are the various points I wanted to present to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Thank you.

We'll move to our guests from Environmental Defence Canada.

Mr. Brooks and Mr. Buonsante, you have 10 minutes for your opening statements.

[Keith Brooks, Programs Director, Environmental Defence Canada]

Thank you.

I'm just reading it from the computer, which is why I have it open in front of me.

Thank you, members of the committee, for the opportunity to present here. I'm Keith Brooks, and I'll be presenting for Environmental Defence. Vito, my colleague, is here to help answer questions.

We are a national charity based in Toronto, and we have an office here in Ottawa. We work on climate change, fresh water, toxics, plastics and advocating to protect Ontario's greenbelt.

We began our stand-alone plastics program in 2018, in response to the immense public outcry that something needed to be done about plastics. We note that this government has been talking about doing something about plastics for awhile, which is encouraging. We are happy to be here in front of this committee.

We acknowledge that plastics are a contributor to increasing standards of living, and have many extremely innovative and important uses in modern society. There is, however, a downside to the proliferation of plastic, especially of single-use plastics. We're going to focus our remarks today on single-use plastics, which are products and packaging used only once or for a very short period of time.

Some of the most durable material in the world is manufactured to be used once and then thrown away. There's an issue here. At this time, we think efforts to curb the negative impact of plastics should be focused on single-use plastics, and in particular, plastic packaging. This is not to say that other plastics are free from being problematic. The plastics industry uses hundreds of toxic additives to modify the properties of plastic materials. The European Chemicals Agency recently identified over 400 chemicals of concern that are used as plastic additives, such as flame retardants, plasticizers and UV filters.

We have been advocating for changes to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, or CEPA, to ensure that it would better address and protect Canadians from these and other toxic chemicals, but that's a discussion for another day.

Shoreline cleanups, litter audits and pretty much all of the research done on this tell us that much of the most visible plastic pollution threatening wildlife is related to these single-use plastics and plastic packaging. Although Canada has been a front-runner in tackling plastic pollution by declaring microbeads toxic and banning them from most consumer products, not enough has been done to deal with other problematic sources of plastic pollution.

In fact, Canada continues to subsidize the production of plastics, in many cases. For example, a very recent gift of $49 million to the Canada Kuwait Petrochemical Corporation was announced. By mid-2030, this facility is going to be processing 23,000 barrels of propane each day and turning it into polypropylene to make products, some of which will be single-use plastics, such as plastic packaging. We're actually subsidizing the production of more single-use plastic packaging.

These subsidies, and the production of virgin plastics, has to stop. The subsidies are, in particular, working at cross purposes with the objective we have of moving toward a circular economy, where we're using old plastics in the manufacture of new plastics, and moving away from using virgin fossil fuels to produce single-use plastics that then get thrown out.

We think the federal government should be supporting a move to a circular economy, in part by fixing Canada's broken recycling industry, to ensure that Canadians' efforts to recycle are not in vain. A report recently done by Deloitte on behalf of Environment and Climate Change Canada, as I'm sure everyone here knows, reported that Canadians recycle only 9% of the plastics we use in this country.

That same report argues that only 1% of that plastic is leaking into the environment, but in this case, that's 29,000 tonnes of plastic leaking into the environment every year. We are contributors to this global plastics pollution problem in its worst manifestation, which is leakage into the environment. We think that 29,000 tonnes number is probably an underestimate. Regardless, it's not acceptable. We can and must do better.

In addition to avoiding the loss of billions of dollars of valuable plastic to the environment or landfills, recycling plastics is more climate friendly. A study published in January of this year shows that recycled plastic reduces energy consumption by 79% for PET, 88% for HDPE and 88% for polypropylene. According to this study, recycled resin can cut emissions over virgin materials between 67% and 71% for a variety of plastics. It has a significant impact on climate change as well.

Polls indicate that Canadians support take-back schemes and bans on single-use plastics, to ensure that plastics stay out of the environment, and to increase our recycling rates. It's our view that if this government doesn't include bans of some plastics in its strategy for dealing with plastics, Canadians will reject the strategy as inadequate. Environmental groups certainly will. This is not to say we're calling for a ban on all plastics, but bans certainly have a part in the strategy this government and the nation needs to come up with.

All levels of government, of course, have a role to play in solving this problem, and many provincial governments will be moving in the near future towards extended producer responsibility schemes. We'll do what we can to support that, and to support it in Ontario in particular, where most of our efforts our concentrated, but it's very important that the federal government ensures there is a level playing field among the provinces.

