Madam Speaker, it is incredibly dangerous to be right when one's government is so wrong. The NDP-Liberal government is wrong, and it is ignoring Canadians. It is ignoring the science, common sense, the cost of living crisis it created and the courts, when it tries to ban plastics. The NDP-Liberal government hates the facts on plastics. If Canadians are suffering now with skyrocketing bills, wait until the full ban of plastics is in effect.
Plastics make modern life affordable, reliable, practical and enjoyable. There are no Canadians left who can say the same about the Liberals. Wet, limp and utterly useless are paper straws, which Canadians are forced to use. They suck. Paper straws have a higher carbon footprint than plastic ones, making them worse for the environment. All the environmentally conscious people on the other side of the aisle, and we are conscious of the environment on this side, should remember that emissions are higher with a paper straw, and paper straws are worse for people.
Square this one for me: Canadians are suffering with the high cost of heating right now, which was driven up on purpose by the carbon tax to lower emissions. Although it is not working, that is the Liberals' intent. The same government is banning common consumer goods that have lower emissions than their replacements. The government is driving up emissions.
Someone please make sense of this. Grandma is turning down the heat this winter to lower emissions so the radical left can force Canadians to increase emissions in other parts of their lives. Does this make sense?
It is not just for the environment that paper straws suck; they are worse for our health. The science shows that the chemicals that coat paper products, making them somewhat waterproof, also unfortunately leach chemicals into our food and drink and then ultimately into our body. This is what the NDP-Liberals are forcing Canadians to use instead of plastic straws: an inferior product that is worse for their health. Is that not wacko? What they are doing is completely wacko.
Even as the science shows that the policy would hurt the environment and Canadians' health, it is also bad for Canadians' pocketbook during a cost of living crisis. Paper products cost more money than plastic ones. The ban would also make food more expensive because plastic extends the shelf life of food. That is why plastic-wrapped cucumbers last over two weeks longer.
Banning plastics would only drive up food costs, sending even more Canadians to the food bank. We know that over two million Canadians have to rely on a food bank because of the situation they find themselves in with the policies from the Liberal-NDP government. Conservatives will stop this soon. Do we want to make things cheaper for Canadians? We need to stop banning more affordable products. What Canadians really want is a ban on banning things, and the courts agree.
For the millions of Canadians who are thirsty for a common-sense change, dawn is breaking. There is a failing regime that is desperate to attract the most radical environmentalists to its cause. It has gone too far. Common-sense Canadians will soon punish the Liberal government, during a carbon tax election, for ignoring the science, ignoring the facts, ignoring the common sense, ignoring the provinces, ignoring the Constitution and ignoring its citizens. I believe that is why most Canadians are ignoring the Prime Minister.
In the end, it is not really about straws that suck or do not suck, or about flat wooden spoons, weird forks or even plastic itself. It is about power and control and about an out-of-control Liberal government that does not want to find practical solutions to problems but wants to virtue-signal for its shallow political interests; that is all the government is about right now. It is using the heavy hand of government to get its way.
We need a new government that is about practical solutions and not about feelings and virtue signals. Does the government even care about the garbage in our environment? This is the most infuriating thing for me: There is an issue here, and the government is addressing it with a ban that obviously has had zero effect on our climate and our environment.
Between 88% and 99% of the garbage in our oceans comes from 10 rivers in the developing world. Instead of the millions of dollars that we have wasted on the ban, what if we took a bit of that money and tried to introduce a waste disposal system in the developing world, which has the 10 rivers that are causing the majority of the problem? That is a common-sense approach: not to ban waste but to manage it, reuse it and ultimately recycle it.
I have a couple of common-sense—