Take back your trash, lawmakers tell Canada

The House of Representatives has written a strongly worded letter asking Canada to take back the 50 container vans of garbage shipped to the Philippines in 2013 that have provoked a diplomatic back-and-forth between the two countries.

Invoking the Basel Convention, House ecology committee chair Manila Rep. Amado Bagatsing wrote his counterparts in Canada’s House of Commons in Ottawa to argue that the shipment should be returned to its port of origin, in accordance with the Basel Convention.

The interparliamentary letter was sent by e-mail to the chair of the committee on environment and sustainable development of Canada’s parliamentary chamber on Aug. 25.

Copies of the letter were also furnished to Canadian Ambassador Neil Reeder, Environment Secretary Ramon Paje and Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario.

Unlawful importation

In the letter, Bagatsing cited the results of his committee’s inquiry last March into the “unlawful importation” of mixed wastes from Canada.

The panel, he said, established that from June to September 2013, 50 container vans filled with wastes, mostly used plastic bags, bottles, newspapers, household garbage and used adult diapers were shipped from Canada by Chronic Inc., a private company in Ontario, Canada.

The Bureau of Customs (BOC) seized the container vans and subsequently declared the contents to be “heterogeneous wastes,” and thus considered the shipment an unlawful importation under Republic Act No. 6969 or the Toxic Substances and Hazardous and Nuclear Wastes Control Act of 1990.”

Private matter

But the Canadian Embassy has spurned calls to take back the wastes, saying the issue was a “private commercial matter” between the Canadian exporter and the Philippine importer.

In July, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs said it would file a diplomatic protest with the Canadian government over the container vans of garbage.

This was upon receiving a joint letter from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the BOC asking the department to file the complaint to avoid “a repeat of the unfortunate incident and enjoin the government of Canada to revisit their domestic regulations on the export or illegal traffic in waste.”

The Bagatsing letter notes that governments of the Philippines and Canada are signatories to the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes, which ban developed nations from dumping garbage in developing countries.

According to that treaty, the country of origin of the shipment should be responsible for returning the waste to its port of origin “within 30 days” from the time it was notified about the illegal shipment.

No applicable law

Bagatsing said he found “unfortunate” a statement by the Canadian ambassador “that there is no current domestic law which your government could apply to compel the shipper to return its containers to Canada.”

“It must be underscored that its provisions, intentions and underlying principles for governments to take due diligence and responsibility on illegal traffic activities, most specially on wastes emanating from their country, must be diplomatically resolved,” the letter states.

“In this connection, we would like to express our united position that the said 50 container vans of wastes, including those wastes exported thereafter, be shipped back by the government of Canada itself since it cannot compel the shipper to return its containers to Canada pursuant to the Basel Convention,” it said.