Thank you, Mr. Chair
The Environmental Law Centre is an organization that works within the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria, and has done so for 25 years. We provide over 6,000 hours of pro bono legal services to community groups, indigenous organizations, and citizens each year.
In 2017 we met with three then members of Parliament at their request—the Honourable Gord Johns, Murray Rankin and now Minister Jonathan Wilkinson—to discuss our client’s increasing concern with plastics, and specifically the impact of single-use plastics in the ocean, the freshwater environment, and as a largely unregulated waste. As you know, since then the plastics issue has exploded.
As a lawyer I am not here to address the pollution issue for you. You have plenty of evidence in front of you regarding the pervasive and invasive presence of plastics in every part of our food chain, hydrologic cycle, and in our land. Clearly we need to stop unintentionally treating our communities and natural environment as a dumping ground for low value, persistent plastic particles.
We are supportive here at the ELC of many aspects of the proposed integrated management approach to plastic products to prevent waste and pollution, that is, the approach set forth in the federal government's discussion paper. In particular, we agree that banning and/or restricting of harmful single-use plastics is a priority, and support the proposal to establish minimum recycled content for plastics producers. We also support the Government of Canada’s commitment to work with provinces and territories to promote extended producer responsibility.
Following on the work completed through the Environmental Law Centre, in particular by my colleague Calvin Sandborn, Q.C., I will address the specific purpose of this committee hearing, a ban on single-use plastic items and designating plastics under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999. We have produced three reports on this issue more broadly that can be found at elc.uvic.ca. I will include in my written submission to the committee all of the links and direct you specifically to our commentary on regulating single-use plastics.
I have three recommendations to highlight for the committee today. The first one is regulating single-use plastics. Some call it a “ban”, but in law we understand it more as “regulating” because, typically, we ban substances or activities and then we create exceptions for them or create conditions under which they can be used. Creating a regulation of a broad range of single-use plastics, what are traditionally single-use plastics, under CEPA makes perfect sense. Everything from adding polypropylene, polystyrene, and hard-to-recycle plastics or particular products to CEPA in schedule 1 and enacting regulations to control the way we interact with them in Canada makes perfect sense. That would certainly reflect a 21st century understanding of environmental law and regulation. When we do that, then we could reduce and/or tax the importation of products that contain these substances and also control the way they're used in manufacturing.
My second recommendation is to establish meaningful recycling standards that would give direction to the plastics industry and anyone who is interacting with plastics about what kinds of plastics are welcome to be produced and always reused in Canada. We want to get away from this approach where whatever the client wants, the client gets in terms of plastic production, and go to a much more streamlined range of plastic production that can be reused over time. These kinds of regulations involve mandating a minimum quantity of post-consumer plastic content in all plastic products from these listed substances, and improve the reusability and recyclability of products made from these materials. There are lots of other ways that this can brought about as well.
My final recommendation is for the Government of Canada to really take a long-term view of this, given that the persistence or legacy of plastics in our environment will now we be with us for thousands of years. A long-term approach would commit to a 21st century view of environmental regulation that includes taking a circular economy approach.
Therefore, any ban or regulation of single-use plastics has to take place within a larger plan for bringing the Canadian economy and how we do environmental regulation up to date. We still use the principle that dilution is the solution to pollution, but our environment can no longer withstand that approach.