Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t want to belabour this licence plate issue, but I am not understanding why the Department of Transportation wants to dispose of the old licence plates. There are non-profit organizations, youth groups, sports associations, all kinds of people that if you won’t trade a new plate for an old plate, understood, but people can turn their old plate in to the Department of Transportation. You could in turn, instead of disposing of them, give that to some organization. They’re light as a feather, you can mail them out to people, and somebody could make money off these things. I need to understand why you wouldn’t give them to your brother’s department there.
I don’t know what he was going to do with them, but I think they have value and I don’t want to see them going into a landfill. Tell me again, if the Minister could, please, why we could not recycle these plates and earn money from them for some good cause. People would probably even bring them and trade them in and drop them off and pay for their new one if they thought the money was going to a good cause.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister responsible for Transportation, Mr. Michael McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are two reasons, I guess, that we are reluctant to try to recycle these plates. Our preference would be to collect all the plates. We know that’s not realistic. People want to keep their plates as souvenirs. Some have personalized plates or numbers that they want to hang on to. Some want to keep it because the plate is not going to be in production any further. So we’ve made allowance for that. People can keep their licence plates. Organizations can do a drive to pick up licence plates. However, we have a concern about disposal of plates that are out on the market. These plates have a toxic dip that was required to prevent corrosion. We also would like to have all the licence plates off the market by December 2011 so that we can try to alleviate some of the concern of having unregistered vehicles out there with plates so that all vehicles will have new plates by then. We’ll also eliminate the temptation to put the old plates on the front of a vehicle, which is also illegal. There are a number of things that require us to move forward in keeping the plate off the market. Those are the reasons.
People put all kinds of things on the front of their vehicles. I didn’t know it was illegal to put a valid driver’s licence on the front of the vehicle. That’s news to me. I’ll have to make sure I don’t ever do that.
So the Department of Transportation is not willing to be the receiver of these plates to be recycled for any organization. So I guess it’s just, I think the whole idea of them being dipped in something is a bit of a red herring. I don’t think that’s going to stop people from collecting or reselling or doing anything. I guess all we can do is throw it out there that if somebody wants to mobilize or organize, that there could be some other way of collecting these and reusing these. I thought a good way would be to trade an old one in for a new one, but I guess the Minister doesn’t really have any appetite for that.
Just to be clear now, this chemical that these plates are dipped into to prevent or retard erosion, how worried should we be about that, handling these plates? Have they always been like that? I mean, let’s quantify that problem. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, the Member shouldn’t be driving with decorative plates on the front of the vehicle with any kind of numbering or any indication that it’s a legal plate. The plate is required to be on the back of the vehicle.
The disposal of the plates is not a red herring. It’s something that we have to do due diligence on. As the plates are turned over to us, we have to ensure proper disposal. We can’t afford to let 30,000 plates go into the landfill. That would collectively be of concern. So that’s what we have to do. The opportunity is still there for people to keep their plates. The opportunity is still there for organizations to collect them, if they so wish. It’s just that if they come into our hands, we want to make sure the disposal is done properly. Thank you.
The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.
