Madam Speaker, in 2018, it was my colleague from Courtenay—Alberni who proposed a national strategy against plastic pollution.
I want to thank my colleagues for helping me out on this today. I just had a little trip in the hallway, and it has me a bit flustered.
My colleague proposed a national strategy against plastic pollution that was agreed to by all parties but has yet to be implemented by the Liberal government. Thanks to a motion by former MP Megan Leslie, in 2015, plastic microbeads are now banned in consumer products. In addition, Canada has made legally binding international commitments to reducing plastic pollution and to being plastic-free by 2030. This can only be done by advancing policies on plastic, not by tearing them down, which this bill does, but this is the culture of the regressive Conservatives.
Canada has a responsibility as a rich and developed country to reduce our waste and to be a climate leader on the international stage. We cannot let the regressive Conservatives, kowtowing to the petrochemical industry, set the tone for our international commitments to people. An NDP government would end all public financing and subsidies of petrochemical companies, meaning big oil and gas, that profit from producing more plastics. Corporations that are fuelling the climate crisis and our pollution problem should not be getting rich off their pollution, and they should definitely not be getting government handouts to help them do it.
Ending government handouts to fossil fuel companies is something the residents of Port Moody—Coquitlam want. They want their government to take real steps toward putting an end to pollution. They are also concerned about the proliferation of plastics in their lives and in the ocean.
The last NDP MP for my riding of Port Moody—Coquitlam was Fin Donnelly. He stood in the House over six years ago to share that it was Canadians who first proposed World Ocean Day at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. However, over 30 years later, the issues are more overwhelming than ever before. Climate change, plastic pollution, open-net salmon farming, illegal fishing and habitat destruction all need immediate attention. This cannot continue, and that is why New Democrats are moving forward to end plastic pollution. We are not going backwards as the Conservatives continue to do.
Canadians want their governments to take action, and they are also taking action by organizing beach cleanups, banning plastic bags and saying no to more plastic. It is time the Conservatives also get a climate plan and address this pressing issue, although solutions to pollution and climate change require a belief in science, which the Conservatives do not know much about.
It was the Harper government that attacked science and scientists. An investigation by the Information Commissioner of Canada showed that the Harper government muzzled scientists. The investigation came about after a complaint by the University of Victoria's Environmental Law Centre clinic and the advocacy group Democracy Watch. The group submitted a report detailing a series of examples of Harper government officials blocking media access to scientists. In one case, the government scientist was ordered to get permission from the minister of natural resources before he could talk to reporters about a flood that happened 13,000 years ago, even though this research had been published in the journal Nature. Another example is that it took 11 government employees and 50 emails to decide how to answer a reporter's request to interview a Canadian government scientist who was part of a NASA team studying regional snowfall patterns.
It was shown that most of the muzzling involved scientists researching climate change. We cannot go back to the Conservative era. We know Conservatives do not have a climate plan; they do not believe in reducing fossil fuel emissions to slow down catastrophic climate change. In fact, the Conservatives are trying to reduce the very important climate change discussions down to a dislike of paper straws and coffee cup lids. They are deeply unserious, and they are not up to the challenges of the 21st century. In fact, if they could get their way, they would roll us all back to the years of bench seats in cars with no seat belts and no concerns for the emissions they produce.
That is not the only thing they would roll back. They would roll back women's rights, the pension eligibility age for seniors, climate protection policies, affordable child care, dental care, pharmacare and indigenous sovereignty. We just need to look at what the B.C. Conservatives have already said: Provincially, they would undo commitments to UNDRIP. These are the realities that Canadians would experience with a regressive Conservative government.
I want to go back to the oceans. Oceana published a report in 2020 called “Drowning in Plastic”. It shares that Canada introduces millions of tonnes of plastic, and 87% of it ends up in landfills or in the environment. Much of the plastic we discard ends up in the ocean, threatening whales, birds, turtles and all marine life. Canada has a national and global responsibility to stop the damage and do more, not less, to stop this pollution.
Unfortunately, doing less is what the Conservatives always do. In the three years the current Parliament has been sitting, they have done nothing for Canadians; the NDP continues to bring about wins for Canadians, such as in housing, child care, anti-scab legislation, dental care and pharmacare.
With that, in closing, I ask for unanimous consent to table, in both official languages, the report I quoted earlier: “Drowning in Plastic” from Oceana Canada, dated September 2020.