Green Hero Justin Trudeau Unbothered by Canada’s Rogue Behavior in Philippine Trash Scandal

As with most of Duterte’s bombast not directed at impoverished Filipino citizens, Duterte also walked back his call to arms against the entire nation of Canada, and the trash remains in his hands. By Thursday, Duterte’s presidential office announced that it would hire a private company to send the garbage back immediately, essentially guaranteeing the same outcome as the Canadian plan a little earlier and at the expense of the Filipino taxpayer.

That move would not have been necessary if Trudeau had simply respected Duterte’s call for Canada to stop behaving like a rogue state, disregarding outrage over their flagrant violation of international law. That the law broken is an environmental one serves as a reminder that among the things many on the left loved the most about Trudeau was his alleged commitment to green policies.

“Climate change is an immediate and significant threat to our communities and our economy,” the Liberal Party website proclaims, under a giant photo of Justin Trudeau’s face. “[Former prime minister] Stephen Harper has had nearly a decade to take action on climate change but has failed to do so. His lack of leadership has tarnished Canada’s reputation abroad, making it harder for Canadian businesses to compete.”

McKenna, Trudeau’s Environment Minister, has moved for an official declaration of a “climate emergency” in Canada. Trudeau himself has imposed an economically crippling “carbon tax” on the country intended to reduce emissions.

It should be a priority for an administration like this to stop contributing to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and yet no one in Trudeau’s administration is in any rush on the issue.

In the United States, at least the right has noticed.

“I was shocked that he would send his garbage to the Philippines—a struggling third-world country needs more Canadian garbage?” Fox News host Tucker Carlson noted in April, when Duterte first threatened war. “I mean it just seems so insensitive, and that seemed like … a form of colonialism, garbage colonialism. Why is he sending his hair gel bottles to Manila? It just seems like white privilege to me.”

Duterte had Trudeau’s number years ago. Following what Duterte claimed was a cringeworthy lecture on human rights from Prime Minister Oscar the Grouch in 2017, the Philippine president told reporters, “[I]t is a personal and official insult. … it angers me when you are a foreigner you do not know what is happening in this country.”

“I only answer to the Filipino. I will not answer to any other bullshit, especially foreigners. Lay off,” Duterte said.

Indigenous leaders have grown tired of having their concerns being treated as lesser in Canada, too.

“Why don’t you sit down with my people? Why don’t you talk to them?” a Tsleil-Waututh Nation member, Will George, asked Trudeau during an event on Wednesday in Vancouver, expressing frustration that Trudeau’s government is attempting to push an oil pipeline through indigenous territory with little input from the people who actually live there. “How dare you bring that through our waters?” George asked. “Those are our spiritual highways. You have no right to do that to us.”

Incidentally, the pipeline in question – the Trans Mountain pipeline – would also be an environmental disaster, those who live there allege.

The pattern is clear. Trudeau’s respect for locals’ wishes and the wellbeing of the earth ends where his political interests begin. Those interests have been battered by years of broken promises, condescension, and embarrassment, dimming his 2019 electoral prospects. But until Canada solves its own problems – from taking out their literal trash to cleaning up their halls of power – the rest of the world will be forced to continue to smell it.

Story cited here.

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