Evidence of meeting #27 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was plastics.
A video is available from Parliament.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Moucachen, does Merlin have anything to add? How do you work with the producers, as well as with recyclers? It sounds like there's a burgeoning industry just waiting to burst through here.
5 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Merlin Plastics
I have been working through many organizations—North American—like the Association of Plastic Recyclers. The most important thing is the package itself. The package has to be designed right. If the package is not designed right, then you can build infrastructure to collect it and you can move it from one place to another, but all you will be doing is increasing your carbon footprint.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Right, so if you knew you had.... The cost of not doing a proper design is going to catch you on the user-responsibility fees. It's going to make you double-check your design criteria.
5 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Merlin Plastics
It's going to double-check the design criteria also in two ways. First, if you don't make it right, it's going to double-check you there. Also, it's going to prevent you from meeting your goal.
In one sense, you could stand up and say, “I want to be part of the circular, and I want to have 25% circular,” but when your package is not designed to be circular, how can you do it?
5 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you very much.
Mr. Olivier, I have a limited amount of time. It sounds like you have a social enterprise ready to go. Is there a role for social enterprise in doing the sorting and recycling?
5 p.m.
Research Professor, Université de Sherbrooke, As an Individual
Yes, social enterprises certainly have a role to play. With masks, one of the micro-businesses that I am aware of uses groups that provide work for persons with disabilities. It means that it can condition and sort the material. That company currently does the recovery with small suppliers, such as small schools and certainly dentists' offices. Just look at dentists' offices. They have always used a lot of masks. So they need people to collect the material and people to sort it, to make sure that only polypropylene masks will enter that process and other protection equipment will go into a different process. The social economy always [Inaudible—Editor]
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
5:05 p.m.
Bloc
Monique Pauzé Bloc Repentigny, QC
We know that humans are being exposed to micro-plastics in what they eat, drink and breathe. Last autumn, Environment and Climate Change Canada published a scientific assessment of plastic pollution, which summarizes its effects on the environment and our health.
Mr. Olivier, I am going to go back to the question I asked you, because we did not have the time to talk about it. People always say that virgin plastic is reliable and of high quality. But they also talk about the importance of having recycled and compostable plastic. At the same time, we are being warned against the materials that might replace the plastic in our six single-use items, like straws, which could be made with plants and acid-infused paper. We dealt with that at another meeting.
Could you sort it all out for us? Could you help us choose the proper solution?
5:05 p.m.
Research Professor, Université de Sherbrooke, As an Individual
I will answer the question in three parts. The first is very short. We must not claim that commonly used plastics are made of toxic material. This is simply because the word “toxic” has a definition similar to those used in normalized categories and properties. If you look at the WHMIS, the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System, you will see a category of toxic material used in the workplace that describes exactly what the toxic properties are. None of our usual plastics fall into that category. The plastic itself is not toxic.
Then we are told that plastics can have substances contaminating their surface, substances that themselves are not very good. Now I really have to tell you that, in terms of industrial hygiene, the concentrations are so low that we are not able to observe any very specific and normalized effects of that contamination.
Second, you said that products made with alternative materials have to be used, such as paper straws. Does a paper or cardboard straw do the job if it is infused?
The quantity of the material used for the infusion and which can separate and pass into the digestive system is so small that you really have to compare the advantages and disadvantages side by side. Personally, I find the disadvantages are particularly weak and the advantages are very intriguing.
Third, we must not forget that, if we are using plastic materials that are not durable, we will go nowhere with materials that we call biodegradable or “biofragmentable”. They are a waste of energy and a waste of material.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you.
I think we are all going back to drinking from fountains.That's how far we've come.
Ha, ha!
5:05 p.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Perhaps picking up where Mr. Olivier left off in this discussion of toxicity, it seems from a number of the previous witnesses that there's a real conflation between the way in which CEPA defines “toxic” and more of a health sciences definition of toxicity. I note that currently under CEPA there are a number of products listed under the definition of toxic, such as CO2, heating oil and ozone—products that would not necessarily meet that health sciences definition.
