Environment Committee on June 11th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Order. Good morning, everybody.

This is meeting number 44 of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. This is a public meeting.

For those in person, please remember to follow the health and safety guidelines for your microphones to prevent audio or feedback incidents for our translators.

We will commence today's study on single-use plastics prohibition regulations with the first of two sets of witnesses. For the first hour, we have Dr. Chelsea Rochman, assistant professor at the University of Toronto; Scott Thurlow, senior adviser, government affairs at Dow Canada; and Dr. Peter Ross, senior scientist at the Raincoast Conservation Foundation.

You will each have five minutes to present some opening statements. I do have a little time sign to warn you when you're at a minute and when you're out of time, when you'll have to wrap up, please. We'll use that throughout the session.

We will begin with you, Dr. Rochman. The floor is yours.

[Chelsea Rochman, Associate Professor, University of Toronto, As an Individual]

Thank you, Chair Miedema and Vice-Chairs Ross and Bonin, for the invitation. I'm really happy to have the opportunity to share my expertise.

My name is Chelsea Rochman, and I'm an associate professor at the University of Toronto. I have been researching plastic pollution for nearly 20 years. My research is widely known for increasing our understanding of the prevalence, persistence and ecological effects of plastics in the environment. I study plastic debris globally, including here in the Great Lakes as well as in the Canadian Arctic. I'm often asked to advise governments on the issue of plastics in the environment. This includes the United Nations and every level of government in both the United States and Canada. I recently co-led a working group on monitoring and risk for the International Joint Commission, a binational organization created by Canada and the U.S. to protect our resources and boundary waters, including in the Great Lakes. Today, I will focus on the evidence demonstrating that plastic pollution is ubiquitous, persistent and harmful.

Plastic pollution is increasing, and if we want to protect wildlife, we must focus on waste reduction, which is a proven solution. According to the Government of Canada, we lost 90,000 tonnes of plastics to the environment in 2019, which is equivalent to 53 million garbage bags of plastic waste, a figure predicted to increase 19% by 2040.

I can tell you a bit about what I see in Toronto. I supervise students who clean and monitor plastic floating in our harbour. They cover about a two-kilometre stretch of the waterfront. Every year, we remove hundreds of thousands of pieces of plastic from the water. The most common items we see are single-use plastics, including food wrappers, straws, plastic bags, bottle caps and cigarette filters. Although we clean a lot, we don't make a dent. Cleanup will not solve this problem, and we are currently failing to keep Toronto's waters clean.

Toronto's Don River is among the most urbanized in Canada. We estimate that this river contributes roughly tens of thousands of plastic items, plus 500 billion microplastics, defined as one micron to five millimetres in size, into Lake Ontario annually. Downstream, the fish have the highest levels of microplastics reported globally. Microplastics are in every fish that we sample from Lake Ontario as part of the government's sport fish program. That's every fish.

The weight of evidence about the effects of microplastics has grown quite a bit. There is no doubt that microplastics can harm organisms. Scientists now have enough data to synthesize toxicity results into risk assessments. Most recently, within the International Joint Commission, we quantified the risk of microplastics to the Great Lakes. Based on our findings, our group of scientists and policy-makers recommended that microplastics be listed as a chemical of mutual concern under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.

Across the lakes, there is a consistent release of plastic. It is ubiquitous and persistent, and it is found at concentrations that cross risk thresholds. Related to this, plastic manufactured items fit the definition of toxic under the CEPA, which states that a substance is toxic if it enters the environment in a concentration, or under conditions, that may have a harmful effect. Plastic manufactured items break down into microplastics in the environment. Moreover, whole plastic manufactured items cause harm at amounts we see in nature. Animals eat plastic items such as bottle caps, straws and bags, and this can cause injury or death.

We recently published a quantitative risk assessment in a top scientific journal measuring how much plastic is too much for seabirds, turtles and marine mammals. Plastic ingestion has been documented in every seabird family, every marine mammal family and every sea turtle species. Based on necropsy data, our model predicts the amount of plastic that is nearly certain to kill an animal. For seabirds, plastic waste in the volume of one to two marbles will almost certainly be lethal. For turtles, the number is about one to two baseballs, and for whales, it's about one to seven basketballs. In smaller animals, death can occur from a smaller load. Just one bottle cap can kill a seabird. There is risk to wildlife from the amounts we observe in nature, thus the current state of the science supports managing plastic under the CEPA.

