Canada to fight U.S. on trash import ban

Canada to fight U.S. on trash import ban
Minister says U.S. ban on importing trash would break free trade rules

WASHINGTON — Canada is jumping into a garbage dispute with the United States, much to the relief of Toronto-area politicians who'll be sitting on a mountain of trash if Michigan follows through on threats to stop taking it.

International Trade Minister Jim Peterson is telling U.S. officials pending legislation to ban foreign trash breaks free trade rules and Canada will challenge it, raising the spectre of another fracas between two countries already at loggerheads over softwood lumber.

Peterson has already complained to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Portman, saying Michigan legislation and proposals before the U.S. Congress giving states the right to restrict foreign trash contravene the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Canadian officials said they'll step up advocacy efforts in the United States but it's clear solid waste is considered a good, like cars or clothes under trade laws, so it shouldn't be treated differently than garbage that goes to Michigan from other U.S. states.

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Garbage is a commodity!

It's kinda late now for us to wake up and rise against its being defined as such.

It really picked up in the early and mid-90s. Needless to say, we in Michigan think the Canadians are using us as a convenient place to avoid dealing politically with their own enviro problems. It's not like they, umm, don't have any land.

Peace

If "free trade" rules force every country to accept trash?

Apparently our distaste for litter only applies to putting it in our own back yard, where it belongs. We're some of the most profligate garbage-makers in the world, and that's downright un-Canadian. Until we improve this situation, as well as our greenhouse gas emissions, far be it from us to lecture anyone else.

a Commerce Clause ruling that waste (trash/garbage) was an article of commerce. The first such case was Philadelphia v. New Jersey, 437 U.S. 617 (1977), which first treated waste as an article of commerce. The U.S. Supreme Court held that a New Jersey statute which banned out-of-state shipments of solid wastes into New Jersey dumps violated the commerce clause because "(o)n its face" it discriminated against "out-of-state commercial interests." The apparent vice of the New Jersey statute, which was motivated by the increasing exhaustion of solid waste facilities in the state, was in drawing a line at the state border, since the court noted that New Jersey could have "slowed the flow of all waste into the State's landfills even though interstate commerce may be incidentally affected . . . ." (http://www.rbeerslaw.com/solwaste.html)

Hhhmmm, I wonder if the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade together w/ WTO documentation is worded to kick-in a similar ruling? Will America be sunk in garbage? Foreign garbage? Apparently, some Canadian government officials thinks so.
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edited to correct minor typo.
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We'll hold the high ground (thanks to all of that Canadian trash).

Ski Mt. Trashmore in Riverview.

sane agreements!