YES, CANADA must take back at once the thousands of tons of its garbage languishing in our country’s ports to bring the long-drawn-out dumping controversy to a close. To recall, 103 container vans of mixed garbage from Canada, wrongly declared as scrap plastics for recycling, entered the port of Manila in 2013-2014. The Bureau of Customs intercepted the illegal shipments.
This dumping controversy has dragged on for five years already without tangible resolution. We are, however, encouraged by two recent developments. First, President Rodrigo Duterte on April 23 slammed Canada over the illegal garbage exports that have yet to be re-exported to its origin despite the statement of the Canadian Prime Minister issued in Manila in 2017 that “it is now theoretically possible to get (the wastes) back.” Second, a clear legal opinion was released on April 10 by a respected Canadian environmental law center confirming that Canada is obliged under the Basel Convention to take back the wastes.
The President has once again spoken against the garbage imports from Canada stressing that the Philippines is not a dumpsite. His 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.
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. 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.
We are counting on Canada to announce without delay a clear and definite date by which it will take back its wastes. The upcoming 14th Basel Convention Conference of the Parties, which also marks the 30th anniversary of the treaty, in Geneva, Switzerland starting April 29 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.
But to prevent the country from turning into a global dumpsite, the government must outlaw foreign waste importation and to ratify the Basel Ban Amendment, which prohibits the transboundary movements of hazardous wastes from developed to developing countries. The Canadian dumping scandal serves as a stark reminder of the insufficiency of our laws and the need for a stronger defense against the entry of wastes and toxics that could be better managed in exporting countries.
