Canada Court Overturns Government Ruling That Some Plastics Are Toxic

A court in Canada struck down a regulation classifying some plastic products as toxic, "a ruling that could hurt a push by Ottawa to ban single-use plastic items like bags, straws and forks." From the report: A ban on manufacturing and importing "harmful" single-use plastics came into effect last December after the federal government formally drew up a order that added them to a list of toxic items. But the Federal Court in Ottawa overturned that decision, calling the listing "unreasonable and unconstitutional." The case was brought by plastics manufacturers such as Dow Inc as well as Imperial Oil.

The office of Environment Minister Stephen Guilbeault said it was considering an appeal. "We strongly believe in taking action to tackle this crisis and keep millions of garbage bags worth of trash off our beaches, out of our waters, and away from nature," spokeswoman Kaitlin Power said in a statement.

And that is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The case was brought by plastics manufacturers such as Dow Inc as well as Imperial Oil.

The companies who produce oil, coal, natural gas, plastics, etc. are not going to just go away. They are not going to just give up and go out of business. They have a lot of money and they are going to use it to bribe as many politicians as they can to make sure that they can still make their billions of dollars in profits.

Re:

[Kernel Kurtz]

Actually this was a court saying the politicians were overstepping their constitutional boundaries. I would not even bet on how an appeal might play out, but if there have been bribes to politicians in this case they have not come from the fossil fuel lobby.

Re:And that is the problem

[hey!]

Actually this was a court saying the politicians were overstepping their constitutional boundaries.

It doesn't appear that the court is saying the government can't regulate toxic substances, it's saying that applying the laws which regulate toxins to plastics is a constitutional violation. The government is probably trying to do something reasonable here, but the court has an important job to do here. Laws are made up of words, and they don't mean much if a word can mean whatever a poltician wants it to.

The problem is that laws about things like "toxins" are written by lawyers who have certain situations implicitly in mind. A scientist will tell you that "toxicity" isn't always a property of a substance, it can depend on circumstance. In the right circumstances even pure water can be toxic. So it may well be that plastics an reasonably be called "toxic" for purposes of science but were intended to be not regulated by the law. It's not a straightforward call.

Re:

[Kernel Kurtz]

It doesn't appear that the court is saying the government can't regulate toxic substances.....A scientist will tell you that "toxicity" isn't always a property of a substance, it can depend on circumstance. In the right circumstances even pure water can be toxic.

The federal government can indeed regulate toxic substances. That said if they declared water toxic the court would likewise throw it out. I think the whole point is there has to be a demonstrable basis in science, the government can't just use the toxic label as a workaround for a political agenda.

Re:

[Kernel Kurtz]

Yeah but little woke Trudeau has crossed the virtue signaling border line many times already. This isn't the first case where the supreme court invalidates his extreme-left tyrant stupid laws. Time for him to go away for the benefit of Canada I'd say.

I don't love our SCC at all but they are independent if nothing else and their existence is better than not in the end IMO. They also invalidated many of former PM Harper's laws, even though he appointed a majority of them. I was glad to see Harper gone, I'll be even more glad to see Turdeau gone. Politicians are indeed like diapers, as the adage goes.

Re:

[Kernel Kurtz]

I am seriously asking, what about Pierre Poilievre? Although not trans-gender, his deputy leader in parliament is a lesbian. Is that inclusive enough? I view this as a sign of inclusivity from the Tories. Also, Pierre Poilievre seems to accept abortion as a choice for women. Anyway, what do you think of him?

I'm very socially liberal which makes me unwelcome on the right, but am also fiscally conservative and a gun owner which makes me unwelcome on the left. I don't really have a party here, best that can happen is not let any of them get entrenched.

I'll absolutely vote for PP to be rid of Turdeau. But I know some years down the line I will be wanting to be rid of him too, it is inevitable.

Re:

[NomDeAlias]

Even under the rare circumstances where ingesting pure water can kill someone it's still a disingenuous stretch to call that water toxic.

Re:

[ravenshrike]

The classification is wrong on its face for grocery bags. They are, at minimum, dual use, or even triple use for most of the people I know, mainly as a replacement for small garbage bags, dog poop bags, and as a cheap container to carry a change of clothes and any food to a friends house. That doesn't even take into account how the homeless use them and how after San Fran banned them the amount of human feces on the streets increased exponentially.

Re:

[NomDeAlias]

They sell appropriate bags for the task.

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[Erioll]

Exactly. This was yet another case of executive branch saying "hey, we have a power like this somewhere, let's apply it to other things!" instead of, you know, PASSING LAWS. That's more-or-less what the court said: regulate whatever, but you need a law to do this one, not just changing what's on a list.

Re:

[NomDeAlias]

You are accusing judges of taking bribes? Do you have any evidence?

Toxic or excess garbage?

