In response to Ms. Saks's question and comments, for the latter portion of this amendment, it's really important to know that Canada has ratified specific amendments, but they have not ratified a very crucial amendment around waste for “special consideration”.
What we heard from the testimony from Mr. Puckett.... He was our witness from the organization focused on the Basel Convention. He said that this amendment would actually fill in an important gap in the current legislation, and that he was hoping to see us align our language with the parts of the Basel Convention that we haven't yet ratified.
In response to what we have heard from officials, yes, absolutely, since 2016 we have changed our regulations to require permits whenever plastic garbage is exported to countries that see that waste as hazardous, but since 2016 we have been seeing.... In 2019, there were reports from Malaysia and Cambodia that they had found containers of Canadian plastic garbage in their ports. Clearly, the 2016 changes have not addressed the issue.
The amendments that came in most recently in December are amendments that don't actually cover hazardous waste, or waste for special consideration in particular, which is why I have put forward this amendment.