Canadian Finishing & Coatings Manufacturing Magazine November/December 2021 - 10

CPCA CORNER
BY PETER MIRTCHEV
Regulatory Costs for Paint Recycling Increase
400 Percent in 2021 in Ontario
I
t is untenable that manufacturers in Ontario now must
contend with even higher regulatory costs for paint
recycling under the new Hazardous and Special Products
(HSP) regulation. The new Regulation will significantly
increase annual regulatory fees for recycling programs, which
are now set by, and paid to, a delegated Authority in Ontario
despite the fact they are Ontario Government regulations. The
Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA), the
" delegated authority " for waste recycling was created to oversee
" compliance and enforcement " but instead is now setting fees and
determining de facto waste policy for the Ontario Government.
Its mandate has grown substantially with scope creep and a 400
percent increase in overhead, with 71 staff in two years, up from
50 today, and just 10 five years ago. The actual waste recovery
operations are in fact delivered by industry which contracts
with professional program operators (PRO) to fulfill paint
manufacturers' obligations under the Act. Paint manufacturers
pay 100 percent of the cost of recycling with little or no control
over the costs of the delegated Authority. Neither the Ontario
Government or the industry obligated to deliver recycling has
any control over costs and administration.
Those regulatory costs for paint recycling are already much
higher than in other jurisdictions in Canada and globally. To
highlight the point, the regulatory fees for a normal operating
year for the paint recycling program in Ontario (2019) were
$325,000, representing 30 percent of Ontario waste regulatory
fees. This contrasts sharply with the proposed new regulatory
fees announced by RPRA on August 24, 2021 for the paint
program. Those regulatory fees are now $1.1 million and must be
paid before year-end 2021, now representing 58 percent of the
total regulatory fees charged under the new HSP regulation.
Ontario Government officials argue that these increased
regulatory costs are based on the " weight of products " sold into
the Ontario market. This is an arbitrary fee-setting methodology
despite the fact that the vast majority - 90 percent or more - of
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a consumable product like paint is used up by consumers with
less than 10 percent left to recover. In 2019, almost 100 million
kilograms of paint were sold in the province, but only 9.7 million
kilograms were recycled. Despite the fact that industry strongly
opposed regulatory fees being based on " volume sold " for the
highly variable weight of the materials and the consumable
nature of products such as paint, officials proceeded anyway.
The " weight " of materials has very little to do with regulatory
costs and is clearly unfair and arbitrary. And, it seems unfair for
paint given that the eight other materials under the regulation,
combined, will only pay $800,000 in regulatory fees collectively
and weigh more.
The paint and coatings industry is not opposed to sustainability
and waste recovery, which it has proven over the past 12 years
in Ontario, meeting and exceeding established targets annually.
However, it is opposed to a 400 percent increase in regulatory
fees for duplicative overhead costs by a delegated Authority, with
little or no prospect for increases in waste recovery in Ontario.
Continued Lack of Alignment with the U.S.
in Biocide Evaluation
One of the most critical issues CPCA continues to work on is
the issue of biocides used in formulations of in-can paint and
film preservation. Over the past year, CPCA has worked with a
number of members, both manufacturers and suppliers, to convey
the importance of this issue to the Pest Management Regulatory
Agency (PMRA); the agency responsible for regulating biocides.
PMRA has been very critical of a range of biocides used by
companies in the paint industry and has restricted uses for
many of them and seeking to do the same for others widely used
in Canada. That needs to change given the fact that the US EPA
continues to permit the use of these same critical ingredients at a
time when Canada is seeking to restrict concentrations. The lack
of alignment with our largest trading partner is getting worse, not
better. In addition to creating a Coatings and Adhesives Working
Group (CAWG) to continue advocating for the retention of critical
biocides in Canada we work very closely with our counterpart in
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Canadian Finishing & Coatings Manufacturing Magazine November/December 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Canadian Finishing & Coatings Manufacturing Magazine November/December 2021
