Industry Committee on April 19th, 2023

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you for that.

The chair will cut me off if I run out of time, but until I'm apprehended maybe I'll go on with one more question.

In your opinion, segueing from that, what's the best way that governments can hold corporations accountable for the waste they generate while also making sure they are manufacturing products that are able to be reduced?

What kinds of mechanisms have you seen working there?

[Dr. Christina Seidel]

I actually think extended producer responsibility is probably the best mechanism we've seen so far. It has to be married with other things as well, like other supporting regulations. In terms of an overarching policy, EPR puts the responsibility fully back on producers, who then can't ignore it anymore, because they're the ones who are responsible not only for paying for it, but also for meeting targets. It makes them pay a whole new level of attention that they haven't had to pay before. It is already making a big difference in other jurisdictions, like Europe.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you very much.

I think my time is probably up at this point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

That is indeed the case, Mr. Fillmore. Thank you very much.

I now give the floor to Mr. Lemire for six minutes.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. McClenaghan, during our committee's study, we heard that the government was holding consultations on the transportation of dangerous recyclable materials. Our study is focused on metals and plastics, but you drew our attention to plutonium. When explosive nuclear materials become available, nation states will have the choice of using them for civilian or military purposes, it would seem.

Should Canada be more transparent when it comes to what it sells to other nations? Which department should we question about this? Which international convention should we review to shed light on these issues?

[Theresa McClenaghan]

[Technical difficulty—Editor] for years. Canada is a party to the International Atomic Energy Agency's Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. That's a 1968 treaty that was enforced in 1970. Now there is work happening worldwide to include a convention or treaty that would ban reprocessing nuclear waste. Canada has not been supportive of that approach to date, at least not explicitly. Canada had a de facto ban, or at least an operational practice not to support utilizing the reprocessing of nuclear waste, specifically because of the weapon risks, along with highly enriched uranium, which we don't do here either.

There was a real opportunity for Canada to include a ban in its just-released, updated nuclear waste policy, which the International Atomic Energy Agency had asked it to do. Instead, unfortunately, Canada said in that policy, released a couple of weeks ago, that because there was no current reprocessing of nuclear waste, it was outside the scope of the nuclear waste policy.

That was, I think, a real missed opportunity. Because the advocates, as I mentioned, are arguing for the use of nuclear power as part of the answer to climate change—and that's a different discussion for a different day—the types of nuclear technology are being examined. Some of them are proposing to use, as fuel, reprocessed nuclear fuel—i.e., plutonium extracted from the used fuel from reactors.

Yes, Canada does need to work with its partners, but Canada needs to also pull up its own socks. It has been providing research money to some of the industry companies that want to explore this type of technology. Furthermore, in the recent budget, Canada, without discrimination, added nuclear to a range of tax credits and clean technology credits and benefits, without excluding reprocessing nuclear fuel from that list.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Despite signing the Basel Convention, many countries, including Canada, continue to export electronic waste to developing countries.

The Basel Action Network, or BAN, mentioned in a report that it started investigating Canada's electronic waste trade in 2002. The network proved that Canada illegally exported electronic waste, mainly from the Port of Vancouver to ports in Asia.

Furthermore, BAN stated that for over 10 years, it found the Electronic Recycling Association, or ERA, to be a constant and prolific Canadian exporter of electronic waste towards developing countries from three different locations in the Vancouver area of British Columbia. Over the years, BAN flagged those exports to Canadian authorities.

While companies like base metal smelters are telling us they have challenges due to the quantity of inputs, how are we to understand exports of electronic materials abroad?

[Theresa McClenaghan]

Is that question for me?

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Yes, Ms. McClenaghan.

[Theresa McClenaghan]

CELA weighed in from time to time on Canada's participation in the Basel Convention. It deals more broadly with hazardous waste and requires, as you say, the consent of the importing country and accedence to a list of products, technologies and substances that would not be exported.

We have had concerns that, particularly in respect to some of those exports, Canada hasn't.... There were some shipments, for example, that sat on imports—in Thailand, I believe it was—that had originated from Canadian ports. It took a lot of campaigning by many civil society organizations both here and there for Canada to finally repatriate that waste.

We'd like to encourage Canada to be a leader in terms of how we're handling waste, and not to allow for that type of unfortunate action—which is harmful to the receiving countries and embarrassing for Canada.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

How can we establish the limits of the recycling industry, given its impact on the environment? On the one hand, recycling is important to protect the environment. On the other hand, recycling certain plastic materials and electronic products also has environmental impacts. How do we reconcile both sides of the problem?

[Theresa McClenaghan]

One of the things CELA works on is toxic chemicals regulation. In particular, with respect to recycling products, we're quite concerned that we need to have much better disclosure and labelling about the toxic chemicals that might be found in plastics, for example. We also need traceability, so we can make sure that those plastics produced with toxic chemicals don't end up, for example, in children's toys.

In terms of electronics recycling, one of the concerns we have—not just electronics but various types of plastics—is that they can end up as very long-lived contaminants. There are campaigns going on in Europe, Canada and the U.S. around PFOS chemicals, for example. They are not only used for firefighting foam but are also in some plastics. These are finding their way into people's bodies in Canada.

Making sure we think about what we're recycling and what's in the materials that we're recycling is critical. As I mentioned at the outset, we will likely file an additional brief from CELA on that topic. The brief I filed so far was just on the topic of nuclear waste reprocessing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Masse, you have the floor.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Before I get to my questions, starting with Ms. Johnston-Billings, I want to preface them with a case that's taking place in Windsor right now. It's not electronic metals and plastics; it's Windsor Salt, which is now owned by Stone Canyon Industries, a holding company from the United States. They also bought a facility in Lindbergh, Alberta and closed it down. It had been there since 1948. They also bought K+S in the United States—salt.

