That's how we get hugs into the blues.
Thanks very much for the question. As I alluded to in my notes, in 2012 there was a realignment of the districts in Halifax regional municipality, and I found myself representing the Burnside industrial park. Of course, for politicians, since there are no people who live there, there are no votes in there, but I was very eager to go in and find out how I could represent those businesses.
I took some tours of some of the really cool things that are going on in the Burnside industrial park and stumbled upon Dan-x Recycling. They are very neat and kind of eclectic folks who, I think, saw a TV show about the harm of mercury in light bulbs. The entrepreneur, who had a little bit of money, went and built a factory without borrowing any government money, predicated on the fact that he was expecting that there would be regulations federally, provincially, or municipally to ensure that light bulbs ended up there.
The tour that day led me, in my position as a municipal councillor on the environment and sustainability committee, to try to find a way for us to do that as a municipality. Could we come up with regulations whereby we could tell people that they must...?
We found out we couldn't do it. The best we could do was to ensure that all of the light bulbs, both the fluorescent tubes and the CFL bulbs that were used in municipal facilities....
If you think about fluorescent tubes, think about our MP offices. There are about 40 four-foot fluorescent tubes in every office, and there are 338 offices. There are millions and millions of these bulbs going to landfill every year because there are no regulations.
That was the impetus for this. When they told me there were no regulations but that they were always expecting regulations to come along, I was absolutely amazed. I was shocked that was the case. The bulbs we use, the CFL bulbs and fluorescent bulbs, are efficient and they're cheap. Kudos to the former government for having us use them, but I really wish we had moved forward on some form of national strategy 10 or 12 years ago.