Alberta Premier Says Calgary Should Reconsider Single-Use Items Bylaws

A women leaves a grocery store using plastic bags in Mississauga, Ont., on Thursday, August 15, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Alberta’s premier is calling on the City of Calgary to rethink a bylaw that was designed to reduce waste from businesses.

The single-use bylaw came into effect on Jan. 16, 2024, and requires restaurants, grocery stores, cafes, drive thrus, and retail shops to ask customers if they want single-use items like cutlery and napkins.

These businesses are also required to charge 15 cents to customers who want a paper shopping bag, and that cost goes up to 25 cents in January 2025. Reusable shopping bags cost $1 for customers and will increase to $2 in January 2025, according to the bylaw.

Edmonton has a similar bylaw that came into force on July 1, 2023, with the goal of reducing litter.

“The goal is to reduce single-use items, not to switch from plastic items to non-plastic items,” the City of Edmonton website says.

Premier Danielle Smith said that the cities should reconsider the bylaws.

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“Whether it’s banning plastics straws or forcing businesses to charge for bags and utensils, perhaps our cities should reconsider such bylaws ... I think most folks would really appreciate it,” she said in a Jan. 26 post on X, formerly Twitter.

She also posted a poll on Jan. 27 where people can vote on whether they support the bylaw in Calgary and Edmonton.

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner created a video response to the bylaw that notes the money for reusable bags is not going to a good cause, but rather to the wealthy.

“It’s not going to fight affordability issues or homelessness. No, it’s going to the wealthy CEOs like those who own Loblaws, companies that have seen record profits over the last several years. Well, people in our community can barely afford to buy food,” she said in the video posted on X.

“We need to be focused on the issues that are affecting our community like affordability. And you know what, there are better ways to protect the environment than this, and people who can’t see that don’t deserve to be reelected.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the City of Calgary but did not hear back by publication time.

Federal Ban on Plastics

Banning single-use items and plastics is something that the federal government has also been working toward.

In 2022, Ottawa banned plastic bags at grocery stores and liquor stores, plastic cutlery, and plastic straws. In August 2023, Ottawa took aim at plastics at grocery stores by targeting plastics that come into contact with food.

At the time, Minister of Environment Steven Guilbeault said the government was committed to achieving zero plastic waste.

“A significant amount of plastic food packaging is used only once and then ends up in landfills as waste, or in the environment as pollution,” Mr. Guilbeault said.

“By getting rid of problematic plastic food packaging, replacing single-use packaging with reuse-refill systems, and ensuring that plastics, if needed, are designed to be safely reused, recycled, or composted, we can all help move Canada toward zero plastic waste.”

However, in November 2023, Ottawa faced a setback when the Federal Court ruled against its single-use plastic ban.

Judge Angela Furlanetto said a cabinet order that classifies plastic manufactured items (PMIs) as toxic was “unreasonable and unconstitutional.”

Judge Furlanetto ruled that the PMI categorization was too broad.

“There is no reasonable apprehension that all listed PMI are harmful,” she wrote.

The court also said the order exceeded the government’s ability to make criminal law.

Mr. Guilbeault said the government would be appealing the court’s decision.

“We intend to appeal the ruling,” Mr. Guilbeault told reporters on Nov. 20, 2023. “The body of scientific evidence showing the impacts on human health, on the environment of plastic pollution, is undebatable. And the Canadian public has been asking us to do this.”

He said that Canadians were “tired of seeing plastic pollution in their neighbourhood and in our streets, in our environment, clogging our waterways, polluting our oceans,” and also mentioned cases of plastic pollution harming people.

“I mean, we’re finding microbeads of plastics in our brains,” he said. “It’s affecting fetuses. It’s affecting the growth of our kids. We have to put a stop to that.”