(Montreal) The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, will not come to Montreal, where he was to participate in a meeting that promised to be full-bodied with his Quebec counterpart, François Legault.
“Unfortunately, for weather reasons, the Prime Minister was unable to travel to Montreal today,” said Ann-Clara Vaillancourt, press secretary in Prime Minister Trudeau’s office.
The meeting was postponed later, it was said.
“The Prime Minister will still speak to Premier Legault by telephone this morning as a courtesy,” she added.
MM. Trudeau and Legault were to have a long talk, among other things, on the thorny issue of health transfers.
Remember that Quebec, along with the other Canadian provinces, has been pleading for years for a substantial increase in federal health transfers.
The Trudeau government has said it would raise them on the condition that the provinces and territories collaborate on a national system for sharing health data. Mr. Legault is, however, awaiting a concrete offer from the federal government.
There would surely also be a question of the issue of immigration. In an interview with The Canadian Press this week, Mr. Trudeau said that Quebec had the capacity to welcome up to 112,000 immigrants, a statement lambasted by the Legault government.
Mr. Trudeau had to clarify his remarks later, affirming that he had not wanted to propose figures for Quebec.
The two prime ministers met last month on the sidelines of the Francophonie Summit in Djerba, Tunisia.