JAY GOLDBERG: Scrapping single-use plastics should not be last domino to fall

Yet another domino has fallen in former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s failed climate strategy. Quietly, just before Christmas, the federal government announced what will effectively be the end of its ban on the export of single-use plastics.

The government’s rationale? Tariffs and supply chain issues are “creating significant pressure on the domestic economy.”

Apparently, the federal government finally recognized that the environmental benefits of its export ban on products like plastic straws, cutlery, grocery bags, ring carriers and stir sticks would not have been proportional to its economic impact.

As the government wrote in the Canadian Gazette, “Restricting access to economic opportunities in the global markets for these (single-use plastics) adversely impacts a segment of Canadian business activity by displacing domestic producers in favour of other competitors in the global marketplace.”

Thus, because Canadian producers simply would have been displaced by producers elsewhere, there would not have been significant reductions in plastic pollution either at home or abroad should the ban have gone into effect.

Rationale can be applied elsewhere

One can only hope the federal government will come to recognize that its rationale on this plastics issue can be applied to a whole host of other areas.

For example, a few years ago, when the leaders of Germany and Japan came to Canada and asked the Trudeau government to crank up liquified natural gas (LNG) production, they were told by our former prime minister that there was “no business case” to do so. And so those countries went elsewhere.

Similarly, when the federal Liberal government passed law after law making it virtually impossible to build new pipelines, ideologues in the Trudeau government were hoping to keep oil in the ground. But the reality is that, if international customers cannot get ethical Canadian oil, they will simply turn to another source, adversely impacting the Canadian economy without improving the global environment.

The Liberal war on plastics began during the Trudeau government’s first term. It culminated in the ban of single-use plastics domestically in 2023. And the crowning achievement of former environment minister Steven Guilbeault’s war on plastics was supposed to be the export ban, which had been scheduled to take effect on Dec. 20, 2025.

Thankfully, Prime Minister Mark Carney nixed Guilbeault’s plans at the last minute. But the conversation about single-use plastics in Canada is far from over.

The domestic plastics ban is still at issue, as the Federal Court ruled the federal government’s move to designate plastic as a toxic substance was unconstitutional back in 2023. The federal government is still appealing that ruling, so the ban remains in effect. But should that ruling be overturned as well, Guilbeault’s entire anti-plastics regime could come tumbling down.

Alternatives should be considered

For the sake of consumers and the environment, Ottawa’s ban on single-use plastics domestically ought to be the next domino to fall.

Consider the alternatives to plastic bags, which are one of the single-use plastic products banned by Trudeau-era regulations.

Paper bags, a frequent substitute for plastic bags, need to be used 43 times to bring their per-use impact on the environment down to the per-use impact of single-use plastic bags that used to be available at grocery stores.

As for the cotton bags that many shoppers now bring to grocery stores, one bag has to be used 7,100 times to be as environmentally friendly as a single-use plastic bag.

If the era of virtue-signalling abroad on plastics is over, it ought to end domestically as well.

It’s time for Carney to undo even more of the disastrous so-called environmentalist policies of the Trudeau era. The domestic single-use plastics ban should go. And the rationale used to stop the export ban — that other countries and other companies will simply produce the same products — ought to be applied to other segments of the Canadian economy, such as the energy sector.

One more domino is down. It’s time for the rest to fall, too.

Jay Goldberg is the Canadian affairs manager at the Consumer Choice Center