Plastic pollution is the new front in the culture war

Last week, Lianne Rood decided to take a stand.

Appearing in a video recorded outside a Tim Horton's restaurant in downtown Ottawa, the duly elected Conservative MP for the Ontario riding of Lambton—Kent—Middlesex announced that she would not be partaking of the iconic chain's coffee unless it discontinued its use of paper lids.

"I'm done with Tim Hortons until they stop trying to push these woke paper lids that dissolve in your mouth," she wrote in a social media post.

The non-plastic lids were part of a product test by the company in Ottawa and Prince Edward Island.

Rood's use of "woke" is further evidence that the word (whatever its original meaning) has been reduced to a catch-all term for things Conservatives don't like. But it also speaks to her party's apparent desire to turn the issue of plastic pollution into a culture war battle.

"This is not about science," Conservative MP Corey Tochor told the House of Commons last month. "It is about government controlling our lives."

Tochor was speaking about Bill C-380, his own initiative to reverse the Liberal government's move to list manufactured plastic items as a toxic substance under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

That listing was part of a broader effort by the federal government to ban a number of single-use plastics, actions taken in response to growing concern about global plastic pollution. The listing was challenged by major plastics producers and a Federal Court judge ruled last fall that it was overly broad. The federal government is appealing that decision.

Torchor's primary concern is the paper straw, which he described as "soggy, limp, wet and utterly useless."

Five days after Tochor's bill was debated in the House, Conservative MP Branden Leslie posted an eight-minute video that promoted Tochor's bill. Leslie's complaints extend to reusable bags — which he says he's always forgetting to take with him when he goes shopping — and non-plastic cutlery.

"Turns out those crappy paper straws they literally jammed down your throat are linked to cancer and a bunch of other diseases," Leslie wrote (it should be noted that the government is not "literally" doing that).

"Liberal virtue signaling is literally making people sick."

In pointing to health concerns, the Conservatives are seizing on a study released last fall that found the presence of poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances — otherwise known as PFAS or "forever chemicals" — in paper straws. Researchers also found PFAS in some of the plastic straws they tested.

But the Conservatives are not merely raising questions about existing alternatives to plastic straws.