[SPEAKING FRENCH]. OPERATOR:

Merci. Thank you. First question, the “globe and mail”. your line is open. Please go ahead.

Reporter:

Good morning, Prime Minister. Thank you for taking our questions. My question is with regard to the government’s decision to tighten the scrutiny of forced takeovers of Canadian firms impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Why is this decision important and why did you take this decision a month after European countries started doing this?

Prime Minister Trudeau’s we recognize that countries around the world are looking at their own regimes and recognizing that there are vulnerable businesses that are going to be important to our recovery who are perhaps exposed to foreign purchases in a vulnerable time, that we need to be careful and are taken care of. We’ll be strengthening our oversight and paying close attention to foreign investment in this country, to ensure that there isn’t people taking advantage of this crisis.

Interpreter:

We recognize it is important in this time of economic slowdown and vulnerability for many businesses that there are not people or companies overseas that are trying to take advantage of this situation to invest in Canadian companies which normally would not be as a result negotiable that type of takeover. and that is why we’re talking about just how important these measures are to ensure the protection of our industries and our economy.

Caller:

Are you aware of any foreign takeover deals that are occurring or are there any sectors that you’re concerned about?

Prime Minister Trudeau:

Certainly as we look at challenges around supply chains for essential medical supplies and personal protective equipment as we strengthen our own domestic industry and production, we wouldn’t want a foreign investor tic that production that is being made for Canadians in this moment of crisis and send it overseas. We also recognize that there are perhaps some startups that we would want to remain Canadian for the coming years that could be exposed to predatory foreign investors. This is something that, of course, we’ll be keeping an eye on.

THANK YOU. [SPEAKING FRENCH]. OPERATOR:

Thank you. Merci.

Reporter:

Bonjour.

Interpreter:

Good morning, Mr. Trudeau. What can you tell us about the negotiations regarding the reconvening of parliament next week and if the 338 M.P.s have to be recalled tomorrow. Whose fault will it be? well, we’re very concerned about the fact that we have not yet reached an agreement with all the opposition partis to not come back tomorrow morning. The current situation is that parliament is supposed to resume tomorrow on the 20th of April with 338 M.P.s from every corner of the country and their team, their staff, security guards and administrative personnel and, of course, we’re not in a situation where that should be happening. We need a parliament that works. We need to do that in a responsible way. That’s why we’ve had some good conversations with most of the parties and we’re close to an agreement to be able to come back every week to ensure that they can ask questions and we can move forward with legislation. But the conservatives are resisting that reasonable solution at this time. But we do hope that this can be resolved soon. Follow-up? yes. So you’re saying that it’s the conservatives. Now you were talking to children earlier because it’s Sunday. So, what kind of image does this present if everyone is making sacrifices and does it really show that politicians are not able to agree at such a difficult time? well, that’s a very good question, lena. and for me it is very frustrating. Because we’re clearly hearing from our experts and public health authorities that we must continue to make the responsible choices and limit our movements and seems to me that it’s fairly clear that parliament should not return in the same manner as before, starting tomorrow. I very much believe that I’s extremely important to continue to support our democracy and keep our *ins using – institutions working and I’m willing to answer questions. I take questions from the media every day and I think opposition M.P.s should have the chance to also ask questions as well and that is why we made a proposal that seems very reasonable to all the other parties but the conservatives. I don’t know. I think you’ll have to ask him, ask them what their approach is. and why they’re unreasonable in this situation.

Prime Minister Trudeau’s we’re in a situation right now where our public health authorities, our experts and common sense tells us we need to continue to limit our movements, we need to continue to work from home. We need to continue to do everything we can to ensure that people are kept safe from further spread of this pandemic. That’s why it would be irresponsible for the house of commons to resume tomorrow, as scheduled, on April 20 with 338 M.P.s, their staff, support staff in the house of commons, security, people coming in from across the country at this particular point. We have proposed, and it has been accepted by – largely accepted by the other opposition parties that we should have accountability measures. We should have parliament that functions, but we have to do it responsibly. That’s why coming back every week for questions and for work on passing new legislation is something that I think is reasonable and is acceptable to most parties. I believe deeply in our democracy and democratic institutions and our principles and it’s important to be accountability. I’m perfectly happy to be take questions every day from media and looking to ward to taking questions from opposition parties but it has to be done in a responsible way and right now the conservatives are not taking a responsible approach.

THANK YOU. MERCI. QUESTION? OPERATOR:

Next question, Canadian press. Please go ahead.

Reporter:

Yes, Prime Minister. Thank you for talking to us. The n. D.p. is asking for, in terms of parliamentary sitings, one in-person day and two virtual sitings. You proposed only one virtual sitting. Can you explain why two is unaccepting?