Since Canada started to address plastic pollution seriously, Canada has quickly risen as a global leader due to its comprehensive policies aimed at reducing plastic waste and pollution, which include the ban on a handful of single-use plastic items, microbeads and rinse-off personal care products. Since the ban on microbeads, the presence of microbeads has plummeted in Great Lakes water samples. Since the single-use plastic ban, the great Canadian shoreline cleanup reports a decline in every single one of these items.

Reducing single-use plastics that are common in the environment, are not practically reusable or recyclable and that have a substitution is a key part of the transition to a circular economy. It also protects the environment. The scientific evidence supports staying the course, continuing to be a leader and enforcing the current policies already in place.

Thank you. I'd be happy to answer questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you very much, Dr. Rochman.

We will now turn to Mr. Thurlow for five minutes.

[W. Scott Thurlow, Senior Advisor, Government Affairs, Dow Canada]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. It is my pleasure to be here today to speak on the issue of plastic and plastic waste.

The Dow Chemical Company was founded by Herbert H. Dow, a Canadian-born industry pioneer, a native of Mr. Malette's riding, born in Belleville, Ontario.

Today, Dow is one of the world's leading material science companies, serving customers in high-growth markets such as packaging, infrastructure, mobility and consumer applications. We operate manufacturing sites in 29 countries and employ over 30,000 people around the world. Dow Canada is headquartered in Calgary and has manufacturing facilities in Alberta and Ontario.

As you may have heard, in 2021 Dow announced the expansion of our Fort Saskatchewan facility. That expansion will triple the production of our polyethylene and derivatives. In so doing, we will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and we will be net zero from a scope 1 and scope 2 emissions perspective. That expansion is generously supported by the federal, provincial and municipal governments and is already creating thousands of construction jobs.

Dow has been at the forefront of Canada's approach to plastic and plastic waste since the very beginning. As we have articulated before many other parliamentary committees, the approach the federal government has used to date has been to use the wrong act to solve the wrong problem, doing it the wrong way. Plastic is not toxic, and we verily believe that the use of the toxic substances provisions of CEPA is inappropriate. We have never wavered from that position.

The best way to ensure plastic remains in the economy is to incentivize greater recycling rates for materials after use. We believe that government policy can create demand for products with recycled content and we remain committed to a recycled content standard for all plastic packaging. We strongly believe that creating a market for post-consumer plastic is the best way to ensure it is returned to the economy and not permanently orphaned in a landfill or escaped into the environment.

No one is going to argue that fugitive plastic waste entering the environment isn't a problem, but to think of post-consumer use plastic as waste is a missed opportunity. Through chemical conversion, industry can depolymerize post-consumer plastics and return those molecules to the economy. Transitioning to a circular economy is not only vital to the preservation and protection of our planet's natural resources: It's also critical to the business successes of Dow.

As we transform to a circular economy, we are taking into account a product's life cycle from creation to use to disposal in everything we do and create. We are taking a leading role in driving a more circular economy by designing for circularity and building new business models for circular materials.

Dow believes that public policy will be a critical enabler of successfully establishing a circular economy. Smart policies as well as partnerships can help drive innovation and accelerate the adoption and expansion of advanced recycling to complement traditional recycling. Policy should be promoting advanced and chemical recycling alongside other recycling technologies. This is essential to resolving the issue of hard-to-recycle substances in products.

No policy should deselect approaches that can best prevent plastic from being recovered and placed back into the economy. We believe that we need to invest in the waste management infrastructure to improve the supply chain and enable advanced recycling technology approaches. We believe this should begin with a more favourable tax status for industry investments in all stages of the materials ecosystem.

We have recommended that private actions that support the expansion of the waste infrastructure be supported by favourable tax treatment like an accelerated capital cost allowance so that the work of the private sector can be encouraged to be incorporated into the work that provinces and municipalities do every day. Every dollar that industry spends throughout the materials ecosystem is a dollar that the government does not have to spend dealing with post-consumer plastic.

In conclusion, the government should be looking at waste infrastructure the same way they are looking at our trade infrastructure and our transportation infrastructure. It's critical for the economy to succeed and grow.

