Tag: media

Ottawa pushes toward scrapping ban on single-use plastic for exports

This article was written by Emma Graney and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 24, 2025.

The federal government has taken the next steps to scrap its looming ban on single-use plastic exports, though the Alberta government maintains that Ottawa should get rid of the domestic prohibition, too.

Ottawa published regulations to prohibit the manufacture, import and sale of single-use plastics in 2022, spurring a court challenge to the constitutionality of the rules. The federal government of the day said that items such as grocery bags, cutlery, stir sticks, straws and food takeout containers were environmentally harmful, and rolled out the domestic ban between 2022 and 2024.

The ban on exports was set to come into effect on Dec. 20 this year.

Instead, on Saturday, the federal government launched a 70day consultation period through the Canada Gazette on nixing the ban, saying that tariffs and global supply chain challenges are “creating significant pressure on the domestic economy.”

Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin announced in October that the government would no longer pursue the export ban, citing a review of the global policy landscape, trade conditions and domestic economic challenges.

“Most importantly, the export ban is not expected to lead to a net decrease in plastic waste with few peer countries following suit and many international buyers simply switching away from Canadian suppliers,” Ms. Dabrusin said in a statement at the time.

More than two dozen plastic makers joined forces in 2022 to ask the Federal Court to put an end to Ottawa’s ban on singleuse plastics. The following year, a judge ruled a federal decision to label plastics as toxic to be unreasonable and unconstitutional. (Ottawa appealed the decision, which is still making its way through the courts.)

The Alberta government was also part of the plastics court action. The province’s then-premier Jason Kenney argued that Ottawa had no real evidence that plastics are toxic.

“While the industry is investing massively in becoming more environmentally responsible, Ottawa – for, I think, political reasons – decided to say that plastics have the same risk as toxins like arsenic, which is clearly unscientific,” he told reporters at the time.

Rebecca Schulz, Alberta’s Environment Minister, congratulated Ms. Dabrusin in October when her federal counterpart announced the cancellation of the export ban – but noted her disappointment that the federal government is standing by the domestic prohibition.

Indeed, Ms. Dabrusin insisted in October that the domestic single-use plastics ban is working. “Canadians are seeing fewer plastic bags in trees, less Styrofoam containers on their beach walks and fewer wildlife being tangled in ring carriers,” she said at the time.

Ms. Schulz countered at the time that “silly statements about plastic bags and Styrofoam litter is divorced from reality,” adding there is no legal, policy, economic or scientific justification for the ban.

“The ban is an attack on Canada’s plastics industry – which employs thousands of Canadians and attracts billions in investment – while creating the plastics needed for every modern convenience, from surgical gloves to iPhones,” Ms. Schulz said in a statement.

As Ottawa marches toward nixing the export ban, leaving the domestic policy untouched, Ms. Schulz’s office said Tuesday that her position has not changed.

The Gazette released Saturday said that restricting access to global markets for single-use plastics would displace domestic producers in favour of competitors from other parts of the world. That in turn could drive production, investment and employment opportunities from Canada – but do little to reduce plastic pollution.

Removing the export ban would restore Canadian businesses’ access to international markets for single-use plastics, and “help re-establish economic opportunities curtailed under the prohibition.”

That’s particularly true for the highly trade-exposed plastic product manufacturing sector, which according to Ottawa generated $35-billion and supported roughly 85,000 jobs in 2023.

The sector is deeply integrated within North American supply chains, with roughly 94 per cent of Canada’s $14.9-billion in plastics exports in 2023 destined for the United States.

The export ban would have been particularly tough on small businesses.

An analysis by Dun & Bradstreet in November, cited in the Gazette, found that 82 per cent of the companies that retained the ability to manufacture and had access to the export market were small businesses with fewer than 100 employees or less than $5million in annual gross revenues.

Cana­dians need a source of fact­checked inform­a­tion

This article was written by Paul Deegan, the president and CEO of New Media Canada, and was published in the Toronto Star on October 5, 2025.

