Trudeau pressed on ‘Canadian trash’

MANILA, PHILIPPINES • The front-page headline that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau awoke to on Friday in Manila before his return to Canada wasn’t as fawning as others about him in the Philippines.

“Apec hottie not so hot on taking back Canadian trash in Tarlac,” said the tiny story in a corner of page one of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Two days earlier, photos of him and a winking Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto declaring them “APEC hotties” occupied the top half of the paper’s front page.

That abrupt shift illustrated the dynamic at play during the prime minister’s first week of foreign travel: for every sunny moment celebrating his fresh-faced debut on the international stage, there lay a complex foreign policy pitfall lurking in the shadows.

On his first week of travels — to the G20 in Turkey and the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in the Philippines — Trudeau’s footing stayed sure for the most part, but he faces a challenging path moving forward.

On the issue of the “Canadian trash,” Trudeau faced sharp questions from a Filipino reporter near the end of his lengthy and packed APEC press conference Thursday.

Trudeau had evidently digested his pre-trip briefing of hot local issues. The irritant of foreign garbage in the Philippines certainly qualifies, since ships laden with foreign waste have been arriving in the Philippines for about a decade and a half.

In 2013, an Ontario company shipped 50 containers of waste, weighing 2,500 tonnes, through Vancouver, declaring it as scrap metal for recycling. It was later found to be rotting kitchen waste, including used adult diapers.

There have been demonstrations at the Canadian embassy in the Philippines and calls for the garbage to be sent home.

In response to the reporter’s question, Trudeau said Canada was working on legislation that would give it some recourse to take action against companies.

“I know that this has exposed a problem that needs fixing within our own legislation,” Trudeau said, before the journalist pushed for more.

“I believe there are loopholes here that were allowed to be skirted that we need to make sure we close, both for Canada’s interests and a good relationship with our neighbours,” the prime minister replied.

On the front-line international issues that he faced going into the trip — Canada’s decision to withdraw fighter jets from the combat mission against ISIL, its plan to admit 25,000 Syrian refugees by the year end, and need for further study of the Trans-Pacific Partnership — Trudeau held steady to his core positions.

Repeatedly, Trudeau explained this past week that these were promises that he made to get elected, which were based on listening to Canadians.

That sparked partisan political attacks back home that he wasn’t being nimble enough in reacting to the Paris terrorist attacks that unfolded just as he was preparing to fly out of Ottawa last week.

Some analysts say Trudeau’s first foreign policy steps have been a bit too rigid, especially in light of the Paris attacks.

“The prime minister’s response to the crisis has been to lash himself to the mast of his election commitments on refugees and to withdraw our CF-18s from the allied bombing campaign,” said Fen Hampson, director of the global security program at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

“We are already seeing that soft power, not hard power, will define Mr. Trudeau’s global security policies and international engagements.”

THIS HAS EXPOSED A PROBLEM THAT NEEDS FIXING WITHIN OUR OWN LEGISLATION. — JUSTIN TRUDEAU