Duterte orders recall of envoy, consuls in Canada over garbage row
Credit to Author: BERNADETTE E. TAMAYO| Date: Thu, 16 May 2019 04:35:02 +0000
PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte has recalled the Philippine ambassador and consuls to Canada after Ottawa failed to comply with his May 15 deadline to take back the tons of garbage it exported to Manila in 2013.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. on Twitter said that “at midnight last night, letters for the recall of our ambasador and consuls to Canada went out” and were expected to be back in the country “in a day or so.”
“Canada missed the May 15 deadline. And we shall maintain a diminished diplomatic presence in Canada until its garbage is ship bound there,” said Locsin in a post on Twitter.
The Philippine Ambassador to Canada is Petronila Garcia.
There are 901,218 Filipinos in Canada as of April 2018, comprising a mix of naturalized Canadians, permanent residents and temporary foreign workers. This number comprises almost 2.6 percent of Canada’s population.
In 2017, remittances from Filipinos in Canada totalled over $644.4 million, up by 12.6 percent from 2016 ($572.8 million).
A total of 103 container vans from Canada loaded with garbage had been mislabeled as “recyclable plastic materials.” These were shipped to Manila in 2013 by Chronic Incorporated, a private company in Ontario, and were consigned to Chronic Plastics, a Philippine company.
Upon inspection, the Bureau of Customs (BoC) and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) discovered that the shipment contained bottles, adult diapers, kitchen refuse and other household trash.
The Canadian embassy in the Philippines, in a statement in April, said that Manila and Ottawa were working together to resolve the garbage issue.
“Canada is strongly committed to collaborating with the Government of the Philippines to resolve this issue and is aware of the court decision ordering the importer to ship the material back to Canada,” the embassy said.
The post Duterte orders recall of envoy, <br> consuls in Canada over garbage row appeared first on The Manila Times Online.