EPR is being rolled out across the country. British Columbia has the more mature system in place, but there's also Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, Yukon and the Atlantic provinces. There's quite a lot of development on EPR, which is essentially about transferring the responsibility and cost of managing the end of life of a product from the communities to the private sector.
An expansion of the EPR programs across the country is happening. There are two gaps. One gap is in harmonization. They do not all look the same. For the industry, that makes it more difficult for them to comply with different sets of systems. That's what we're working on with the CCME. The other gap is the geographic gap in the types of products covered.
The industry has an important role to play. They do control important levers that will make plastics easy to manage. They are recognizing it through, for example, the Canada Plastics Pact. In terms of reducing the complexity of plastics packaging so that it's easier to recycle, sometimes it's multi-layered or has a lot of additives. That makes it very hard to recycle.
The report, which my colleague from Environmental Defence Canada will be able to speak more about afterwards, shows that voluntary actions alone won't work. There's a need for jurisdictions to mandate some requirements.