KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent – St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has defended his decision not to meet with Vincentians in the Canadian Diaspora when he attended the recent Canada-CARICOM summit in Ottawa, saying that he had a number of pressing matters to attend to in Washington and at home.
PRime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves sits with other CARICOM leaders at the Canada-CARICOM SummitIn an interview on local radio on Sunday, Dr. Gonsalves said he left Ottawa on Thursday to attend a fund raising function of the Mustique Charitable Trust, which took place that same night.
“First of all, I had to leave Ottawa Thursday to get to New York in time to go to a big fundraiser for the Mustique Charitable Trust,” Gonsalves said adding that “they are the ones who raise $5 million U.S. to help St. Vincent and the Grenadines with the Soufriere. And they are involved with us with the housing programme — the 21 houses we delivered a few weeks ago and the 20 we going deliver on Thursday coming.”
He said he left New York on Friday to be back in St. Vincent in time to celebrate his mother-in-law’s 95th birthday with her on Saturday and to attend the funeral of Famo Samuel funeral, “a comrade from Chester Cottage”.
“If you have a choice between…coming to host your mother-in-law 95th birthday, which I did at Gorse yesterday or to talk to 50 people, Vincentians, important as they are, in Ottawa –” Gonsalves said on radio.
“… what’s wrong with me coming back to be with…my mother-in-law at her 95th. Since her house get blown down in 2017 in Dominica she has been living here in St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” the prime minister told listeners.
“But I didn’t go under a cloak of secrecy,” Dr. Gonsalves said. “I booked my passage in the same way. The staff did it. The Canadian authorities meet me in Toronto; they met me where I laid over; they met me in Ottawa.
“I don’t understand. You see these fellas, they tell themselves a lie for many, many years and they begin to believe their lie. There’s never been any reason, legal or factual to restrain me from going to Canada. Never!
“I didn’t go to Washington for nearly 12 years and I just went there. If I don’t have a reason to go, a compelling reason and as I told you, I was not interested in applying for any visa and my continuing demand for a liberalisation of the visa regime for Vincentians.
“I didn’t have a compelling reason to do that. This time, I had a compelling reason because I had to go to the summit.”
Since 2012, Vincentian passport holders have required visas to visit Canada and Gonsalves said this is one of the issues he raised with Trudeau.
