Philippines | Duterte moves to forcibly send garbage back to Canada

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has moved to have truckloads of garbage that Filipino officials say were illegally shipped to the Philippines years ago be forcibly shipped back to Canada, Duterte’s spokesman said yesterday.

Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo held a news conference to announce that Duterte has ordered officials to look for a private shipping company to transport the garbage to Canadian territory in an escalation of his increasingly adversarial stance. The Philippines will shoulder the cost of the garbage shipment, Panelo said.

“If Canada will not accept their trash, we will leave the same within its territorial waters or 12 nautical miles out to sea from the baseline of any of their country’s shores,” Panelo said. “The president’s stance is as principled as it is uncompromising: The Philippines as an independent sovereign nation must not be treated as trash by other foreign nations.”

The Philippine government recalled its ambassador and consuls in Canada last week over Ottawa’s failure to comply with a May 15 deadline to take back the garbage. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last week that Canada has been working hard with Philippine officials and hopes to strike a resolution shortly but did not specify a time frame. AP