Premier Ford and Premier Legault Join Forces on Economic Immigration, Health Care, and Trade

The Voice of Canada News:

Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Quebec Premier François Legault released the following joint statement:

“Ontario and Quebec have had a strong record of working together to create a competitive business environment in our provinces and prosperity for our people.

Today, we discussed the importance of immigration to our two economies. Ontario and Quebec both need higher levels of economic immigration to close the employment gap and ensure businesses can access the talent they need to grow and succeed in every region. We are calling on the federal government to ensure our immigration system is flexible and responsive to those needs.

Our governments remain committed to investing in critical public services like health care. We will continue to advocate for an increase to the Canada Health Transfer of 5.2 per cent annually in our efforts to end hallway health care and ensure patients continue to receive the care they need and deserve.

We also reaffirmed our commitment to work together to remove trade barriers and increase the flow of trade between our two provinces. We repeat our call to the federal government to immediately ratify the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement when Parliament resumes and actively counter damaging Buy American policies in order to protect Ontario and Quebec workers and businesses.

As Premiers, we will continue to build on today’s productive discussions at the upcoming meeting of the Council of Federation in Toronto.”