In May 2018, Environmental Defence brought together 15 major environmental and civil society groups from across Canada to draft a joint declaration on plastics. That declaration now has over 40 signatories. It's been submitted to the federal government for consideration. Based on that declaration, we would recommend the following.

The Canadian government should set binding collection targets for categories of plastic packaging items. Producers should be responsible for reaching these collection targets.

Ban plastic products that have a negative impact on the environment. The EU single-use plastic list of bans could be a good place for Canada to start.

Require progressively increasing recycled content in plastic products and packaging. This is to ensure there is a demand for recycled content and that we're creating a circular economy and using old plastics to create new plastics instead of virgin fossil fuels to create single-use plastics that then get thrown out.

We need to ban problematic polymers such as polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene, and additives such as phthalates that put human health and the environment at risk and can impair the recyclability of these plastics as well.

Finally, set enforcement mechanisms and data collection requirements to ensure that these provisions are complied with.

All these measures will need to recognize that some plastic items, namely single-use plastics and some plastic materials such as those containing toxic additives, as well as PVC and polystyrene, should be recognized as toxic under the CEPA, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. That, incidentally, was the mechanism that was used to ban microbeads. For this reason, Environmental Defence and some of the other environmental organizations that signed on to our declaration submitted a request to the federal government in June 2018 to add single-use plastics, microplastics and microfibres to the priority substance list for assessing whether they are toxic or capable of becoming toxic under CEPA. To date we have not heard back as to how the Canadian government is treating this request, despite a requirement under CEPA to provide a response within 90 days of a request being submitted. Therefore, we are following up on that request to find out what the government intends to do. Following listing as toxic, the federal government would then have powers to put in place a broad variety of measures, including those to mitigate risks and reduce the environmental impacts of plastics.

We welcome any questions that you have. Thanks for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Thank you for those opening comments.

Lastly, we'll move to the Retail Council of Canada.

Will both of you be speaking?

[Andrew Telfer, Vice-President, Health, Wellness and Industry Relations, Retail Council of Canada]

Both of us, yes. We're going to tag team it.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Excellent. We look forward to hearing what you have to say.

You have 10 minutes.

[Andrew Telfer]

We're going to be a little different from the rest of the witnesses.

We are Andrew Telfer and Philippe Cantin, for the Retail Council of Canada. Thank you for inviting us this afternoon to talk on this important issue, apparently an issue that is ever-increasing, as I hear that a disposable coffee cup was spotted in Winterfell on Game of Thrones last night. It's definitely an increasing issue.

We're from the Retail Council of Canada. Retail is Canada's largest private sector employer, with over 2.1 million Canadians working in our industry. The sector generates over $76 billion in wages and employee benefits annually. Retail Council of Canada members represent more than two-thirds of core retail sales in this country. We're also a not-for-profit industry-funded association. We represent more than 45,000 storefronts in all retail formats, including department, grocery, specialty, discount, independent, and also online. Our grocery members represent over 90% of the market in Canada.

[Philippe Cantin, Senior Director, Circular Economy and Sustainable Innovation, Montreal Office, Retail Council of Canada]

Plastics reduction is truly a global challenge. We know that plastics also have a role to play, if they are properly and appropriately managed.

We think that Canada is well-positioned, thanks to its recycling infrastructure, to accept the challenge. From retailers' point of view, we support plastics management through the three Rs hierarchy: first, prevention through reduction, then repurposing and reuse, and then recycling. Following that would be compostables. Finally, there is the landfill, which is the last resort.

Plastics are recognized for their light weight and light look, which means that many businesses will use them. That also may lead to a better GHG balance for their transportation, since they are lighter. However, their weight and their small size create their own set of challenges in the sorting and recycling stages.

Although most types of plastics are recyclable, and despite recent innovations—including in molecular recycling—as my two colleagues were saying earlier, there are various opportunities to improve the recyclability of the most problematic categories, such as polystyrene. The fact remains that for us, retailers, plastics help both extend the life of fresh foods, as Mr. Downham mentioned earlier, and meet the food safety standards, which involve very clear restrictions in terms of materials.

The consumer also really plays a key role here. If the consumer does not participate, nothing works. So it may be worthwhile to launch an education and awareness campaign for Canadians based on the science concerning plastics in order to rebalance perceptions by highlighting considerations such as the benefits and properties of those materials.

[Andrew Telfer]

Many retail companies have recently made and/or announced efforts to reduce the amount of plastics and packaging in their operations. These include removing excessive packaging, removing difficult-to-recycle materials, increasing post-consumer recycled content, ensuring and encouraging use of recyclable packaging materials, reducing packaging for e-commerce specific items, plastic shopping and grocery bag reduction initiatives, providing better for the environment alternatives to single-use plastics, and they also allow customers to shop with reusable containers.

