OTTAWA – After being caught on camera with a large quantity of single-use plastics, Justin Trudeau is adamantly denying the stash of fossil fuel derived cutlery belongs to him.

“Look, this is all a huge misunderstanding. The bag wasn’t mine. I don’t use plastic utensils. I wouldn’t even know how to use plastic utensils. Do you put them in the dishwasher first? Can they go in the oven? See, I don’t even know,” Trudeau said in a sweaty statement to the press.

Coming on the heels of a recent Liberal announcement that Canada would be banning single-use plastics for environmental reasons, the image of the Prime Minister smiling while clutching a bag containing nearly a kilogram of pure hydrocarbon polymer has sent shockwaves through the government, despite Trudeau’s insistence that the utensils were not his.

“It’s so random, this friend that I barely know asked me to hold a bag. I didn’t know what was in the bag and when I saw it was single-use plastic, I was like, how dare this exist, and I decided to take the plastic to a recycling facility to be made into environmentally responsible playground equipment. That’s when I was photographed with the bag,” Trudeau said.

“My friend’s name? Oh, uh, I don’t remember. He’s more of a friend of a friend. Of a friend. It all happened so fast, it probably wasn’t even him so you shouldn’t bother trying to find him or asking him whose plastic it was.”

Green Party leader Elizabeth May has issued a statement saying that she isn’t angry but she is disappointed, and she believes the only way to make Trudeau learn his lesson is to force him to use the entire bag of plastic forks and knives.