I would welcome the committee's questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you very much, Mr. Thurlow.

We will now turn to Dr. Ross for five minutes.

[Peter Ross, Senior Scientist, Raincoast Conservation Foundation]

Good morning, Madam Chair. Thank you for inviting me today.

I've been studying plastic and microplastic pollution for the past 20 years in Canada. During that time, I have worked as a federal scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, at the Vancouver Aquarium, at Ocean Wise and now at Raincoast Conservation Foundation. I'm a toxicologist, which means I'm concerned about the impacts of chemicals and pollutants on the well-being of Canadians and Canadian wildlife. For four decades, I've studied a variety of pollutants in killer whales, beluga whales, harbour seals, salmon and shellfish, and in air, water and sediments. I've worked with first nations across Canada to look at the safety of indigenous foods. Most of what I've studied has been chemical in nature—PCBs, dioxins, PBDEs, pesticides, hydrocarbons and metals, including mercury among others.

Plastics have emerged as kind of a unique pollutant in my world, as a structural pollutant of obviously widespread scientific, public and policy concern. It's a pollutant where every piece or particle is nearly unique in shape, size and formulation. Think, as Canadians might, of a snowflake, where we have an infinite number of structures. The complexity in this pollutant class renders the technical characterization of plastics and microplastics challenging, but it also offers incredible opportunities for scientific research, advances, information exchange and innovation.

I'd like to summarize a few points that reflect my professional perspective on the topic of plastics and microplastics. First, as has been shared today, plastics and microplastics have been widely detected throughout Canada's three oceans as well as in freshwater and terrestrial environments. Plastics and microplastics kill fish and wildlife. They are toxic. They can cause entanglement of whales, turtles, seabirds and seals. They can suffocate. They can starve through artificial satiation. Plastics and microplastics are pervasive and persistent pollutants. They do not break down chemically during our lifetimes. They break up into smaller and smaller pieces such that every piece of large plastic is a reservoir of future microplastics. They can be found in the air we breathe—today, from this polyester carpet—the water we drink and the food we eat.

The plastic pollution problem is only getting worse each and every day. Global plastic production is doubling every 10 to 15 years. Shoreline or ocean cleanups are useful for data and education but are an ineffective band-aid for the growing plastic pollution problem. Recycling systems, despite the best intentions of municipalities and provincial agencies, fail to collect the vast majority of plastic waste in Canada. Additives, colours and chemical formulations, including endocrine-disrupting compounds, prevent a safe and circular plastics economy. The majority of plastics in our blue bins end up in either landfills or dead-end products, such as park benches, carpets or curtains. This means that recycling entails, generally speaking, a maximum of two uses for virgin plastic. Do you remember the stubby and the 44 uses for the beer bottle that we used to have in Canada?

The third major point this morning is that plastic pollution comes from all of us—we are all polluters—but the fishing and aquaculture sectors remain an important source of plastics in the ocean, representing probably half the floating plastics in the Pacific right now. Millions of fibres from clothes, much of this polyester, are shed with each laundry. This is something we've detected in seawater throughout the Arctic Ocean, even under the water at the North Pole. These are coming from textiles and laundry. Municipal waste-water treatment reduces but does not eliminate discharge into our waterways, with the microplastics retained in biosolids now being spread on our farmers' fields. They're not destroyed by waste-water treatment.

Single-use packaging from restaurant customers, recreational users and travellers can be found on our streets and shorelines. This is something that every child can tell us about and that we all do our best to avoid. Plastic packaging accounts for approximately 47% of plastic waste in Canada. This is ending up largely in landfills. That's 1.4 million tonnes per year. More than 86% of plastic waste ends up in landfills.

During my 25 years of working on plastic, these numbers have not changed substantially, barring a few low-hanging fruit items that my esteemed colleague Dr. Rochman spoke to.

I believe, as Dr. Rochman presented, that Canada is well positioned for further global leadership.

My time is almost up, so I will wrap up. My apologies, Madam Chair.

Canada's SUPPR have directly led to less plastic litter. Canada adding plastic manufactured items to the domestic substances list allows Ottawa to identify further products.

