Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the threat of war by President Rodrigo Duterte against Canada is just a "figure of speech".

"It's just a figure of speech to dramatize his extreme displeasure. But if it were me, I would run after the importer of those garbage," said Lorenzana.

Just last Tuesday, Duterte threatened to declare war against Canada if they will not pull out tons of trash dumped in the Philippines on 2013 to 2014.

"I'll give a warning to Canada maybe next week that they better pull that (trash) out," Duterte said.

"We'll declare war against them, we can handle them anyway," he added.

Arsenio Andolong, Department of National Defense (DND) spokesman emphasized that "declaring war is not a simple issue".

"Like what the secretary of national defense said its probably, he's (Duterte) dramatizing his extreme displeasure and the president is just human, there are moments when even us can say a word which is actually not what we wanted to say," he said.

"Declaring war is not a simple issue, we all know that there are a lot of process that needs to do we always respect processes and constitutional procedures... I think it's not what the president meant literally," he added. Robina Asido/DMS