Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for YorkâSimcoe for bringing forward this important issue. We should never be offloading our garbage to other countries that cannot deal with it. It is appalling to me that the government fought to continue this terrible practice.
One of the things advocates have flagged as a concern with the bill is that, as it is currently written, it leaves open loopholes that could allow Canada to only apply the ban to non-recyclable plastic waste, when we know the majority of the waste in plastic pollution being shipped overseas is deemed recyclable in Canada, but in reality, is not able to be dealt with by the countries receiving these plastics and electronics. We know that the government, for all its talk, fought against the Basel Convention and would use loopholes to continue this atrocious practice.
Is the member open to amending the bill to ensure it is, in fact, banning exports of all plastic waste, deemed recyclable or not, which is impacting human health and the environment in countries predominately in the global south that often do not have the infrastructure to handle it?