Prime Minister Trudeau:

I think it is important that we have in-person sitings and one a week seems about the right number in a reduced fashion. But we also have been clear from the very beginning that we think there should be virtual sittings to allow parliamentarians from across the country who aren’t within driving distance of ottawa to continue to participate and that is why we have been pushing for virtual sittings. We heard that they are incapable of standing up virtual sittings for this coming week. But we are very open to increasing them over the subsequent weeks because it’s important that we be able to hear from all parliamentarians.

Reporter:

and there is report of a deal that has been reached. Can you confirm that a deal has been reached with the opposition partis?

Prime Minister Trudeau:

I can’t confirm anything like that. As I came out this morning, I heard that we were very close on it. But I haven’t in the past half hour got notice that there was a deal. It seems reasonable that we can agree that there needs to be a parliament functioning responsibly in this difficult time. Most parties have responsible proposals forward and I certainly hope that the conservatives will agree to doing the responsible thing here. Operator:

Interpreter:

Now the virtual sitings. What would they look like in concrete terms, Mr. Trudeau? well, there are various proposals that the house of commons is looking at now. The idea is for members of parliament across the country to make speeches and ask questions via video conferencing with the same rights and ability to speak as people current will I have inside the house of commons. There would be some in the house and other M.P.s attending virtually. That is why the house of commons has asked for more time to get this ready. In your speech, you said that thousands of families are going through a terrible time and premier legault said yesterday that his government was not properly prepared for this pandemic. You said in the past that there will be a time for a postmortem. After a month of this crisis, there are question asked across the country. Do you think that your government was adequately prepared for this pandemic? I think when we’re in the middle of the crisis and witness the tragedies, we will never fully be prepared. At the same time, we know that canadian and the different levels of government and organisations and everyone have come together to try and put in place measures to protect people and slow the spread of this virus. In a positive way compared to other countries. But even if we end up having a better history than other countries, let’s not forget this is a terrible tragedy for too many families out there and we all have a responsibility to do our very best to ensure that we come out of this tragedy and this crisis without too many additional tragedies. Could you tell me why three in-person sittings per week with reduced numbers is unreasonable? well, I think we know that all parliamentarians cannot return to the house of commons. There are people who live in provinces that are far away from Ottawa and cannot return. and that is why we’ve been saying it’s very important to have virtual sittings so that people can participate in order to represent their community during this crisis. At the same time, in being there to answer questions regularly, it is also important for democracy and our Canadians. It’s fine to take media questions here. I do that about every day and parliamentarians have a role to play and the proposal we made for a session or a sitting every week was accepted by most of the parties as being a reasonable compromise during this crisis. It is important to remember that people are elected from all corners of this country to be their community’s voice in parliament. Particularly in a crime of crisis, it is important to look at virtual ways that allow members from every corner of the country to engage in parliamentary debate and discussion and not just those who have the opportunity to proximity to be around the national capital region. That is why we’ve been pushing the virtual sittings. We know that accountability is important and taking questions every day from the media is a good thing. But it is also important that parliamentarians and opposition politicians go ET to ask questions of the government which is why we proposed parliaments sit every fwhaoek reduced fashion and that is a proposal that was accepted by most parties. The conservatives still need to work on it a little bit in terms of their own reflection.

Interpreter:

Would you be open to there being several virtual sittings per week once that starts happening, three or four, for example? right now the opposition part is can not ask you to account every single day. and that is why they’re unhappy. Would you be in favour of several virtual sittings? I can tell you that the proposals made by the opposition parties and the issues they are raising in terms of criticizing the government are, you know, hear in the media and we have adjusted our proposal and are trying to ensure that we’re doing everything we can to respond to real needs across the country. We are coming to functioning parliament. It’s extremely important that that be the case. That is why we’re trying to find a solution and I can tell you that most opposition party dos agree, only the conservatives may force us to come back tomorrow morning with 338 members of parliament in the house of commons.

Reporter:

You just said that you respect parliament and believe in accountability. Why is your party still hallinging at the last minute over terms of the sitting. Why is this so complicated?

Prime Minister Trudeau’s we have been consistent from the very beginning where I said we have a proposal to bring back parliament every single week and ensure that we’re expanding and looking at virtual sittings as quickly as we can. This has been our position and we’re consistently on that position. Most opposition parties found this to be reasonable. There is one party, and because the house is scheduled to resume tomorrow morning, there is required to be unanimous consent by the parties to not come back tomorrow morning and the conservatives are not wanting to be reasonable in this, I think.

Reporter:

Australia and other companies are calling for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19 outbreak in china. You said this is not the time to point fingers or assign blame. Are you supportive of this investigation in the future and do you believe that china responded and reported adequately?