Some retail companies in Canada are also collaborating with consumer goods manufacturers and civil society organizations and the Circular Economy Leadership Coalition to find ways to better utilize, reduce and replace plastic materials.

Regarding single-use plastic bans, we see them as only one tool within the toolbox. A ban on single-use plastic is only effective in reducing plastic waste where the replacement item is better for the environment. For example, the City of Vancouver reports that 65% of plastic single-use checkout bags were used for household waste. When plastic bag bans are instituted, the sale of plastic bags intended for household waste typically increases twofold.

We would support a ban on plastic bags if it were implemented in a harmonized way, with harmonization in mind across many jurisdictions, to avoid a patchwork.

We do not support bans if no suitable or feasible alternative materials are available.

Our recommendations are to ensure replacement materials are both available and have a smaller impact on the environment and ensure bans are harmonized across multiple jurisdictions to decrease consumer confusion and burden to businesses.

[Philippe Cantin]

When it comes to standards on recycled content, we are in favour of increasing the use of recycled content in packaging products, when that is feasible. Increasing recycled content will also develop secondary markets of materials collected to be turned into new packaging products. A national standard on recycled content would support or even increase the quantities of materials already collected in Canadian homes.

However, as it was said earlier, a Canadian standard in this area will need to be developed while keeping in mind that supply chains are now integrated across the continent, even across the globe. Alignment must be achieved with what has been done in other countries to find inspiration in best practices and to ensure that any Canadian approach would make sense and be relevant.

We are also favourable to a well-defined and easy-to-understand standard, but it must also lead to positive effects on the environment compared with the status quo. So creating incentives to promote recycled content is an element that is really important to us.

[Andrew Telfer]

Regarding additives in plastic packaging, because recycling is preferred over compost, we do not support the use of additives to plastic resin to make it biodegradable. We prefer that the plastic molecule be kept in motion through recycling. Additives to make plastic biodegradable add unwanted costs. Recycling of plastics supports the circular economy, in that plastics can be collected, recycled and made into new products and/or packaging. Biodegradable plastics can contaminate the recycling stream if not handled properly at the end of their life. The recommendation is to introduce a framework to address the use of additives in plastic packaging.

[Philippe Cantin]

When it comes to federal actions to facilitate recycling, we think that the government's role could be to contribute to the success of provincial programs by reducing cost disparities between landfill and recycling—landfill is currently all too often the least expensive method in Canada to manage waste materials—by implementing a national education and awareness campaign to relay provincial messages and provide information on their programs, by providing more funding for innovation and improving sorting and recycling facilities, including through molecular recycling, and by offering incentives for the use of recycled resin versus virgin material. We know that the cost of virgin resin is often tied to oil prices. So it is often difficult for SMEs that manufacture recycled resin to be competitive or to break into the market, be it in terms of costs or volumes.

Our recommendations concerning federal measures would be to implement funding mechanisms to drive innovation and provide more incentives to encourage the use of recycled resin. In our opinion, that would help complete the cycle in terms of the circular aspect of our products and packaging in Canada.

[Andrew Telfer]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Thank you to all of the groups for your very tight opening comments. That give us lots of time to get through the rounds of questions.

With that, our first round of six minutes of questions will go to Mr. Amos.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

I thank all the witnesses.

I really appreciate your suggestions. This is a very complex issue with numerous aspects.

Today, I would like to focus on your comments and your recommendations. I assume that our committee will soon have to recommend very concrete, very specific measures, and that it will have to go beyond the principles of circular economy, among other things. We may agree that it is a good idea to go with circular economy, but sometimes very concrete decisions have to be made to get there.

I would like to put my first question to Mr. Telfer and Mr. Cantin, whom I will ask to answer briefly, as we have very little time.

As far as I understand, you feel that the harmonization issue is very important, be it on a provincial or a national level, or even on an international level. Should it be surmised that it could be very good for the federal government to think about establishing national standards? That would create certainty within industry and within Canadian communities. Should Canadian authorities move forward with those standards?

[Philippe Cantin]

Yes, indeed. The most harmonized approach would consist in implementing Canada-wide standards. In that case, we feel that the government should look at what is being done in the United States or in certain American states and ensure that Canadian standards are in line with the market elsewhere in North America. The objective is to become integrated into the supply chain. Developing products only for Canada would be a bit difficult to imagine if we want Canadians to have access to affordable products. This is what I think should be considered. That said, it would really be very appropriate for Canada to decide on standards.