I think Canada can further strengthen its leadership by doing the following: enabling innovation and research in material sciences, textile design and waste-water treatment; facilitating a national knowledge exchange through working groups, conferences and consultations; strengthening research capacity through interlaboratory calibration and other exercises; encouraging home source controls through updated appliance standards and consumer education; strengthening the market value, as my esteemed colleague emphasized, and the food safety of recycled plastics through the labelling of plastic formulations for additives and dyes; continuing to build a national recycling framework, through the leadership of the CCME, to encourage municipalities and provinces to get on board in a national way that would improve marketability and the circular economy; and finally, considering the value of braided western science and the important contribution of indigenous knowledge.

I thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you very much, Dr. Ross.

We will now go to questions from the committee members, and we will begin with Mr. Leslie for six minutes.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Thurlow, the government has still not explained the basic contradiction here. I'm wondering if you can.

If a product is considered toxic enough for it to be banned for everyday use for Canadians, why is it acceptable to manufacture it in Canada and send it across the border?

[W. Scott Thurlow]

I'm afraid you're going to have to ask the minister that question because I can't answer it.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

As long as we don't screw it up before we start, we're heading into renegotiations on CUSMA.

Has the United States ever raised Canada's plastics policy broadly or included this specific toxic designation or the export rules as a trade irritant?

[W. Scott Thurlow]

Every year the U.S. trade representative puts out a report about the global trade irritants around the world. In their most recent report, they very specifically pointed to Canada's plastic waste agenda as something that was a trade irritant.

You may or may not know that the current CUSMA has a chapter that's dedicated to plastic management and plastic waste. It's certainly something the United States has mentioned. They've gone so far as to say, “proposed reductions in food packaging and packaging compostability requirements could compromise food safety, increase food loss and waste, and restrict U.S. agricultural exports.”

Yes, they have identified this as a trade irritant.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you.

Your opening remarks—and I think this was echoed by all the witnesses—noted that this is about what we do once the plastic is here.

Instead of relying on a blanket toxic designation and bans, what, in your assessment, would be a more practical way to reduce plastic waste without punishing manufacturers in Canada?

[W. Scott Thurlow]

Industry has long argued in favour of a recycled content mandate. A recycled content mandate is the requirement that a certain percentage of the plastic come from nonvirgin resources. Doing so will create a market for that product. It will allow industry to make targeted investments based on the existence of the rule. They could go to their financers and say, “We now have a rule that says that we have to do this. Please give us the funding on favourable terms so that we can build the infrastructure that we need to do that.”

That is precisely how the Canadian renewable fuels network was created under Prime Minister Harper's government. There was an amendment to CEPA that very specifically spoke to the composition of the fuels. Investments happened as a direct result of those fuels. It was a legislative amendment with a subsequent regulatory requirement that allowed the renewable fuels industry to grow. We would tell you that the same growth would happen in the recycling industry.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

We are looking at the stick approach here. That is, I think, part of the carrot. You also mentioned tax treatment.

Could you identify specifically what carrots for industry the government should consider to help reduce plastic waste and improve the overall recycling system?

[W. Scott Thurlow]

Certainly.

We have long argued for tax incentives to help facilitate investments in what we describe as the materials ecosystem. We're not fussy about it. We just want to make sure that credit is provided for things that are investments in the manufacturing process to encourage a design for circularity. We are interested in tax credits for both consumer and business education about how the product gets back into this circular economy, including collecting, cleaning, sorting and mechanical recycling, as well as the creation of the facilities for chemical recycling and any development of more sustainable feedstocks as well.

All of these things are part and parcel of part of the solution that can help reduce the amount of resin that gets into the waste cycle.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

You mentioned the need for a recycling content plan of some sort for plastic packaging. What model that has been tried and tested internationally, or more specifically made in Canada, would work in Canada, in your assessment?

[W. Scott Thurlow]

It would be something that has the force of law at the federal level that would encourage investments based on the issue of concern. That would include collection, distribution, repurposing and all of those things in the same life cycle. It would be something that has a rule, that has the force of law and a corresponding financial incentive to make those investments.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Obviously, the benefit of that is to keep plastics out of the environment, but what would possibly be the spinoff economic benefits? I assume a supply chain would need to be developed to better handle all of this excess waste being diverted correctly into a recycled system.