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

Both are bad but trash everywhere is not the same as toxic. If they really declared them toxic to avoid huge garbage piles then they fucked up. They should have just declared them a nuisance and either taxed the shit out of them or flat out banned them just because they can.

Calling them toxic if they're not was stupid if they wanted to fix anything and they got called out on it.

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

Creating a nuisance tax would require a new legislative action on the part of their parliament in all probability. Stretching existing regulations to apply to substances that were never meant to be covered under said regulations is much easier.

Re:

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

Except it wasn't much easier because the court told them they stretched too far. Now they don't have a regulation, they are behind in the legislative process, they still have plastic they don't want, and wasted lots of time and money in court. And imo look dumb.

If I'm missing something fill me in because they're not looking really smart from over here.

I don't normally comment on other countries' trivial internal matters but this was pretty blatant fail in any country. The same thing happens here all the

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

Oh you aren't wrong. It's just that the people pushing these regulatory changes ARE wrong in the way they choose to go about things, and they don't very well care. Some of them simply don't understand that there are restrictions on what laws will allow people to do regardless of their righteousness. It's a common problem among environmentalist crusaders.

Abusing regulatory frameworks is commonplace among those who have no intrinsic respect for rule of law or democratic processes.

Re:Plastics are usefu

[jsonn]

Your Coca-Cola argument actually doesn't work. At least in Europe, glass bottles are much more eco-friendly when filled and sold locally. The alternative are reusuable PET bottles, which CC has been phasing out in favor of single use plastic bottles, which have a much worth foot print. So no, it's not about vilifying all plastic use, but single use plastics with good alternatives? Heck, yes!

Re:

[jsonn]

That's exactly the core issue. There is absolutely no reason for shipping water for any kind of longer distance. Bottling coke isn't magic and unlikely other beverages like beer, the core ingredients already is shipping in concentrated form. So no, energy required for transportation is an excuse. If it is significant enough, you are already wasting too much fuel anyway.

Single use plastic bottles are not recycled into new single use plastic bottle or at least only to certain fraction. That's the big recycli

Re:

[NomDeAlias]

LOL get out of here with this reusable nonsense. I'm not going to bring a bottle, mug, straw and shopping bag every time I leave the house. Some plastic does in fact become another bottle and some may go on to be recycled into some other product. There's no lie.

Re:

[jsonn]

Reusable plastic bottles are prefilled. The difference is that they are returned, washed and then reused, similar to glass bottles.

PET is one of the most recycled materials and yet, a new bottle will typically contain less than 30% of recycled material. Compare that to over 80% for most copy paper. The majority of PET is degraded and only usable in lesser plastics. So yes, if they tell you that 90% of PET bottles are recycled, it's a lie by omission as it is very much not the same thing as 90% of a PET bot

Re:

[NomDeAlias]

Yeah, I fully understood what reusable meant hence saying I'm not going to bring a myriad of reusable items with me every time I leave home.

You just confirmed exactly what I said about recycling. Some of it does indeed become bottles again, alternately the plastic goes on to become part of something else like shoes. That's not a lie that's just recycling. If they tell you 90% are recycled and most of it ends up becoming something other than a bottle there is still no lie you just don't understand what

Re:

[jsonn]

So you are throwing away your clothes after using them once? Sorry, but for the vast majority of all bottles sold, there is absolutely no reason for them to not be reusable. I don't know about how part of the world, but here in Europe we certainly have the infrastructure and the only reason why single use plastic is so popular is because plastic is dirt cheap as the industry doesn't have to pay for long-term costs associated with it.

I'm calling plastic recycling a lie because that's what it is. Let's igno

Put Up or Shut Up

[organgtool]

If the court believes that plastics aren't toxic, then the judges should have no problem demonstrating that by eating a large quantity of plastic. If they're not comfortable doing that, then maybe they're full of crap. At least crap is easier to digest than plastic.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Your inability to survive eating large portions of plastic does not make plastic "toxic". If you eat large portions of plastic you will die from matters unrelated to plastic toxicity.

Your ability to digest something also is unrelated to toxicity. The issue here is one of definition, no one has said that plastic isn't dangerous or bad for the environment. Laws need to be written properly. It seems the government didn't do that, and they should go back and rectify that problem. Even well intentioned laws are

Re:

[NomDeAlias]

Or how about they place their groceries in plastic bags then eat those groceries.

Why stop there?

[MorgothTheMighty]

Go ahead and ban all oil, after all its "singe use" too.

classic govt hypocrisy

[ne0n]

A huge chunk of the problem is that Castreau's administration pushed tens of millions of Chinese single-use covid tests and hundreds of millions of single-use face diapers between 2020 and now. Nobody else has demonstrated that level of hypocrisy.

Real change begins when we turf Castreau and his cronies. Anything less continues this farce.

def: toxic

[groobly]

The left redefines words to suit their needs. You, too, my friend will be ruled toxic if you don't watch out.