Let's start with the latest Conference Board of Canada research on Canada's waste management system. As a whole, we ranked 17th, which is pretty bad, but it's really bad when you realize there were only 17 countries ranked in that study.

We've talked a lot about the manufacturing system and the recycling system, and one of the gaps we have is in Canadians' lack of self-awareness about where we stand in the world and how we're doing.

I want to get back to Mr. Fast's comment about the economy, because I think that's an important piece. I'll take Ontario again as an example, because it's relevant to a number of members here. If the 25% that is diverted from the waste stream right now moved up to, say, 65%—which is achieved in many other OECD countries and some European countries we're familiar with—it would add $1.5 billion to the Ontario GDP. It would create upwards of 13,000 jobs. That's a number that most of us, as elected people, can really understand and appreciate the significance of.

Oftentimes we see this in terms of the cost and the impact on industry as it currently stands. I would argue that we also need to flip that around and say, “What is the current cost of inaction or of the status quo?” I'm not saying we are not acting, but are we acting aggressively enough? Are we making all of the smart moves? This is just from the economic lens, never mind the other two lenses. It also costs our fishing industry something in the order of $1 trillion a year. To a west coast MP, that matters.

You asked about other jurisdictions. The European Union certainly has been in the lead. We have also seen...not just on the producing side but on the receiving side. As I mentioned before, it's not just China. There are a number of other developing nations that traditionally received recycled materials from the west but are no longer receiving them and are changing their own standards.

You can look around globally. There are seven major rivers in the world that contribute most of the waste we see in the Pacific Ocean. We can say that this is a China problem or a Sri Lanka problem. Well, they didn't create the plastic, necessarily. They received it from us. Some of it was recycled, but a bunch of it wasn't. A bunch of it ended up in the streams that end up in the ocean, and we look at the gyre in the middle of the Pacific Ocean as a problem.

Getting back to Mr. Amos's question, the U.K. government has been very aggressive around banning single-use plastics. I've had drinks out of non-plastic straws. They worked fine. Ed and I will have to compare notes. You're not meant to reuse them over and over again. That might be too aggressive a Conservative position.

Nathan Cullen

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