Mr. Speaker, certainly, I have to give the government credit for finally starting to take action on this. When I first raised this in the House two years ago, around the Hanjin, I asked questions of the government about taking action in support of our communities, but I could not get an answer. In fact, the Prime Minister continued to cite the oceans protection plan, but there was no mention of plastics at all or marine debris in the oceans protection plan. I could not get an answer from any department, whether it be the Department of Environment, Transport or Fisheries and Oceans.
However, I will commend the Minister of Environment and Climate Change for finally starting to take action on this issue and pulling together the ocean plastics charter, which is a beginning, but we need an actual national strategy so that we can develop goals and hard targets. The government is talking about making sure that we have a circular economy and more recycling, but that is not good enough. We actually need to reduce the amount of plastic that we are using.
There is a lot of leakage when it comes to plastic into our ecosystem, and we need to protect our environment. Other countries have taken leadership. The government has done a lot of great talking. It is moving forward with a lot conversations, but we have not seen any action. It has not created any regulations, like the EU, which has set a target of 2021 to remove plastic cutlery and plates from its environment.
What I would like to see is the government actually do something. This strategy would create the framework so that it can set those hard targets and work with all levels of government to take real action. That is what Canadians are looking for.