BREAKING Speaker kicks Poilievre out of Commons over unparliamentary comments
Speaker Greg Fergus kicked Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre out of the House of Commons during question period today.
Canadians appear to be slowly cutting back on their use of plastic straws and grocery bags ahead of a national ban on such items that will take effect next month, new statistics show.
The Canadian government is looking to curb domestic plastic pollution by the end of the decade as negotiations toward a formal plastics management treaty begin this week in Uruguay.
Canada is one of nearly three dozen countries lobbying heavily for an international agreement that would end global plastic pollution by 2040.
"Enough is enough," Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said in a tweet.
About 22 million tonnes of plastic ends up where it shouldn't every year, including in lakes, rivers and oceans worldwide, he said. In Canada, about 29,000 tonnes of plastic garbage, mainly packaging, ends up in the environment each year.
Another 3.3 million tonnes of plastic garbage ends up in landfills. Less than one-tenth of the plastic Canadians throw out is actually recycled.
In a bid to cut down on all plastic waste, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised in 2019 that some single-use plastics would be banned by 2021. It took the government a year longer than it planned to figure out which items to ban and how to do it.
The final regulations were published in June, and as of Dec. 20, it will no longer be legal in Canada to manufacture or import most plastic shopping bags or straws, along with stir sticks, cutlery and takeout containers. One year later, the sale of those items will also be banned.
The manufacturing and importing of six-pack plastic rings for drink containers will be banned in June 2023, with their sale ending a year after that.
The six single-use items the government is starting with meet two criteria: they are commonly found polluting nature, and they can be replaced by readily available alternatives that already exist.
In the lead-up to the ban, some Canadian retailers proactively moved away from single-use items, with grocers such as Sobeys eliminating plastic carry bags and many restaurants replacing plastic straws with paper versions.
There are early signs the use of some plastic items is already falling.
A Statistics Canada survey on households and the environment taken every two years found that between 2019 and 2021, the number of Canadians who regularly used plastic straws fell slightly, and the number who more regularly remembered to bring reusable bags on shopping trips went up.
In 2019, 23 per cent of Canadians reported using at least one plastic straw a week, a number that fell to 20 per cent two years later. Manitoba was the only province that bucked that trend, with 29 per cent of respondents using at least one straw a week in 2021 compared to 26 per cent in 2019.
Quebec residents used straws the least, with 16 per cent reporting using at least one per week in 2021, a number almost unchanged from 2019.
Statistics Canada said that in 2021, 97 per cent of Canadians used their own reusable bags or containers when grocery shopping, up only slightly from 96 per cent in 2019. But the number who said they always used them went from 43 per cent in 2019 to 51 per cent in 2021.
Ending single-use shopping bags may have the biggest effect in Saskatchewan, where fewer than two in five respondents remembered their own bags or bins for every shopping trip in 2021, though that proportion is up from less than a third two years earlier.
In Quebec, more than two-thirds of people said they always used their own bags or bins to shop, up slightly from three in five people in 2019.
Canada is in the midst of consulting to develop national standards on plastic products with a view to making recycling them easier. The country's low recycling rates are blamed in part on the fact that a wide variety of plastics are used, which is difficult for recycling facilities to handle.
Canada is among the most wasteful countries in the world. World Bank data on municipal solid waste show that, on average, every Canadian throws out 706 kilograms of garbage each year.
Among G7 countries, that is higher than everywhere but the United States, which discards 812 kilograms per person each year. In Germany the average is 609 kilograms, in France it's 548 kilograms, in Italy 499 kilograms, in the United Kingdom 463 kilograms and in Japan 399 kilograms.
Factoring in industrial, electronic and business waste, Canada shoots to the top of the pack internationally, producing more than 36 tonnes of garbage per person a year.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 29, 2022.
Speaker Greg Fergus kicked Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre out of the House of Commons during question period today.
A police chase which started with a liquor store robbery in Bowmanville Monday night ended in tragedy some 20 minutes later when a suspect fleeing police entered Highway 401 in the wrong direction and caused a pileup which killed an infant and the child's grandparents, as well as the suspect, investigators say.
When an ambulance took David Lippert to the hospital in March of 2023, the 68-year-old Kitchener, Ont., executive was hoping to find out why he was feeling weak and unable to walk. Some 24 hours later, he was found unresponsive in the ER.
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland will be tabling yet another omnibus bill to pass a sweeping range of measures promised in her April 16 federal budget, though left out of the legislation will be the government's proposed capital gains tax change.
Air Canada has paused a new seat selection fee for travellers booked on the lowest fares just days after implementing it.
The federal Conservatives made good on their promise to push for former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney to testify before MPs, resulting in a heated political debate in Ottawa on Tuesday.
McGill University says it has 'requested police assistance' about the pro-Palestinian encampment on its lower field.
London Drugs says it is working with third-party security experts as the company tries to reopen dozens of stores across Western Canada that were shuttered by a cybersecurity incident Sunday.
Donald Trump was held in contempt of court Tuesday and fined US$9,000 for repeatedly violating a gag order that barred him from making public statements about witnesses, jurors and some others connected to his New York hush money case. And if he does it again, the judge warned, he could be jailed.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.