Open in full screen mode A Federal Court judge ruled the Trudeau government's decision to list plastic items as toxic unconstitutional. (Archive photo) Feature in trial Log inCreate my account Speech synthesis, based on artificial intelligence, makes it possible to generate spoken text from written text. Ottawa will move forward and appeal the Federal Court's decision to invalidate a decree that listed plastic items as toxic. The judge behind this invalidation, Angela Furlanetto, considered the federal government's decision unreasonable and unconstitutional, justifying that it was not reasonable to say that all items made of plastic are harmful, because this categorization is too vast. The federal Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, said he was a little stunned by the decision of the Court to invalidate its decree and said it was considering appealing.
The Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, will appeal the invalidation of his decree. (File photo)
The accumulation of pollution linked to plastic is nothing less than a crisis which has led several countries to propose global solutions to this problem. Our government will appeal this decision of the Federal Court and we continue to explore all options to combat plastic pollution, he said in a press release.
This decision to consider plastic items toxic is what allowed the federal government to adopt a regulation in June 2022 that bans six plastic items: grocery bags, utensils, take-out meals, straws, coffee stirrers and rings for beverage packaging.
Remember that waste treatment is generally a provincial jurisdiction, except for environmental considerations, when products are placed on a list of toxic products by Ottawa. In this case, the provinces must comply with these standards.
Judge Furlanetto clarified that this regulation adopted by Ottawa threatened the balance of federalism, since it did not include all plastics which have the potential to harm the environment.
The Federal Court decision follows a lawsuit filed by the Coalition for Responsible Plastic Use. The group includes around thirty companies, including Dow Chemicals, Imperial Oil and Nova Chemicals. The governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan also opposed the federal decree, considering it unconstitutional.
With information from CBC News
- David Beauchamp (View profile)David BeauchampFollow