[W. Scott Thurlow]

Right now, we have multiple different supply chains. British Columbia does it the best. British Columbia has somewhat of a unified system where the rules are the same in all of the municipalities.

Once you get away from individual municipalities deploying their relatively meagre resources at different problems, and you have a galvanized effect of everyone rowing in the same direction to create a similar type of infrastructure, you will absolutely see spinoff benefits from that.

The better the system is at reclaiming and repurposing these materials, the less virgin materials have to come out of the ground. That has a different economic impact, but there's also a value that's added through each stage of that process.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Just to clearly juxtapose, the ban doesn't seem to be working versus an opportunity for a domestic market of enhanced players within the game here. They could achieve environmental goals while enhancing the reuse of existing products. Is that correct?

Can you sum it up better than that?

[W. Scott Thurlow]

I couldn't agree more. A comprehensive product ban has not been demonstrated to solve the problem. We would much rather have something that is a much more comprehensive approach and isn't, pardon the pun, whacking a mole one at a time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you, Mr. Leslie.

We will now turn to Mr. Greaves online for six minutes.

[Will Greaves, Liberal, Victoria, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning, colleagues. Thank you to our witnesses for joining us today.

My first question is for Dr. Ross.

Thank you for joining us today, sir. Thank you for your contributions to the study of our ecosystems and water systems in southern British Columbia, in particular, a highly relevant experience that informs our discussion and our study today.

I'd like to drill into this question of the economic impacts of plastics as we were just hearing. We're often presented with the argument about the negative environmental impacts of regulating plastics in various ways. However, from a differing perspective, and as a representative of a coastal community that has millions of visitors come every single year, we see the way in which plastic pollution on our coastline and in our waters is actually an economic threat to one of our core industries in the visitor economy.

I would suggest that's true not just on Vancouver Island but everywhere that we have beautiful coastlines in this country, whether that's elsewhere on the B.C. coast, whether that's in Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland, whether that's the Bow River in Alberta, or indeed on the shores of Lake Ontario.

In that context, Dr. Ross, could you speak to the volume of plastic pollution that we have in our waterways? Would you have any comments you could offer about the economic harms that plastic pollution causes to our local and regional economies?

[Peter Ross]

That's a great question.

Whenever we look at a pollutant, we look at the potential for harm to fish, wildlife and human health. In coastal British Columbia, where our indigenous communities are relying on aquatic foods, consuming, on average, 15 times as much seafood as the average Canadian, we remain concerned that the microplastics and plastics that are either killing fish and wildlife or getting eaten by fish and wildlife, which are then consumed by first nations, represent a significant setback to our attempts at reconciliation. Assuring food safety for indigenous communities is a pre-eminent interest of ours.

To the point about the effectiveness of SUPPR in this context, I do note that the great Canadian shoreline cleanup has documented significant declines in the number of plastic bags and straws on Canadian shorelines to the tune of a 60% straw reduction and 25% fewer bags.

These are large amounts of plastic, but, again, the single-use plastic regulations only target 3% of the total plastic waste entering Canadian waterways. We suffer from continued blights on our shorelines that are a problem for tourism in B.C. On the east coast, we have whales that are entangled in fishing gear, most of it being plastic.

There are significant impediments to the health and well-being of wildlife and at-risk species, such as the southern resident killer whales which are endangered and number only 74. As well, there are concerns regarding food safety for all Canadians.

Tourism, food safety, indigenous food security all have significant threats to their well-being and, obviously, have bearing on the economic well-being for those communities or the communities relying upon them.

[Will Greaves, Liberal, Victoria, BC]

Thank you for that answer, Dr. Ross. You anticipated my next question.

I'd like to drill down on the connection between land and the rivers, seas and oceans that surround us and marine life. As you're aware, for our community here in Victoria, our urban and rural watersheds are directly tied to the health of the Salish Sea and, as you mentioned, the southern resident orcas and the salmon populations that inhabit those waters. They are inseparable from our way of life and many aspects of culture and identity on the B.C. coast.

In that context, could you please explain how plastic pollution from inland watersheds is compounding the challenges facing these species in critical marine habitats? Specifically, what targeted interventions at the watershed level would yield the greatest benefit for cleaner oceans and waters for all of us?