It feels to me, and I want to check this with you, that the plastics industry is reacting to the stigma of the word toxic without looking at the underlying definition in CEPA. We've heard other witnesses talk about the reputational damage that could ensue if the word “toxic” is linked to these products. Have heating oil, CO2 or ozone suffered in the marketplace because of a connection under CEPA to the word “toxic”?
5:05 p.m.
Research Professor, Université de Sherbrooke, As an Individual
The best example is table salt, NaCl, that all of you use. However, I can kill you with NaCl. It's just a matter of how much you use.
Toxicity is all about dosage. By dosage, we mean the concentration and the duration of the exposure. I am currently breathing 418 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere here. Carbon dioxide is not toxic for me, but the dosage could lead to a toxic situation, if the concentration were greatly increased.
Saying that such and such a substance is toxic is linguistic inflation, because almost anything can be toxic if the concentration is high enough. The doses that we are exposed to do not put us in a situation of toxicity. The word ”toxic” is sometimes used as a bogeyman, to scare people, but we must not use it like that.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you, Mr. Olivier.
Mr. Albas, you have the floor for five minutes.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC
Great. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to start again by thanking all of our witnesses, but the majority of my questions will be for the Retail Council.
In your submission to the CleanBC consultation, you stated that exemptions should be made to bans for items that impact accessibility, such as plastic straws. This is certainly something we've heard during the study. My question to you is, how do you expect that will work?
5:10 p.m.
Senior Director, Sustainability Innovation and Circular Economy, Retail Council of Canada
That's a very good question.
When you look at certain places in the city of Vancouver, they've introduced accessibility aspects by just requiring businesses to have those items on hand if a customer asks for them and is clearly in need of the item for an accessibility reason. They are not to just leave them available for every other customer. That's the approach they've taken in Vancouver.
I wouldn't necessarily be able to give you more ideas of what this would look like. I think Vancouver right now is the only jurisdiction that has introduced those requirements.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC
If we had that right across the country, the number of people who would need these products for accessibility reasons isn't sufficient to maintain a domestic manufacturing industry, and importing it would be expensive. The government hasn't even said it will allow the importation. Wouldn't only allowing these exemptions increase the cost for a person with a disability?
5:10 p.m.
Senior Director, Sustainability Innovation and Circular Economy, Retail Council of Canada
As I mentioned earlier, it's very difficult to tell what the costs impact would be. Definitely, when there's less volume of a material on the market, the cost is more expensive, but that's something I would have to look into further to let you know if this would have a major impact or not.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC
Well, to me it seems that if we banned domestic production, many domestic producers who do a good job right now of making a safe product would say, “You're going to allow imports?”, and vice versa. I think the government really has an issue here, when it comes to deciding on this.
You've also argued that significant regulatory reform is needed as a precursor to bans, especially in the areas of health and safety. Has this been done, or will the bans have negative consequences such as those you've warned about?
5:10 p.m.
Senior Director, Sustainability Innovation and Circular Economy, Retail Council of Canada
That's what I mentioned to your colleague earlier, when I talked about the interactions with Agriculture Canada requirements. They're not necessarily moving at the same pace when it comes to adjusting the requirements.
Most of the reason certain companies are going with plastic packaging is that it's the only cost-effective and viable solution on the market to comply with the requirements from Agriculture Canada. That's something we need to keep in mind when we're looking at why certain plastics are introduced on the market for certain packaging.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC
If I have some time, Mr. Chair, I'd like to ask Mayor Vodanovic a question.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC
First of all, you mentioned earlier that the government ban is not on a wide enough range of items to have a serious effect. If you had your choice between what the government is proposing now and seeing EPR common standards right across the country, which would you choose?
5:15 p.m.
Mayor of the Borough of Lachine, City of Montréal
I wouldn't choose. I would say, do this first and then do the other one second, but do it all. You can't choose—