Prime Minister Trudeau:

I think it is important that we understand what happened and ask tough questions of all countries involved, including china. This is something that we need to pursue. My priority right now and the priority for countries around the world needs to be doing everything we can to keep our people safe and make sure that we have the resources necessary to protect our citizens and get through this. and that will always be My focus.

Interpreter:

We recognize that there are important questions to be asked and there needs to be reflection on what happened and what kind of responsibility some countries have, including china. But our priority must be how we’re going to protect our own citizens now and tomorrow. How we can ensure that we have everything we need to keep ourselves safe.

Reporter:

Prime Minister, a correctional facility near Montreal has confirmed dozens of COVID-19 cases and the same is true with other facilities across the country, including one near Vancouver. What are you doing to protect the incarcerated population and the staff in these facilities to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Prime Minister Trudeau:

From the beginning, service Canada has taken measures to protect staff and inmates in these facilities, including eliminating visits, reducing trantioner ifs, looking at measures including staggered timetables to keep inmates and staff more separate from each other, ensuring that there are different mechanisms in place and those reflections are ongoing. We’re always looking for new ways to ensure protection of those Canadians in those facilities.

Reporter:

Some provinces have had to cut elective surgeries in hospitals to manage COVID-19 patients or prepare for them. Canada’s already – Canada already has long wait lists for some procedures. is the federal government going to assist provinces to make sure that these existing backlogs aren’t amplified wasn’t we’re through this?

Prime Minister Trudeau:

We have a tremendous amount of confidence that provinces are going to be able to continue to manage their health care systems appropriately. We sent them half a billion in new resources to ensure that they’re able to continue with this crisis. One of the key elements through this crisis was ensuring that if more and more people got infected, there would still be emergency beds for them. There would still be intensive care units available for them to deal with the very real challenges of COVID-19 and prevent the death rates from skyrocketing as they have in other countries where their medical systems were overwhelmed. I think Canadians understand how important it is to make it through this crisis as quickly as possible so we can get back to normal. But getting through it as quickly as possible means being very careful about what we’re doing right now.

Reporter:

Good morning, in Austria, for example, they have a plan to get businesses re-opened and doing it in a two-week process. They open a small business, monitor for two weeks, if the cases don’t go up, they continue with hotels, restaurants, etc. Provinces here in Canada have plans that they’re announcing on how they’re going to do that. I’m wondering what the coordination is between your government and the provinces. Will the federal government put a plan up and what are you saying action which businesses should be able to re-open and when?

Prime Minister Trudeau:

Many of the decisions around what makes sense in terms of a careful restarting of the economy are much more appropriately made at the provincial level. Given both provincial authorities and the reality that the shape of this pandemic is very, very different in different parts of the country. What we are working on coordinating with the provinces is a set of principles and approaches that can be applied at different moments and in different ways across the country. We want to be there to ensure that there is a testing capacity, that we are supporting on contact tracing and we’re remaining consistent in the messages that Canadians are hearing from different orders of government across the country, about how to be very, very careful to not allow for a resurge en ls of COVID-19 just as restrictions start being eased. These conversations are very much live with the provinces right now. We are listening very carefully to what experts and looking very carefully at what is working and has worked in other jurisdictions and how and if that can be adapted to us. We recognized from the beginning that we have been slightly slower. We were able to hold off the pace of the virus in Canada for a few more weeks and many other places and, therefore, we can take advantage of learning what works in different situations to adapt it to Canada. We have been extremely thoughtful about that’sing. Again, people need to know it ‘s not going to suddenly re-open in any part of the country overnight to what it was before. We are going to have to be very, very careful, very gradual, very progressive if we are to prevend the kind of resurgence that would send us all back into lockdown as we were before. We want to make sure that what we’re doing now is not for nothing. That we managed to get through this with the containment and control approaches that the proper measures will allow for.

Interpreter:

We know that people want to know when this is going to end and when we can relax certain restrictions. But we have a responsibility to be very careful, to do things properly and gradually and to be extremely vigilant. We’re taking inspiration from what’s been done elsewhere in the world and their success and there are challenges as well. In different parts of the country, and choices are being made and not necessarily the same choices. As the federal government, we’re trying to co-ordinate our efforts so that the understand lying principles with respect to that gradual recovery will be allowed the same way across the country.

Reporter:

There are reports of 12 people sickened in Alberta and other places of the country from that. Should measures be in place to make sure that returning workers isolate whether or not they have symptoms.

Prime Minister Trudeau:

We all understand how important it is to keep workers in essential businesses, workers who continue to work as safe as possible. Safety of workers, of their families as well needs to be the primary consideration of any government and I certainly expect that to be that one as well.