(Ottawa) The meeting between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Quebec counterpart François Legault will finally take place Tuesday in Montreal.
This meeting was supposed to take place last Friday, but was postponed due to difficult weather conditions in the Ottawa and Montreal areas.
“The meeting with the Prime Minister and his counterpart will take place tomorrow (Tuesday). The purpose of this meeting is to work on our common priorities such as the cost of living, health, the promotion of French, investments in infrastructure and the labor shortage”, indicated Ann-Clara Vaillancourt, Prime Minister Justin Tudeau’s press.
This will be the second bilateral meeting between the two premiers since François Legault’s victory in the provincial elections. MM. Trudeau and Legault had a one-on-one during the Francophonie summit in Tunisia last month.
Although last Friday’s meeting was postponed due to a snowstorm, the two prime ministers were able to speak on the phone. They took advantage of this telephone interview to discuss a few subjects, in particular COP15 on biodiversity and immigration.
Immigration will be an unavoidable issue of their meeting on Tuesday, especially since this thorny issue has caused a lot of ink to flow in recent weeks.
In an interview with The Canadian Press last week, Justin Trudeau said that Quebec had the capacity to welcome up to 112,000 immigrants, a statement that was quickly criticized by the Legault government.
Mr. Trudeau had to clarify his remarks later, affirming that he had not wanted to propose figures for Quebec.
The subject of health transfers is also proving thorny.
Canadian provinces have been advocating 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.
With The Canadian Press