Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte threatens war with Canada over ‘illegal’ rubbish dumping

Rodrigo Duterte also threatens to dump the waste outside of the Canadian embassy himself if the country does not reclaim its garbage

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to go to war with Canada if the country does not reclaim a series of allegedly illegal shipments containing rubbish sent several years ago.

The shipments in question date back to 2013 and 2014, when a company called Chronic Plastics reportedly delivered 103 containers of garbage to the Philippines.

Those containers featured nearly 2,450 tons of waste, CNN reported, which Philippine officials discovered were not capable of being recycled.

According to the news outlet, the shipments failed to receive the proper import clearances before arriving at the port of Manila — where several have remained ever since.

“I cannot understand why they are making us a dump site,” the president reportedly said during a briefing over recent earthquakes in the region.

“We’ll declare war against them,” he continued, according to a transcript of his remarks. “Let’s fight Canada. We’ll declare war against them, we can handle them anyway.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has previously defended his government over the dumped waste, saying in 2017 that Canada was “very much engaged in finding a solution.”

Mr Duterte continued attacking Canada over the waste during his comments, threatening at one point to deliver the garbage to the footsteps of the Canadian embassy in the Philippines.

He said he would personally “dump it in front of the Canadian embassy,” adding that the “garbage is coming home.”

“The world runs on arrogance,” he added.

Mr Duterte has launched thinly-veiled threats of war against other countries in the past. Just this month the president said he’d send Philippines troops on a “suicide mission” if China did not stop interfering in regions occupied by the Manila government, CNN reported.