Canadian PM Trudeau leaves PHL after APEC summit; trash solution still vague

Published November 20, 2015 9:45am

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau left the Philippines Friday morning, after attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila, held from November 18 to 19.

Canadian PM Justin Trudeau leaving in a few, waves goodbye saying "Mabuhay!" pic.twitter.com/SrEIU6qoXo
— Lia Del Castillo (@LiaManalac) November 20, 2015

Trudeau waves goodbye. pic.twitter.com/chOtU8ILgx
— Lia Del Castillo (@LiaManalac) November 20, 2015

Radio dzBB's Sam Nielsen tweeted that Trudeau's plane took off at about 9:15 a.m.

Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, nakaalis na ng bansa as of 9:15am @dzbbsamnielsen pic.twitter.com/IWsdiLjtXI
— samnielsen (@dzbbsamnielsen) November 20, 2015

Trudeau arrived in the country on Tuesday afternoon and was welcomed by Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala and Canadian Ambassador to the Philippines Neil Reeder at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

Before arriving in the Philippines, Trudeau attended a meeting of leaders of G20 in Turkey.

During his stay in the country, Trudeau met with US President Barack Obama on Thursday where he reaffirmed his decision to withdraw Canadian jets from missions against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and to instead focus on training troops in Iraq.

Canadian trash

The Canadian prime minister also had a 30-minute bilateral meeting with President Benigno Aquino III on Wednesday where both leaders talked about "the tremendous potential for growing bilateral trade," said Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma, Jr.

Coloma said Trudeau also expressed support to the Philippines’ possible accession to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The dumping of Canadian trash in the Philippines, however, was not discussed during the said meeting.

Trudeau on Thursday however said that a “Canadian solution” is currently being developed to address the issue of the garbage shipped to the Philippines by a Canadian company.

“I think, moving forward, we need to ensure that if a situation like this should arise again, that the Canadian government has more power to actually demand action from the companies responsible,” Trudeau said.

Twenty-six of the 50 container vans of waste shipped from Canada in 2013 were disposed of at the Metro Clark landfill in Capas, Tarlac, between June 26 to July 8, 2015.

Public reaction

When asked about the public’s reaction to him—which helped spawn the #APEChottie trend along with reactions to Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto—Trudeau said that he’d learned to ignore ungrounded views of him.

“There were a lot of people who liked my father and liked me for reasons that were entirely unrelated to who I actually was and I had to learn to set aside positive impressions that were not grounded in reality,” he said.

Trudeau was sworn in as Canada’s new prime minister earlier this November. —Bea Montenegro/LBG/KG, GMA News

Tags: apec2015, justintrudeau, canada