Prime Minister Mark Carney is meeting today with French President Emmanuel Macron on the French Islands of Saint Pierre et Miquelon, just miles off the coast of Newfoundland. A joint media briefing is expected around 4:00 this afternoon, Newfoundland time.
The two leaders are expected to discuss potential energy and aerospace partnerships in what is expected to be a fairly brief meeting according to senior parliamentary reporter with the Globe and Mail, Steve Chase.
He says they’re expected to announce greater military and Arctic cooperation between Canada and France. “They will have a working lunch,” says Chase, “and then right back to Canada after a few hours there. They’re, I think, both heading to the U.N. General Assembly this week.”
Chase noted on The Tim Powers Show on VOCM that President Trump appears to have knowledge of the French islands off Newfoundland, at least according to his tariff plan last year which struck just about every country in the world.
Saint-Pierre et Miquelon was slapped with a tariff of 50 per cent but that was knocked back to 10 per cent later on,” says Chase. “So, he might not be aware of the islands, but his staff certainly are.”
Carney and Macron will also lay wreaths at a memorial for Free France volunteers. It commemorates Free French forces peacefully liberating the archipelago from the control of the Vichy regime in 1941, which aided Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
French media report that Saint Pierre et Miquelon, a French Department, has long felt overlooked by Paris, and is facing a number of local challenges, not the least of which is the possible relocation of a community on the island of Miquelon due to coastal erosion and flooding.
