(Ottawa) The Canadian government plane that was supposed to bring Justin Trudeau home was still stuck on the tarmac at New Delhi airport on Monday due to a mechanical problem. The Prime Minister’s office hopes that the latter will be able to take off Tuesday afternoon, local time, aboard a plane sent as reinforcement.
The Prime Minister’s stay in India was longer than expected, despite himself. Normally, the Canadian Armed Forces aircraft carrying him and the Canadian delegation was scheduled to fly Sunday evening to Ottawa, at the end of a difficult G20 summit.
But the plane never took off. “The CC-150 Polaris of the Royal Canadian Air Force suffered a maintenance problem and is not able to transport the Prime Minister and the delegation home,” explains a spokesperson for the Department of National Defense, Daniel Le Bouthillier.
The problem detected before takeoff concerns “a component that will need to be replaced,” he said.
Another aircraft left the Trenton base on Sunday evening to go to India. According to the most recent update from Justin Trudeau’s office, a “possible departure” is planned “at the earliest late Tuesday afternoon [heure locale] “. However, the situation remains “fluid”, it is indicated.
The CC-150 Polaris fleet includes the aircraft used to transport the Prime Minister of Canada, the Governor General and other senior officials and officials. This fleet has been in use since the early 1990s.
It is still unclear what will happen with Justin Trudeau’s participation in his party’s caucus meeting from Tuesday to Thursday in London, Ontario. His office is expected to provide more details on this in the coming hours.
The Prime Minister’s setbacks drew taunts from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. “Today, Trudeau is experiencing the same flight delays he imposed on Canadians due to his mismanagement of federal airports,” he wrote Monday on X (formerly Twitter).
A laborious summit
The day before, the opposition leader offered this analysis about his opponent’s participation in India: “Putting partisanship aside, no one likes to see a Canadian prime minister repeatedly humiliated and trampled by the rest of the world “.
His message covers a screenshot of the front page of the Toronto Sun where we see a photo of the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, who appears to be telling his Canadian counterpart where to go. “This is the exit: Trudeau discovers he has few friends at the G20 summit in India,” headlined the tabloid.
The Hindu nationalist leader was not kind to his guest either. “He expressed our serious concerns regarding the continued anti-Indian activities of extremist elements in Canada,” it is written in the report of the Trudeau-Modi meeting from the Indian camp.
Indian media were also scathing. “Indo-Canadian relationship reaches new abyss,” headlined The Economic Times, an English-language daily newspaper in India. In this publication as in others, Canada is accused of sheltering extremist Sikhs in favor of the creation of the State of Khalistan.
“This is a big stone in the shoe of Indo-Canadian relations. Canada arrived with elements that made the meeting more problematic,” summarizes Serge Granger, professor of political science at the University of Sherbrooke.
with The Canadian Press