In a world of harm­ful mis­in­form­a­tion and dis­in­form­a­tion, amp­li­fied by Big Tech plat­forms, we need fact­based, factchecked journ­al­ism. Crowd­sourcing is not journ­al­ism. There are no altern­at­ive facts: there are just facts. And Cana­dians need facts to live their lives and to make informed decisions that empower them to par­ti­cip­ate effect­ively in demo­cratic pro­cesses.

AI com­pan­ies are flag­rantly scrap­ing and sum­mar­iz­ing con­tent dir­ectly from pub­lished news art­icles. This is theft on an indus­trial scale — plain and simple. Pub­lish­ers are being harmed because these arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence over­views are so detailed that the reader often stays within Big Tech’s walled garden, rather than being poin­ted elec­tron­ic­ally to news web­sites via links. No clicks mean no money for pub­lish­ers to rein­vest in fact­based, fact­checked journ­al­ism.

Read­ers are being harmed, too. All too often, these arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence over­views serve up slop: inac­cur­ate, irrel­ev­ant, out­of­date and even harm­ful inform­a­tion. In today’s atten­tion eco­nomy, these com­pan­ies pri­or­it­ize engage­ment. That leaves it up to the user to try to sep­ar­ate fact from fic­tion.

“Buy Cana­dian” is part of the solu­tion. Accord­ing to a recent report from Cana­dian Media Means Busi­ness, 92 per cent of digital ad dol­lars are now going to non­Cana­dian plat­forms, which puts the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of Cana­dian media in jeop­ardy. Gov­ern­ments across Canada should not be spend­ing their advert­ising dol­lars with for­eign search and social­media giants. They should walk the talk and “Buy Cana­dian.” They should fol­low the gov­ern­ment of Ontario’s lead and set aside a min­imum of 25 per cent of their advert­ising budgets for trus­ted news brands.

Advert­ising set­asides work. Five years ago, former New York City mayor Bill de Bla­sio, a Demo­crat, man­dated that city agen­cies alloc­ate at least 50 per cent of their print and digital advert­ising to com­munity and eth­nic media. Accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Com­munity Media at CUNY, “The impact of this policy can­not be over­stated: In its first five years, it injec­ted more than $72 mil­lion (U.S.) into the local com­munity­media sec­tor. This helped crit­ical inform­a­tion reach New York­ers who rely on com­munity media as their primary source of news, and added an import­ant source of rev­enue for these out­lets.”

The not­for­profit Rebuild Local News found that advert­ising set­asides, done right, have the fol­low­ing bene­fits:

■ They can provide sub­stan­tial rev­enue to local news organ­iz­a­tions and help com­munity journ­al­ism thrive.

■ It is money the gov­ern­ment is already spend­ing — not new money — so it does not require enlar­ging state or local budgets or rais­ing taxes.

■ Gov­ern­ment mes­sages can reach a full range of res­id­ents, includ­ing those who may not be using lar­ger media.

Bey­ond ensur­ing fed­eral advert­ising is placed in a safe brand, a fed­eral set­aside would send an import­ant sig­nal to other orders of gov­ern­ment and to the private sec­tor about pro­tect­ing Canada’s digital sov­er­eignty and sus­tain­ing inde­pend­ent, com­mer­cially viable pub­lic­interest journ­al­ism.

More than 85 per cent of adults in Canada turn to news­pa­per con­tent each week, and two­thirds trust that con­tent — ahead of tele­vi­sion, radio, magazines, social media and online search. Let’s keep scarce advert­ising dol­lars in Canada — so they can be rein­ves­ted in local news — rather than send­ing them to Amer­ican tech mono­pol­ies that extract tens of bil­lions a year out of Canada — largely untaxed — at the expense of local journ­al­ism and cul­ture, and whose plat­forms have become har­bours for divi­sion, dis­in­form­a­tion and dis­en­gage­ment from the com­munity.

This National News­pa­per Week, which runs Sunday to Sat­urday, as we face the rise of fake news amp­li­fied by algorithms that pri­or­it­ize engage­ment, it is in every­one’s interest to pro­tect the truth.