Liberals hurting Canadians with Single-Use Plastic Ban

In these unprecedented times, there have been many who’ve made equally unprecedented efforts to put their own safety on the line during a pandemic just to ensure people have essentials they need to go on. These unprecedented times however have also brought a new breed of shameful opportunists, whom upon hearing of a “new normal” think of it as their chance for the “new bait-and-switch.”

Why are we suddenly labelling plastics “toxic” when they are needed now more than ever? Why are plastic barriers that could prevent us from getting COVID-19 going to be put in the same industrial category as substances that can cause one to die within minutes?

When governments and businesses started realizing that plastic barriers would be paramount to safely re-open and to protect essential workers, the demand for plastic skyrocketed! Despite this, some including the Federal Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, wish to put plastics like reusable personal protective equipment (PPE) in the same category for industrial substances like mercury, asbestos, and lead. Those have immediate and/or long term health effects. The use of “toxic” as a label for substances like those is meant for the promotion of “safety”. Not for opportunist politicians to use whenever and however they wish to please eco-terrorists who try to do a sit in on the top of airliners thinking they are saving the planet… somehow.

If one would try to claim wearing those protective plastics is “toxic”, that person would probably convince others less of the need for a plastic ban and more on that person’s need for a capable psychiatrist. One can already picture the circular conversations some MPs will be having with their Nurse constituents when parliament goes for break, saying that their PPE is safe, but also trying to convince them that plastics they use to guard their face need to technically be categorized as “toxic”.

So why are we even considering this now? The reason is because eco-extremists everywhere have been calling to turn the “new normal” into, the Green New Deal, The New Green Recovery, or The New Socialism. Their goals do not seem primarily concerned with getting people back to work, but are only concerned in re-branding the exact same policy proposals they had before COVID-19 was a problem. After the lockdown did more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than they ever have and ever will, no one really wants to listen to their rhetoric on emissions or the need to simply phase out our economy anymore, even in the home of the extinction rebellion. Likely because people have gotten a taste of what these rapid “transitions” for workers in carbon intensive industries would feel like during the lockdown, and they don’t like it.

Single-use plastic is a hollow issue in Canada

Getting to a “new normal” is not the reason their measures “need” to be implemented. It’s just the new excuse because the previous ones from the pre-covid reality didn’t hold up under closer examination. Canada isn’t even a major culprit of improper plastic disposal. The overwhelming majority of plastic dumping in the ocean comes from the developing world where governments can’t or simply won’t dispose of their plastics properly. Often just dumping it on the shoreline to let the tide take it out to sea. Shooting our environmentally conscious people in the foot during the middle of a pandemic is not going to change the ignorance of other countries towards their own environment.

At best, this plastic ban is going to be significantly watered down to make it practical, or at worst, it’s going to be another self-inflicted headache of the Trudeau government. The latter would most likely only be finally fixed if and when an administration less prone to appeasing eco-extremists takes over. At any rate, one can expect the liberal government will make every effort to keep its tid-bit label in place, just for self-promotional sake. Style over substance has always been what this administration has been about.

Yes, we can and should have a mature and fair conversation on how to reduce the use of single-use plastics overtime, as well to better prevent plastics from being dumped into the environment. But as a representative of the plastics industry has stated, “Putting plastics up there with chemicals that kill people is just giving critics of the plastics industry a chance to use a label for their own interests.” This is nothing more, than yet another foreign backed eco-extremism attempt to drop-kick Alberta and Canada’s energy sector, which is one of the biggest suppliers of plastics.

Their intent is not to help the recovery, but to control the language we are allowed to use in the environmental debate, so as to ensure we can only be allowed to promote their ideals. There is simply no reason why we can’t reduce our usage of single use plastics through properly made legislation without labeling plastics as “toxic”. It will accomplish nothing more than further hindering our own recovery and making eco-extremists once again content in thinking they accomplished something, when they haven’t done anything.