Environment committee  Sure. On the first one, I'm going to defer to Ms. Mantagaris. She's even more passionate about the issue of advanced recycling than I am.

Environment committee  Look at the automotive sector. If we want to lighten our vehicles and make them more fuel efficient, if we want to electrify them, they need to be lightweight, and that means more plastics. In any car on the road today, there's a lot more plastic than there was in the vintage yo

Environment committee  I wouldn't go that far, Mrs. McLeod; I'd look in your own province of British Columbia. It is the North American leader in extended producer responsibility, and it is driving much farther ahead. That's the model that Quebec, Ontario and the other jurisdictions need to go to. We c

Environment committee  Thank you. I have a quick two-part answer. First, the federal government has provided support to three new proposed investments in the chemistry and plastics area through the strategic innovation fund. In every one of those, the investment from the federal government was tied i

Environment committee  Absolutely. The entire industry is focused on circularity, but it will require a lot of capital to get there. The biggest challenge is the recovery of post-consumer materials and making them available as feedstock. As Mr. Valiante said, that's the key contribution of extended pro

Environment committee  The government has not proposed to ban any personal protective equipment [Technical difficulty—Editor] that society's appreciation for plastics through the COVID pandemic means they are less certain in their determination to solve the plastic waste issue. We have to solve this

Environment committee  I am against. As proposed, it is not six items. It is all plastic manufactured items. That is completely inappropriate, and there's no risk assessment that supports it under the CEPA process.

Environment committee  Absolutely that's true, and I think you've heard that from Mr. Galt as well. Mr. Albas, I want to be clear. Our industry is not against government action in this area. In fact, we encouraged the Government of Canada and Minister Wilkinson to look at the right tools to do this.

Environment committee  I think I started by saying society and Parliament demand action in this area, and we agree. I'm not sure why the government is making the choices it is; it is expeditious to act quickly with the tools you have rather than to develop new ones. There are also issues around the rol

Environment committee  I think this is a key question; that's the whole point here. The Canadian Environmental Protection Act's schedule 1 is meant to address chemical substances. We think of things like asbestos. Someone mentioned PFAS earlier. It's meant to look at those kinds of things. What is bein

Environment committee  I tried to talk about two levels of impact, one definitely, and the list is a precursor to that. The bans will definitely impact the smaller companies. The question of listing plastics as toxic, however, does send a signal about the ambivalence at best, as I said, of Canada as an

Environment committee  I'll talk very briefly about the investment, but I think Ms. Mantagaris can talk more about the impacts on the business. Again, our industry has seen $300 billion of investment in the U.S. in the last seven years. That's half of all manufacturing investment. Most of that has be

Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for this opportunity. I'm pleased once again to be joined by my colleague, Elena Mantagaris. As we mentioned the last time we spoke just a few short weeks ago, Canada's chemistry and plastics industry does share Parliament's an

Environment committee  That's correct.

Environment committee  All Canadian governments of all stripes have been fully committed to the Basel Convention since day one, including—and I think you folks are a little aggressive here—