—as per your request. I was too quick, yes.
Chair, speaking to the motion presented by Mr. Schiefke and what I think what Mr. Schiefke is trying to do, I'm not speaking for him, but I see a lot of merit in what he's recommending. At the end of the day, we have a situation where we have a bill and concerns have been raised, and I'll cite one that concerns me. It's something that Mr. Saini was trying to ask questions about, but I don't think there was enough time to explore it, which is an example of why Mr. Schiefke's motion has merit.
Mr. Saini was asking about something that at a prior committee meeting I was also asking witnesses about, which is what the impact of this bill would be on Canada's waste disposal system and on our landfills. It's incumbent upon us as a committee studying this bill and digging into the details and the implications of this bill to understand what that is. Can this bill actually be implemented? Is it realistic? Is it feasible?
The concerns that have been raised if the bill were to be passed, and that I'm alluding to, are around what would happen to waste that's currently being exported that could no longer be exported, whether that's to the United States or anywhere else, because that's what this bill would do. It would ban the export completely.
From officials who were here today, we heard a figure for the number of tonnes of waste exported every year, and that's just to the United States, never mind all the other countries that we export waste to, so you can imagine that if you suddenly shut the border to that complete export, that waste has to go to landfills.
In response to a question I asked at our last meeting, that was the answer we were given by one of the witnesses. We know from the officials today that landfills are at capacity. They said that to us today. In fact, the quote from Ms. Ryan—I wrote it down—is that capacity of landfills is “stretched”. Also, “Adding material...to handle will be very challenging and potentially...very problematic”.
As a member of the committee whose responsibility it is to evaluate the pros and cons of legislation that comes to us, I think this is one of the potential cons that officials are flagging for us. It's a legitimate concern. Without even hearing from officials, I already had that concern. If I think about these millions of tonnes of waste that suddenly are not going to be exported and have to be put somewhere, they have to be put in landfills that are already at capacity, and that means the landfills will not be able to handle them.
From my experience and in consulting with people who know a lot about this, it takes around five years to get a new landfill set up, because they have to be permitted and regulated and put in place. If I think about just that issue alone, which I have concerns about, I'm concerned about the idea that we would go ahead without getting that additional input that Mr. Schiefke's motion would allow us to get from officials and from others to make sure that we know whether or not this bill could actually be implemented.
That would be my argument for Mr. Schiefke's motion.
Thank you, Chair.