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Quebec Premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon campaigned on a promise to hold a third referendum on the province’s sovereignty as early as 2029.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
After weeks of testy exchanges and thinly veiled jibes, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Quebec Premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon will meet face to face this weekend for the first time since the Parti Québécois won last month’s provincial election.
They will meet Sunday in Cambodia, after Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon insisted that a meeting on Canadian soil must take place in Quebec City – a demand the Prime Minister’s Office said it was unable to accommodate.
The two leaders will instead meet for 30 minutes in Phnom Penh on the sidelines of the Sommet de la Francophonie, which Mr. Carney will attend as part of a four-summit trip that concludes in China next week.
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In the nearly six weeks since the sovereigntist Parti Québécois was elected to form a minority government on Oct. 5, relations between Quebec City and Ottawa have been decidedly frosty. Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon has accused Mr. Carney of treating his province as a vassal, while the Prime Minister this week appeared to take umbrage at the Quebec Premier’s decision to reach out directly to newly elected officials in the United States.
“We look forward to meeting the Premier on Sunday,” PMO spokesperson Audrey Champoux said Thursday in a brief message.
Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon campaigned on a promise to hold a third referendum on Quebec sovereignty as early as 2029, though his minority government may not survive that long. Since the election, he has found several occasions to paint Mr. Carney as an adversary.
Still, the Prime Minister remains considerably more popular in Quebec than the new Premier, whose party won just 28 per cent of the vote – a historic low for a party forming government. After the election, Mr. Carney noted to reporters that his Liberals won a 43-per-cent mandate last year.
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Prime Minister Mark Carney in Dublin on Thursday.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
A back-and-forth over the location of a possible tête-à-tête in Canada played out in public over several days. In an interview with La Presse published late last month, the Prime Minister said he wanted to meet with Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon ahead of the Francophonie summit, either in Montreal or Ottawa.
He extended that olive branch after the Quebec Premier declined to attend a Canada-European Union summit in Montreal because Ottawa refused the province’s request to let him deliver a speech at the event. Mr. Carney said the Premier had chosen to leave an “empty chair.” In turn, Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon accused the Prime Minister of “vassalization and erasure.”
The Premier responded to Mr. Carney’s invitation in a 1,600-word social-media post on Nov. 1, thanking him for the “change of tone” but adding that any meeting must take place in the provincial capital. In the end, Ms. Champoux said, the leaders’ schedules “didn’t line up” for a trip to Quebec City.
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This week, the two leaders also sparred over letters Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon sent to 59 elected officials in the U.S. after last week’s midterms, highlighting the province’s trade relationship with various states.
“As you begin your term in office, Quebec looks forward to working with your team to advance our shared goals,” he wrote in a letter to Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic senator-elect from Michigan.
Asked on Tuesday whether the letters could affect Ottawa’s trade negotiations with Washington, Mr. Carney said trade deals are the purview of the federal government. “In a negotiation, it’s always a good idea to have a single negotiator,” he told reporters in Montreal.
Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon fired back, telling reporters in Quebec City that the Prime Minister is not his boss. “Mr. Carney would prefer that we not put on our skates and never set foot on the ice because he wants the rink all to himself,” he said. “Over the coming months, expect to see a Quebec that takes its rightful place in the world.”
In an interview, Quebec Conservative Leader Éric Duhaime said it’s been a “tough start” for Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon, who he said should focus on the economy rather than “symbolic” battles with Ottawa.
“They’re both wrong … they’re both immature,” he said of the two leaders. “Hopefully, now that they’re in Cambodia, it might be easier for them to talk with more respect and with less political pressure.”
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The Francophonie summit is Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon’s first international trip as premier. But his Minister of International Relations, Dieudonné Ella Oyono, told reporters in Phnom Penh on Friday that the Quebec delegation does not intend to focus on sovereignty during the event.
“We don’t need to talk about Quebec independence, because everyone knows a pro-independence government was elected in Quebec,” Mr. Oyono said.
Ahead of the summit on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron declined to comment on his country’s future relationship with a separatist government in Quebec.
“It is not my place to interfere in Canadian affairs, but to continue to support our common ties, including our cultural and linguistic ties,” he told reporters in Dublin.
With reports from Steven Chase and The Canadian Press