Hon. Bernadette Clement: Honourable senators, this month I had the pleasure of visiting an up-and-coming hub of economic activity, a small town on Highway 138 roughly midway between here and Cornwall. Moose Creek packs a bigger punch than you would expect based on its geographic footprint. Locals know it for its quality dress shops, expanding outdoor tourism opportunities and, well, its landfill. I visited GFL Environmental’s site in Moose Creek with Senator Black. He has just spoken very eloquently about his area of expertise: agriculture and rural development.

What I would like to focus on today is the good, the bad and the exciting. First the good: This 2,400-acre site with a team of 40 employees is innovating daily. They are using hawks to deter seagulls, using stone dust instead of sand for cover, creating high quality compost from material most of us would dismiss as waste and generating electricity from landfill gas.

The bad: As officials from across eastern Ontario toured windrows of decomposing kitchen scraps and yard debris, staff commented that it seemed as though every apple core came wrapped in its own plastic bag. Plastic seems to contaminate everything.

[Translation]

Like the landfill in Cornwall, my hometown, the Moose Creek site is filling up fast because Canadians produce an unbelievable amount of waste. GFL hopes to expand its site to continue serving eastern Ontario and western Quebec.

[English]

Everyone should tour a landfill. It becomes an important exercise in self-reflection. We produce all this trash, but we don’t want to live next to it. In Moose Creek, there are open lines of communication, and I expect consultation with residents to continue. This project has partnership potential that goes beyond business. The folks I met at GFL are determined to earn the support of both the provincial and federal governments, as Senator Black indicated.

Now for the exciting: GFL Environmental has developed an ambitious plan that would see renewable natural gas produced from landfill gas. The current volume of gas could heat over 11,000 homes, and projections indicate that number could rise to 20,000 by 2045. Local farm digesters would pump renewable natural gas from livestock operations into the grid from a connection point at the GFL site. A greenhouse could be fuelled with green heat.

I believe in this team’s ability to garner support to find even more ways to repurpose our waste and to put the little village of Moose Creek on the map as a shining example of innovation, partnership and green investment. Thank you, nia:wen.