Now there's a strike. They're known for union busting. That's really what they're doing. This is only the second strike in over 100 years. I think it was 30-something years before that. It's their own natural resource.

I'm looking at the situation you're going through right now with Teck Resources Limited. This committee is going to be looking at Bill C-34, which is important. Unfortunately, previous governments raised the threshold for review, including on our natural resources, to stop many of the reviews that could have taken place—should have taken place—of many industries. I'll be moving an amendment to the act that would include any natural resources, especially when you look at some of the critical minerals we have coming through for the electrification of vehicles and so forth, to get an automatic review despite size.

The reason I'm raising all of this is that what has been used in this parliamentary system for the two decades I've been here is, “Don't worry about it, we can do undertakings.” We've seen undertakings. They supposedly create a head office in Canada. Whether they have job guarantees for a short period of time or they have production, we've seen that to be a lie as well, when you look at U.S. Steel and Hamilton.

My question to you with regard to your situation is this: Have you guys looked at undertakings? I don't have any confidence in them. I'm just wondering about the thoughts of the board or any of your analysis as to how serious you think that might be, especially given the reputation that's been well earned by Glencore versus others. I think we're pretty much just giving away accountability.

Perhaps you can highlight that. That's our law. We can create undertakings, but enforcing them is another story.

[Amber Johnston-Billings]

Obviously, Glencore has a very poor track record when it comes to labour rights. To your first point, they've had 65 strikes since 2013. A number of those lasted 200-plus days, and in some cases they just shut down the asset instead of engaging with workers, so it's very problematic.

On the question of undertakings, I'm not in a position to be able to direct the federal government to look at this. All I can do is to continue providing the information I've provided today. We're aware that a net benefit review at a later point is absolutely part of the regulatory process.

I think you can see in Glencore's filings that they expect the regulatory process in Canada. I think it was referred to as almost a walk in the park, and it will take 12 months or so. We would like to highlight that we think it's very unlikely, given their practices, particularly around their corruption charges. Certainly we have asked the federal government to take a close look at this, but we're not in a position to ask for anything beyond that.

In terms of the decision they would make at a later date, that's in their court, but we welcome Bill C-34 and some of the amendments that might be made in there.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Yes. We'll look forward, potentially, to some of your testimony for that and include it. I know it would be interesting to have some of that.

The good news is that Peggy Nash, the NDP critic for industry, fought like heck when she was here to stop MacDonald Dettwiler from being sold off, so we stopped that.

I worked on potash when this country tried to decimate our potash. Imagine if we had done that, with the situation Ukraine right now. We almost gave that away with regard to farming and agriculture, because that was on the table.

I'd like to include you on the witness list for that.

I will quickly move to Ms. McClenaghan. With regard to the transportation of hazardous goods and materials, do you know how robust the information is out there? I've been working on the situation with the DGR. That's a nuclear waste facility that's planned, and its reach is about a kilometre and a half off Lake Huron. It's about the length of the CN Tower.

It was first turned down by Saugeen nations, and then they moved another kilometre away from there to attempt another go. This is about the storage of nuclear waste for over 100 million years. The previous ones that have been built include one in New Mexico that caught on fire. Also, we would then have to have radioactive material transported through different parts of Ontario from Darlington, other places and even potentially from the United States if it were to become a storage facility.

Can you give us a bit of an analysis of how safe those issues are? I was part of a campaign as well to stop nuclear waste going through the Great Lakes to be recycled in Scotland, of all places, and then returned to Canada. Putting it on the water obviously isn't the greatest thing.

At any rate, can you highlight that, please?

[Theresa McClenaghan]

That last proposal you spoke about was the proposal to ship steam generators that had been in use at Bruce Power. They withdrew that application because of public concern, first nations' concern, parliamentarians' concern and Great Lakes concern.

In terms of the DGRs, there have been two proposals. The first one that you talked about was going to be for low- and intermediate-level waste quite close to the lake. You're right. It got the EA approvals, but there was a commitment by Ontario Power Generation not to proceed unless the Saugeen Ojibway Nation gave their consent, which they did not.

This one that's now proposed by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization is for high-level nuclear fuel waste. They're down to two communities after looking at 22, and they're doing studies on those. One is in northwest Ontario, and one is in South Bruce.

In terms of transportation, there is only recently starting to be a bit of information from the Nuclear Waste Management Organization on transportation, but there are no containers yet that are approved for transporting that kind of quantity of nuclear fuel waste to the facility. Some transportation occurs. For example, there's the removal of some of the fuel from Whiteshell, which has gone already to the Chalk River laboratory in the Ottawa Valley.

There is extensive nuclear fuel waste transportation already going on in Canada, particularly in Ontario. That includes transport on the Great Lakes, as a matter of fact. The commissioners of the Nuclear Safety Commission have said there's extensive transportation.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Very quickly, because I know the chair is giving me a bit of extra time—

[Some hon. members]

Oh! Oh!

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

We put up with your notice of motion in the last thing, and it took a long time, so you can give me this one last moment really quickly.

Is it possible that we could be an importer of nuclear waste with our current trade agreements? Is that a possibility, if we get the facility built?

[Theresa McClenaghan]

It's not only that, but we already are. The nuclear waste policy that was just released by Canada a couple of weeks ago reconfirms that. It's actually quite concerning, particularly with cobalt-60, which is in itself quite a dangerous type of nuclear waste.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I'll now turn to Mr. Vis and Mr. Généreux for five minutes.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Can you give me a mark at two and a half minutes?

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Yes, I will.