Canada’s strategy to reduce plastic waste — an environmental pollutant that is considered a global problem — is being singled out in a trade report by the Trump administration as a barrier to U.S. exports, a move one expert believes is meant to pressure Canada into abandoning the policy.
“I think there is clearly a strong lobby close to the Trump administration pushing for reversing this environmental policy in Canada,” said Sean O’Shea, government relations and campaigns specialist at Ecojustice, Canada’s largest environmental law charity. “And I think that’s how we’re seeing it now play out in the U.S. National Trade Estimate Report,” said O’Shea.
The report, which is published annually in part to identify export barriers to U.S. goods, said that American industries are concerned that Canada’s policy to reduce plastic packaging “without a viable alternative … could compromise food safety, increase food loss and waste, and restrict U.S. agricultural exports.”
A number of environmental policies in the EU were also targeted in the nearly 400-page report, including a requirement for recycled content in plastic packaging.
”I think what we’ve seen south of the border is a fundamental dismantling of environmental rules, environmental governance,” said O’Shea.
Earlier this month, Trump issued an executive order to block states from enforcing laws to reduce the use of fossil fuels to fight climate change and has promoted drilling for oil and gas in national forests and close to national parks.
But a U.S. challenge to Canada’s environmental policies may be difficult given they are somewhat protected under the Canada, U.S. and Mexico free-trade agreement, called CUSMA.
The agreement “specifically urges the parties (countries) to protect high levels of environmental protection,” said Theresa McClenaghan, the executive director and counsel for the Canadian Environmental Law Association, and “recognizes the sovereign right of each party to establish its own level of domestic environmental protection and to set its own environmental priorities.”
McClenaghan said a long-standing commission on environmental co-operation, set up in the ‘90s under the first free-trade agreement with Canada, the U.S. and Mexico — called NAFTA — has continued under CUSMA to monitor environmental pollution in treaty countries.
CUSMA also contains a specific provision for preventing and reducing marine litter, including plastic litter and microplastics, said McClenaghan.
Microplastics, which can be intentionally manufactured for use as exfoliants in beauty products, or are the result of degraded pieces of larger plastic litter, have been found in every part of the world, as well as in animals and humans. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that between nine and 14 million tonnes of plastic enter the ocean every year.
Canada adopted a Zero Plastic Waste Agenda in 2018 to eliminate plastic waste by 2030 and has banned some single-use plastics.
But the country isn’t on track to achieve its target and forecasts say Canadians will continue to produce two million tonnes of plastic packaging waste in 2030 as they do each year.
In 2022, Canada was one of more than 170 countries that signed on to a UN Environmental Assembly resolution to develop an international legally binding treaty to end plastic pollution and tackle the entire life cycle of plastics, including production, design and disposal.
A number of big corporations in the U.S. and around the world have joined plastic pacts to help create a circular economy for plastic so that it is recycled or reused and not landfilled.
But talks ended last year in Busan, Korea, with little progress. Forthcoming treaty negotiations have been tentatively scheduled in August this year in Geneva, Switzerland.
Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry in Canada and the U.S., which produce plastic, has been pushing back on environmental reforms.
A number of companies including Dow, Imperial Oil and Nova Chemicals took the Canadian government to court after it designated all plastic as toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which allows the federal government to regulate toxic substances.
The court ruled against the federal government’s designation. The government launched an appeal, which was heard by the Federal Court of Appeal last June. A decision by the court has yet to be released.
Despite the setback, environmental groups want the Canadian government to stand up to the U.S.
“Those of us who’ve been watching the free-trade era over the years have always known that governments … and corporations could use things like environmental regulations and labour regulations and hold them up as technical barriers to trade,” said Karen Wirsig, senior program manager for plastics at Environmental Defence.
“I’d like to see the spine of the Canadian government stay strong,” said Wirsig, “not just on the tariffs, but also to any attacks on these so-called nontariff barriers that really are fully within Canada’s right to protect the environment and the people who live here.”
