The debate over the future of Publisacs is raging within the corridors of Montreal city hall.
Public hearings are being held over the future of the plastic bags filled with newspapers and retail advertising.
Charles Montpetit is petitioning the city to intervene. The environmentalist wants the city to regulate the delivery of the bags and allow them to be distributed only to households that request them.
“The environmental impact throughout Quebec is enormous. It is one-ninth of all the material that transits through the sorting centres in Quebec,” he told reporters at city hall Friday.
READ MORE: Montreal to hold public consultations on future of Publisac
Montpetit insists people can receive flyers and newspapers online instead.
“The Publisac is not the only way to distribute those papers,” he said.
But the CEO of TC Transcontinental, which owns and distributes the Publisacs, disagrees.
François Olivier insists that the vast majority of Montrealers choose to receive the bags.
He says the company has made great strides in being more environmentally friendly in recent years. All of the newsprint used by advertising flyers and newspapers comes from the residue found in sawmills.
“There is not one tree in Quebec that is cut to do paper,” Olivier told Global News.
He says the plastic bags have been reduced in size by 30 per cent.
Olivier insists it is unfair to force Montrealers to specifically request delivery of the bags, arguing they already prefer to receive them.
“The population not only here in Quebec, across Canada, prefer to look at deals on paper because it’s a lot easier, a lot faster, a lot less complicated,” he said.
The editor-in-chief of The Suburban, a weekly English newspaper that relies on the Publisac for distribution, says it would be a mistake to curtail the current delivery system.
“Interfering with all of this is interfering with the free flow of information — not the government’s job,” Beryl Wajsman, told Global News.
Public hearings on the future of delivering flyers and newspapers continue until Nov. 1.