Madam Speaker, I will begin by acknowledging that I am speaking from the traditional territory of the WSÁNEC Nation, which is among the Coast Salish nations of southern Vancouver Island. Hych'ka Siem.
I also want to start by congratulating my hon. colleague, although I am not sure if I should congratulate him since he was already the parliamentary secretary for transport. Now he gets to debate me in the late show, because he is the parliamentary secretary for environment and climate change.
The question I asked of the hon. Minister of Environment and Climate Change on December 8 related to Canada essentially exercising the loophole on our shipment of plastic waste to other countries. Long ago, we entered into the Basel Convention on hazardous waste, which prevents the export of hazardous waste to other countries except under certain conditions and with their prior, informed consent. In our move to eliminate ocean plastics, Canada and countries around the world worked to amend the Basel Convention such that plastics on their way to be recycled in other countries could be treated on different levels: as hazardous materials or acceptable for shipment to other countries. At a certain level, annex II plastic waste requires prior and informed consent.
The problem here, as I put it to the Minister of Environment on December 8, is that Canada has entered into an agreement with the United States, which has never ratified the Basel Convention. It is not a party to the convention, and that has created a loophole allowing the U.S. to send non-conforming plastic waste to other countries.
The Minister of Environment answered my question by confirming that the United States is not a party to the Basel Convention, which was part of my question, and then he went on to say that the agreement between Canada and the United States dealt with waste vis-à-vis our two countries. However, that does not deal with the U.S. exporting further to non-OECD countries.
There is an increased level of concern about Canada exploiting this potential loophole, and there are things we could do about it. We could ensure that we amend our agreement with the United States to specify that it must deal exclusively with non-hazardous plastic waste as scheduled under annex IX of the Basel Convention. We could ratify the Basel ban ourselves to ensure that no plastic waste is exported to non-OECD countries. We could extend our manufactured plastic waste strategy under schedule 1 of CEPA to actually enact our ban on single-use, non-essential plastic. We could expand our integrated management plan and our approach for plastic products.
There is much more we could do to ensure that the side agreement Canada has executed with the United States creates all the same protections for the export of plastic products from Canada to the United States as would be the case if the United States has ratified the Basel Convention. We are not able to say that today. There is more to be done to ensure there is no loophole.
While on the subject of plastic waste, I think we need to expand beyond single-use plastics to look at polystyrene, which has many uses in a marine context. Wharves and buoys break down very quickly. These bits of styrofoam, or polystyrene, in our waters and on our beaches are a real threat to marine life, but they are not necessarily categorized as single-use products. They are more durable, but they break down. They are really a threat.