Plastic bags are disappearing from Canadian retailer checkouts after the federal government banned them last year, along with a handful of other single-use plastic items such as straws and disposable takeout cutlery. But just as businesses and consumers were adapting, a court ruling overturned the policy, a key part of Canada’s effort to be among the “world leaders in fighting plastic pollution.”
Regulations banning six single-use plastic materials have been banned: chopsticks, plastic checkout bags, cutlery, straws, six-pack rings and some foodservice packaging. announced last June by Environment and Climate Change Canada. The government first issued a Cabinet order to regulate such plastics in 2021, declaring the items to be toxic substances under the legislation Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
But Judge Angela Furlanetto of the Federal Court governed The government’s classification went overboard on Thursday, calling the designated items “too broad to list” as toxic substances. He said the government order was “unreasonable and unconstitutional.”
The government “acted outside of its authority” and the decision to add plastic items to the list of toxic substances “was not supported by the evidence” it had available, Judge Furlanetto wrote.
The decision gave victory to the coalition of plastic producers and industry groups that challenged the government’s ban, including Imperial Oil, Nova Chemicals and Dow Chemical, one of the world’s largest single-use plastic producers.
“Alberta wins again,” Danielle Smith, the province’s premier, said in a news conference declaration, highlighting its province’s key role in plastics production, having Canada’s largest petrochemical sector and being the country’s largest supplier of natural gas. Both Alberta and Saskatchewan submitted submissions to the court as interveners, objecting to what officials argued was an overreach of federal jurisdiction.
The government is reviewing the court’s ruling and “seriously considering an appeal,” Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said in a statement. declaration posted on X, the social media site.
[From The Times’s Style Desk: Trying to Live a Day Without Plastic]
The decision is the third “blow to the federal government’s agenda in recent times” from environmental policy,” Mark Winfield, a professor in the faculty of environmental and urban change at York University in Toronto, told me.
The two previous setbacks mentioned by Professor Winfield occurred in October, when the Supreme Court ruled that several sections of a law covering environmental impact assessments, a widely used process for considering how infrastructure projects might affect the environment, they were unconstitutional. Later that month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also announced that the government would temporarily lift the carbon tax on home heating oil to address the high cost of living, in a move that some environmentalists decried as backtrack on its climate goals and environmental agenda.
One of these goals is to achieve zero plastic waste by 2030.
“We are disappointed in the decision,” said Lindsay Beck, a lawyer with Ecojustice, a Toronto environmental law group, who represented two other organizations as they appeared before the court. “By listing plastic as a toxic substance, the Government has taken a really important first step towards curbing plastic pollution.”
Unlike these more complicated policy issues, dealing with the court’s ruling on single-use plastics could be a matter of the government narrowing the list of toxic substances, Professor Winfield said, identifying, for example, specific types of plastics and resins.
“This is probably fixable to some extent,” Professor Winfield said. “They need to go back and be more specific about what exactly – types of plastic and uses of plastic – they are actually banning, and that is something that would have a reasonable chance of surviving a constitutional challenge. “It would be the quickest thing to do.”
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A jury has convicted Nathaniel Veltman of first-degree murder in the killing of a Muslim family in London, Ont., two years ago with a pickup truck. A judge will then decide whether the attack constitutes terrorism.
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The mansion perched on the waterfront in Burlington, Ontario has an elevator, three-car garage and home theater. There’s also a stream of angry knockers looking for the “crypto king” who previously lived there, scaring away its new owner, an NBA star who is suing to quash the sale of the house.
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The oft-forgotten “Emily of New Moon” series, written by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery, turns 100.
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Peter Nygard, the former fashion mogul, was found guilty of sexual assault against four women who were aged between 16 and 28 at the time of the crimes.
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Vivian Silver, a Canadian-Israeli peace activist believed to be taken hostage by Hamas, was killed in the initial attack on October 7, her son confirmed.
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British Columbia hikers following a route shown on Google Maps that turned out to be nonexistent led to two recent search and rescue missions.
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In her long-awaited new memoir, Barbra Streisand writes that she found Pierre Trudeau, the former prime minister of Canada, “very dapper, intelligent, intense… sort of a combination of Albert Einstein and Napoleon (laboratory only) . And he was doing important work. “I was dazzled.” The New York Times books staff has compiled a list of the best parts of her autobiography.
Vjosa Isai is a journalist and researcher for the New York Times in Toronto.
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