Getting back garbage ‘impossible’ – PM Trudeau

According to Canadian  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, shipping tons of garbage back to Canada would be “impossible” because of “legal impediments.”
“I expressed to President Duterte that back in Canada, we would continue to work on this. And hopefully resolve this situation,” he said in a news briefing.

“We have legal barriers and restrictions that prevented us from being able to take it back. Those regulations and those impediments have not been addressed. So, theoretically it is impossible to get it back. There are a number of questions: who will pay for it (shipment), where the financial responsibility is. This is a commercial transaction. It did not involve governments,” he added.

Trudeau explained that Canada has laws preventing the country from receiving wastes “even if it originally came from Canada.”

Environmental watchdog EcoWaste Coalition expressed its dismay over Trudeau’s “gross indifference to the long-drawn-out Canadian garbage dumping controversy.”

“While he [Trudeau] executed his publicity stunts with gusto, Trudeau was ‘radio silent’ over persistent demands aired by our country’s environmental, health, labor and political leaders for his government to take back the illegal trash shipments for safe disposal in Canada,” Aileen Lucero, national coordinator of EcoWaste Coalition, said in a statement.

“The more we think about his food-to-go order at a restaurant a stone’s throw away from where the rotting residual wastes are stored, the more it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. He should have gone to the port to see for himself the reeking trash. Prime Minister Trudeau’s apathetic inaction only reinforced our belief that the ‘Canadian solution’ he spoke about in 2015 on the sidelines of the APEC Summit was nothing but an empty promise,” Lucero added.

***

Source:  manilatimes.net