Science and Research Committee on Sept. 19th, 2024

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you.

When it comes to green design, how could the federal government, as a leader, make a difference?

[Mathieu Laneuville]

At this time, not much is being done in the way of green design. Each producer decides what product to put on the market, and the result is a bit of a jumble. Sometimes, products contain a bit of paper, a bit of glass, a bit of plastic and a bit of metal. Obviously, it's quite difficult to then recover this type of product.

Green design helps us to determine the best product for a given type of good. Furthermore, at the end of the production line, we can make good use of the material. The value chain must make sense in economic, environmental and human health terms.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you.

I would now like you to talk about eco-labelling. In concrete terms, what could the federal government do to take action in that area?

[Mathieu Laneuville]

I'll give a very simple example—the famous recycling symbol with a number inside it. We think that is still too complicated for Canadians. It should just be a check mark or an X, which would be simple for everyone. That way, people wouldn't wonder whether the product is recyclable or not. A simple eco-labelling system would clearly make life easier for Canadians. It is often said that Canadians are not doing enough, but I feel that the challenge has more to do with the system than with them.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much.

You talked about the government setting an example. I'd like to come back to that, since it's important. People are watching us and listening to us, but they are also interested in the actions taken and the results. As we know, the Government of Canada has never managed to meet the greenhouse gas reduction targets it had set. It's related. We want to ban single-use plastics, reduce the reliance on plastics and reduce products that are not recyclable.

However, the current government has taken concrete action by buying a pipeline. As a result of this $34-billion expenditure, the daily production of oil will increase from 300,000 barrels to 890,000 barrels. That's a 200% increase. According to the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, this will lead to an increase in greenhouse gases, from 21 million tonnes to 26 million tonnes a year. As you know, the government says it's green. And yet, I have personally never met a vegetarian who owns a butcher shop, but perhaps someone will tell me otherwise today.

We are increasing the production of greenhouse gases and, at the same time, we want to fight climate change with good intentions when it comes to recycling plastic. Does that constitute exemplary action based on scientific data?

[Mathieu Laneuville]

The answer is in the question.

We feel that the important thing when it comes to plastics is eco-design. That is the crux of the matter. Eco-design is what we need to take away from today. We have to get the best products to market, and the life cycle has to be based on science. That's our recommendation.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

In concrete terms, is a pipeline like Trans Mountain recyclable?

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Answer quickly, please, yes or no, because that's our time.

[Mathieu Laneuville]

No.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you.

MP Cannings, it's your turn for six minutes, please.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

I'm going to start with Mr. Merante from Oceana.

You were commenting on what we have in Canada, the cross we have to bear, if you will. We have a federal system where the federal government is responsible for certain things and the provinces for others. Often, there's a lot of overlap. In a big project like this, getting rid of plastics in the environment, everybody has to be pulling in the same direction, as they say, and working together. There has to be that co-operation.

Every province has its own regulations. I'm from British Columbia, where, for instance, every beverage container of any sort.... If you buy something that's ready to drink, whether it's four gallons or 10 millilitres, you have to pay a recycling fee. You get money when you bring it back. Naturally, all that stuff is pretty much recycled in British Columbia. I know it's different in other provinces. I remember my kids picking up a ton of cans and stuff on the beaches of Newfoundland and being disappointed at how little they got.

Can you comment on that whole system, and what kind of co-operation there is? Is there a real effort now to move in the same direction?

[Anthony Merante]

You are correct. It is a multi-jurisdictional patchwork. I think that was also exemplified by Circular Materials earlier today.

I will say, though, that there are good instances where provinces are leading. Then, by contrast, their neighbours are falling behind. Alberta regulates the standard design of beverage containers. For that reason, they have very good recycling and recapture rates. They also add on a handling or deposit fee. Saskatchewan is also extremely good at it. Manitoba does not have it. Ontario just rejected it. They have terrible recycling rates. In Quebec, you can go to any return depot, regardless of material, alcoholic or not, and you can bring it back.

This notion of ecodesign is happening, but it's not national. You've heard asks from industry, the Canada Plastics Pact and national recyclers for a unified or harmonized plan. This is the obstacle in a large country, geographically. There are a lot of instances where, if you want to have co-operative recycling and collection systems, it may actually be more feasible for Ontario and Quebec to share resources with Maine, New York or Pennsylvania, rather than keeping it completely in Canada and shipping it all the way to British Columbia or Saskatchewan. That is something we have to take into account. An international plastics treaty can help with that. CUSMA can help with that, but we need to know what is in our market.

If we want to have recycled content, we need to recapture our own materials and integrate that, but we need to do it in a healthy and safe manner. We're finding that everyday plastic chemicals in a lot of these materials are inhibiting recyclability. Ecodesign is not just about the material. It is about what is unknown in the product right now: dyes, additives and bisphenols. A lot of single-use plastic materials have PFAS, bisphenols and things that are endocrine-disrupting. It's not just in single-use plastic straws. It's in forks, takeout containers and overwrap. We should be more transparent and truthful with consumers about what they are interacting with, especially high-priority materials they are interacting with: clothing, food packaging, baby toys and baby food, very specifically.

