Life in plastic

One of the more significant subjects I've included in my link posts over the past few years is that of plastic contamination. We're learning more and more about the accumulation of plastic in our bodies and the environment, as well as about a growing list of harms caused as a result. 

So naturally, the Cons are looking to undermine any and all regulation of consumer plastics with campaign blending of misinformation and denialism. 

The misinformation side involves a blatant lie of omission as to what Corey Tochor's anti-regulation bill would do. 

Contrary to what you'd think from Tochor's presentation, the scope of the bill is not in any way limited or targeted to the regulation of straws in particular. Instead, its purpose and effect is to eliminate all existing federal regulation of plastics in any form. Which means that any steps to limit even the most dangerous and easily and cheaply substituted plastic products would be trashed.

Needless to say, that outcome would represent a source of cheap and dirty profits for an oil sector which is looking to plastics as a substitute market in the event the world takes any meaningful steps toward reducing the burning of dirty fuels. But how to justify yet another naked attempt to foist the costs of fossil fuel profits on the public in the form of avoidable personal risks?

Tochor has that covered as well, combining an absolute lack of willingness to acknowledge the immense and growing scientific consensus around the dangers of plastics for people and the environment, with an attempt to treat developing concerns about a single substitute (which itself arise out of insufficient study of chemicals in consumer products) as mandating that the entire toxic plastic edifice be allowed to keep growing without regulation. 

All of which makes for a single bill reflective of the entire Con political mindset: using a small but salient public complaint as the basis to gut public protections, all in order to ensure that the oil sector can rake in money at the expense of people's health and well-being. And the combination of dishonesty and disregard for the public should serve as a warning of what would follow if the Cons can take control of Canada's regulatory apparatus.