Canada vows to review travel advisory on Phl

YOKOHAMA – Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper assured President Aquino yesterday that his government would review his country’s negative travel advisory on the Philippines.

Mr. Harper and Mr. Aquino met on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ Summit here where they discussed various issues.

Leaders from 21 countries have arrived here for the summit and other related meetings. Yesterday the first leaders’ retreat session took place at the Pacifico Yokohama Conference Center.

Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office Secretary Ricky Carandang said Harper gave the assurance after Mr. Aquino raised the issue on the travel advisories.

“The President’s comments were well noted because sometimes these advisories hurt our efforts to invite tourists to the Philippines. The only thing we’re asking for is that they carefully evaluate the intelligence information that gets to them before issuing a travel advisory,” Carandang said.

“The government of Canada promised to review their procedures of issuing travel advisories,” he said in a short press briefing after the bilateral meeting.

“He (Mr. Aquino) said that there are different levels of reliability of intelligence and that based on what we know, the level of the veracity of the intelligence was less solid, was not as solid to merit the kind of stern travel advisories. So they said that they will review their procedures,” Carandang said.

He said that while the President understands the need for these advisories to keep their citizens safe, “the level of quality of some of the intelligence (information) that gets spread out really deserves a second look.”

“In our case we don’t believe that the advisories were warranted,” Carandang pointed out.

At the APEC CEO Summit, the President lashed out at the countries that issued the travel warnings, saying they endangered Philippine efforts to invite visitors and investors.

He said the warnings also came at a time when the Philippines was preparing to launch a new tourism campaign tomorrow.

The President disclosed he himself took part in conceptualizing the new tourism campaign that would have “Pilipinas Kay Ganda” as slogan. This will replace the Wow Philippines slogan.

Carandang also said the President thanked the prime minister for his country’s good treatment of the Filipinos in Canada.

There are currently 300,000 Filipinos in Canada, which has laws to protect migrant workers including Filipinos, Carandang said.

Carandang added that the President requested Harper to encourage Canada’s private sector to participate in the Public-Private Partnership conference in Manila on Nov. 18.

“What was discussed was mostly economic ties. This was the first meeting between the two leaders,” Carandang said.

For his part, Harper sought the Philippines’ cooperation in curbing human trafficking.

“There’s a lot of human smuggling that goes into Canada and when they met with the Australian government, they also raised the same issue,” Carandang said.

“They discussed this with us to see how we could help (curb the problem) because many people from Asia and other parts of the world are smuggled into Canada using different transshipment points,” he said.