Palace says Canada’s trash imperils 70-year ties with PH

IT STINKS One of the almost 100 containers found to contain garbage from Canada. —METRO CLARK WASTE MANAGEMENT CORP.

Canada should take back the tons of garbage it shipped to the Philippines “pronto” lest it “puts to naught” decades of bilateral relations with Manila, Malacañang warned on Thursday.

The warning added that the government’s stand on Canada’s trash dumping was “nonnegotiable.”

“The 70 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries will be put to naught if Canada will not act with dispatch and finality on the resolution of this undiplomatic episode to which we take outrage,” presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said in a statement from Beijing, where President Duterte was taking part in the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.

“[Canada] cannot dillydally on getting back [its trash]. It must retrieve them pronto or we throw them back to its shores,” Panelo added.

Earlier this week, the President threatened to wage war against Canada, set sail and personally dump the trash on its source country should Canada fail to retrieve several containers of garbage shipped to Manila in 2013 and 2014.

In response, Canada vowed to resolve the matter, citing a court order directing the importer to ship the trash back to Canada.

It added that a joint technical working group of government officials from both countries was “examining the full spectrum of issues related to the removal of the waste with a view to a timely resolution.”

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana meanwhile described Mr. Duterte’s threat of going to war with Canada as a mere “figure of speech to dramatize his extreme displeasure.”

In a message to reporters on Wednesday night, Lorenzana said, “If it were me, I would run after the importer of those garbage.”

Joey Papa, president of Bangon Kalikasan Movement, said it was not enough for the President to “declare war on Canada,” but that “an executive order from the President or an administrative order from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources should ban the importation of all kinds of garbage.”

He said the President should also order the closure of all garbage dump sites, including so-called sanitary landfills in the country and implement the Ecology Center System in line with the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000.  —WITH A REPORT FROM JEANNETTE I. ANDRADE