There needs to be more transparency. It's not that national harmonization can come through that, but there is a jurisdictional play. I think co-operation would be encouraged.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

How much farther do we have to go in terms of reducing the amount of plastic we have to deal with and recycle? I go to the grocery store and buy something in a plastic tub or styrofoam container, but it's also wrapped in plastic—things like that.

Is that regulated provincially, too, or is there something the federal government can do?

[Anthony Merante]

That's not regulated at all.

This is, I think, a very important notion for people to understand: If you want recycling to work, you cannot just keep pretending it works. You have to be okay with regulating. The most conservative provinces regulate. The most progressive provinces regulate. It's nothing to be fearful of, because you are just improving the quality of a product you are presenting to the Canadian market. You can sell yourselves as creating safe, viable products for your consumers.

I don't think it's right that we are selling Canadians garbage. That is the reality of our recycling system and our plastics market right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

You have 39 seconds.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Okay. I'll turn to the other witnesses.

I think it was you who brought up labelling. Is there some way we can change labelling that would make sorting easier down the line—putting on bar codes or something? I know there's a little symbol. Maybe you can scan it, but I know that's difficult. Is there something we can do, other than the check mark you mentioned, to help the sorting later, to automate it?

[Mathieu Laneuville]

This is good, but we also—as we talked about before—want to ban compostable plastic and all of that, because it brings confusion to consumers.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I was going to mention that, too, but I don't have time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you. That's your time.

We will start a second round, then, for five minutes.

MP Kitchen.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for being here. I didn't get a chance to thank all the witnesses who were here in our last hour, but I do want to mention one thing, which is that a lot of the conversation in the first hour is also being reiterated and reinforced in the conversations we're having today in this hour, and I appreciate that.

One of the things we talked about a little bit in the last hour was public education. You have all talked about public education, and to me that's probably the number one policy that I would love to hear from people on. That's what we need to start, because we don't have that. I believe today we see the population not paying attention to how they were taught in school to recycle. They're not doing that. I see adults walking around here in the House of Commons and.... Granted, it is not plastics, but the reality is that I see people throwing their cigarette butts—just throwing them out. Do they not understand that a cigarette butt is basically a piece of trash that is not rapidly biodegradable and it is destroying...? But they do that.

The same is true with bottles. You see people driving along and they just throw them out. People collect them along the highways to try to raise funds. These are great things that should be done, and we're not doing them. We need to educate Canadians. Canadians are watching this show. I hope they are paying attention and hearing about how we need to start doing that. That is something that needs to be done.

I'm wondering, from your point of view, what the industry can do to try to help with that education.

That goes to both of you, but I'll start with Anthony, please.

[Anthony Merante]

I agree with you that it is very common to see people misplace plastic products everywhere. It happens all the time. We walk down a beach, and there's garbage everywhere.

I do think, though, that as elected officials, you should be meeting your population where they are, at that point. Laying the blame on the consumer is not the right approach to take. There is partial blame, and I agree with that 100%, but it is not the vast majority.

I think it would be very hard for most Canadians to walk down the grocery aisle and not find packaging that is confusing and only plastic. Growing up, I used to be able to buy baby food in glass and metal. It didn't matter where I threw that. It got recycled. A lot of things used to be unpackaged. Now I have to figure out whether my flexible plastic—because I've been taught plastic is recyclable—is recyclable, and in my province, it is not. It will get burned or it will go to landfill.

We need to meet in the middle here. The products that are simply very confusing, harmful to our health, single-use or just not durable or viable will just end up in the garbage.

That is where regulation should come into play. You should present durable, quality products to people. On that level, once you do have these quality products on the market...because there's no denying that something like berries—unless they're very fresh and you get them in a nice little plastic pouch or paper pouch—have to come in a PET thing to transport them over long distances from California in the winter. They require that, but we need to have labels that are—

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I have only a limited amount of time to get questions in.

Mr. Laneuville, could we have just a quick comment on the same issue?

[Mathieu Laneuville]

For us, the first thing is reduction. We can work on the recuperation, but the first thing is to reduce the amount of plastic that we have. For us, there's so much more plastic on the market than should be there, but if it's there, as you said, we must inform the citizens where it goes. It must be simplified. We must bring back trust in the system, because people don't trust it, given the results we have, and we should also have education in schools and teach about where it goes.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you very much.

Don't get me wrong—I don't believe that's the only thing, but it is something that needs to be done and, from a government point of view, it is something that we should be communicating to Canadians quite heavily on, the aspect of getting that education so people understand that.

Mr. Laneuville, I can't remember the percentage you said, but you talked about basically microplastics in brains. I think you said it was one-third of our brains.

[Mathieu Laneuville]

Half a per cent of the weight of our brain is microplastics now.