{"id":70471,"date":"2016-02-11T22:17:41","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T03:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=70471"},"modified":"2016-02-11T22:17:41","modified_gmt":"2016-02-12T03:17:41","slug":"plastic-industry-wants-montreal-suburb-halt-proposed-shopping-bag-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2016\/02\/11\/plastic-industry-wants-montreal-suburb-halt-proposed-shopping-bag-ban\/","title":{"rendered":"Plastic industry wants Montreal suburb to halt proposed shopping bag ban"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"ShutterStock\"<\/a>
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BROSSARD, Que.\u2014Big Plastic is laying down the legal gauntlet against a Montreal suburb that is looking at banning plastic bags later this year.<\/p>\n

The Canadian Plastic Bag Association served the City of Brossard with a legal letter on Thursday demanding it back off on its proposed shopping-bag bylaw.<\/p>\n

Officials in the town are expected to pass a bylaw next Tuesday that would see a ban come into effect by September.<\/p>\n

The association called for consultations, suggesting the bylaw is \u201cabusive and unreasonable,\u201d is based on faulty information and doesn’t consider the negative impacts of a ban.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll stakeholders\u2014even those most negatively affected by a ban like convenience store owners, retailers and bag manufacturers\u2014have been completely shut out,\u201d said Marc Robitaille, president of a company that manufactures plastic bags. \u201cAll we want is an open dialogue and working with the scientific data.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a brief reply, Brossard spokesman Alain Gauthier said municipal lawmakers intend to forge ahead with its plan.<\/p>\n

Shopping-bag detractors say they are a source of pollution, end up in landfills and take a long time to decompose.<\/p>\n

The plastic-bag industry disputes that, calling them \u201cmulti-purpose\u201d and cites statistics suggesting 93 per cent of bags are either reused or recycled.<\/p>\n

The use of shopping bags has fallen dramatically in Quebec thanks to public awareness campaigns and a five-cent charge brought in by many retailers.<\/p>\n

Quebecers now use roughly a billion bags a year, less than half from nearly a decade ago.<\/p>\n

It’s not just in Quebec where the bag debate is in full flow\u2014plastic and retail industry representatives are dealing with possible bans in Victoria and Vancouver.<\/p>\n

Toronto tried and failed in 2012, while at least five smaller Canadian municipalities have instituted bans.<\/p>\n

In 2007, Leaf Rapids, Man., became the first Canadian municipality to prohibit single-use plastic shopping bags. They are also forbidden in the Quebec towns of Huntingdon and Deux-Montagnes, Thompson, Man., and Wood Buffalo Regional Municipality in Alberta, which includes Fort McMurray.<\/p>\n

Brossard residents going about their shopping expeditions on Thursday didn’t expect anything to change. Most of those who were encountered had reusable bags under their arms as they entered a local grocery store.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m OK with it (the ban),\u201d said Benoit Masse, juggling a mix of plastic and reusable bags after buying a few too many items. \u201cI’m for it as long as they offer bigger reusable bags to haul your groceries.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Quebec Retail Council is against the bylaw and is urging the city to reconsider.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has to be harmonized, we don’t want to have a patchwork of regulations in (some) cities and the rest of the province,\u201d said Luc Tremblay, the council’s director of government relations.<\/p>\n

Fadi Nasra, owner of Boutique Denise, a Brossard clothing store, recently bought 3,000 plastic bags for use in his shop. He wasn’t aware of the impending ban, but expects some backlash.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’ll cause some problems for sure, not all customers will accept not getting a bag,\u201d Nasra said. \u201cBut if they come up with a (cost-effective) replacement, it doesn’t bother me to replace them, for the sake of the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brossard elected to go faster than other area municipalities.<\/p>\n

The Montreal Municipal Council, which came down in favour of a ban last December, announced a working group Thursday to tackle the finer points of prohibting bags in 82 Montreal-area communities\u2014including Montreal itself, which had public consultations last year. The city’s environment commission recommended the same target date the other communities are looking at\u2014Earth Day 2018.<\/p>\n

Tremblay says Brossard’s bag ban will just result in people going out and buying other kinds of plastic bags for use around the house.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think it’s a false problem, a false debate,\u201d Tremblay says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BROSSARD, Que.\u2014Big Plastic is laying down the legal gauntlet against a Montreal suburb that is looking at banning plastic bags …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":70489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,5927,16],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-70471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-environment-nature","category-news","tag-original","mauthors-sidhartha-banerjee","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}