Trudeau urged to act fast on Duterte's ‘ultimatum’ over Canadian trash

The Eco-Waste Coalition has urged Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to "act fast" on President Rodrigo Duterte's recent statement over illegal garbage exports from Canada that have yet to be returned to its origin.

Duterte, during a speech on Tuesday, slammed Canada over the garbage issue and threatened to declare war against the country if it would not take the trash back by next week.

“President Duterte has once again spoken against the garbage imports from Canada stressing that the Philippines is not a dumpsite," Eco-Waste National national coordinator Aileen Lucero said in a statement.

"His (Duterte's) latest tirade reflects our nation’s gross disappointment over Canada’s failure to act with dispatch to reclaim their wastes, which arrived in batches in the port of Manila in 2013 and 2014,” Lucero added.

The Ecological Waste Coalition of the Philippines or EcoWaste Coalition is a network of more than 150 groups community, church, school, environmental and health groups committed to the pursuit of ecologically sustainable and socially just solutions to managing discards.

In their statement, the network lamented that the the "illegal garbage exports that have yet to be re-exported to its origin despite the statement Trudeau made in Manila in 2017 that it is now theoretically possible to get (the wastes) back'."

The coalition also cited the legal opinion prepared by lawyers at the Victoria BC-based Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation "confirming that Canada is obliged under the Basel Convention to take back the wastes."

“Now that President Duterte has given a seeming ultimatum for Canada to act and now that there is a clear-cut legal opinion confirming that Canada has the obligation to take back the wastes illegally shipped to the Philippines, we urge Prime Minister Trudeau to do what is right to bring this hullabaloo to rest," Lucero said.

"Canada should comply with the Basel Convention, take the wastes back, and process them in an environmentally responsible way in Canada, not in the Philippines,” she added.

“We are counting on Canada to announce without delay a clear and definite date by which it will take back its wastes,” she emphasized.

EcoWaste noted that the upcoming 14th Basel Convention Conference of the Parties, which also marks the 30th anniversary of the treaty, in Geneva, Switzerland "provides a good platform for Canada to make the announcement for the take-back of the dumped wastes as this will show its commitment to the treaty."

In 2013, 50 containers of waste from Canada were impounded by Philippine customs authorities and left to rot in a landfill in Tarlac.

Trudeau, who attended a regional summit in Manila in 2017, told the press that it was "theoretically possible” to get back tons of Canadian waste shipment to the country and that “legal barriers” prevented their government from taking them back.

After Duterte's fiery statement on Tuesday, the Canadian Embassy had issued a statement assuring that Canada is working with the Philippine government for a "timely resolution" to remove tons of Canadian waste shipment to the country. —LDF, GMA News