Another gross analogy would be the forest industry. Forty years ago, particularly in British Columbia, forestry was what drove that province and it certainly massively contributed to our education and public health care systems. There were very few regulations on how forestry could occur.
However, as we began to understand the impact of forestry on fishery stocks and on the long-term sustainability of communities as a result of the way in which different areas were allowed to be cut over a certain amount of time, then of course we brought in regulations at a provincial scale for doing forestry in a certain way that takes a much more long-term view.
We now have in B.C. a world-leading set of agreements between the seven nations in the central coast and the provincial government called the Great Bear Rainforest agreements. We could point to Haida-Gwaii as well and the federal government's involvement in marine management there. The Great Bear Rainforest agreements take explicitly within provincial law—in the orders under the provincial forestry legislation—a 250-year time frame that respects indigenous values in certain ways and looks at sustainable forestry and sets an annual allowable cut over a 10-year period. This is done done with the forest industry at the table negotiations over a 10-year period and taking a 250 year time perspective. If we would like to evolve to a circular economy, then we need to take a much longer term perspective and have a phased approach to the implementation of regulation and allow for that adaptation.
I'm hope I'm not naive enough to think that Canadians will simply stop using throwaway or single-use products, because I do think there is an element of convenience that we all like. However, this is a first foray into better shaping the way that industry operates in Canada. It's quite clear that the environment cannot simply be used as a dumping ground for activities or products that industry deems acceptable. There is a public interest function between the creation of a product and the disposal of it that the federal and the provincial governments fulfill.