‘This is a power play’: Latest Carney-PSPP standoff is about where they’ll hold first meeting - National Post
Copy URL Facebook Linked In X (Twitter) Loading account options Sign In Manage Account Close account menu Sign Out Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon gives a victory speech following his win in the provincial election in Montreal on Oct. 5, 2026. (Evan Buhler/Montreal Gazette/Postmedia) By Catherine Lévesque November 2, 2026 at 2:01 p.m. Last Updated: November 2, 2026 at 4:39 p.m. OTTAWA — After the kerfuffle that took place at the Canada-EU meeting last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney is extending an olive branch to Quebec Premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon to meet in-person before next week’s Francophonie Summit in Cambodia.
But this time, the location of their meeting could prove to be a contentious issue.
National Post has learned that Carney’s office reached out to St-Pierre Plamondon’s team on Monday to propose three dates for a meeting. However, none of them involve a meeting that would take place in Quebec City, which St-Pierre Plamondon has insisted on.
They could either meet on Nov. 9 in the Ottawa-Gatineau region, Nov. 10 in the Montreal area or after the summit, on Nov. 20, in the Ottawa-Gatineau region.
A federal source explained that Carney’s schedule is too packed to travel to Quebec City on short notice. The prime minister is heading to a Commonwealth meeting in Antigua and Barbuda, and his government is presenting its budget on Thursday.
Carney could accommodate a meeting with St-Pierre Plamondon next week, before Remembrance Day on Nov. 11. Both men will both be travelling to take part in the Francophonie Summit which takes place in Phnom Penh November 15-16.
“I would love to have the luxury of adding days to the week,” said the source.
If St-Pierre Plamondon absolutely insists on having their first in-person meeting in Quebec City, Carney’s team could only make that happen in December or January — sometime between the federal byelections and Carney’s other commitments.
St-Pierre Plamondon did not have an immediate response to Carney’s offer.
Last week, tensions were high between Ottawa and Quebec after St-Pierre Plamondon refused to attend the Canada-EU Summit in Montreal, including a private dinner with high-ranking European officials, because he was not allowed to offer public remarks.
Carney afterwards gave an interview to La Presse during which he expressed a desire to meet with the new premier in the coming days, ideally in Montreal or Ottawa.
St-Pierre Plamondon’s reply came in the form of an extended social post on Sunday.
“I accept this invitation and thank him for his change in tone,” he said of Carney.
But there is a condition: “Unsurprisingly, I simply ask that this meeting take place in compliance with Quebec law — specifically the National Capital Commission Act, which stipulates that meetings of this nature must be held in Quebec City,” he wrote.
St-Pierre Plamondon added that numerous Quebec City stakeholders have demanded that this law be respected and he committed to doing that during the campaign.
Louis Hamann, a former Quebec diplomat and senior Liberal adviser in Ottawa, said this is indicative of the new way of doing things with St-Pierre Plamondon.
“With this new government in Quebec City, Mr. Carney is going to need to get used to the idea of ‘yes, we’ll do this’ or ‘yes, we can meet,’ but there’ll always be a ‘but,’” he said. “Carney extends an olive branch, Plamondon accepts it, but on his terms.”
Hamann said the ideal scenario would be for Carney to try and meet the Quebec premier before they head to Phnom Penh to make sure nothing “blows up” between them on the margins of the summit. But he agreed there is not a lot of time to do that.
Jonathan Kalles, who served as Quebec adviser to former prime minister Justin Trudeau, said there is “a serious logistics constraint that needs to be understood” in terms of Carney’s schedule and it isn’t “some kind of bad faith discussion.”
Bloc Québécois House leader Christine Normandin said that Carney taking the time to go to Quebec City to meet with St-Pierre Plamondon is the least he can do as a sign of good faith.
“Is it really too much to ask — given that he travels all over the world — for him to travel a few extra hours to reach Quebec City, rather than Montreal or the Gatineau area? It seems to me that this would send a genuine message of reaching out.”
Kalles said the idea of holding official meetings in Quebec City is not new. He said there has been lots of dissent from opposition parties at the National Assembly of Quebec and the mayor of Quebec City in recent years when that hasn’t been the case.
“But in terms of Ottawa versus Quebec City, clearly this is a power play, like everything else has been since the beginning of this relationship,” he said.
“What you’re seeing is kind of both sides, I think, feeling each other out and seeing how far they can push their preferred setup for whatever situation there is,” he continued.
“At some point, it becomes playing chicken and seeing who’s going to blink first.”
Hamann said while Carney is a very capable and smart politician, dealing with a Parti Québécois government is a whole other ball game.
“It’s like trying to explain to someone what it’s like jumping out of a plane in a parachute. You can tell them about it all day. They can read about it all day. They can watch videos about it, but you do not know what it is like until you’ve done it.”
“And this is the situation in which Mark Carney finds himself today.”
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