KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC – 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 several pressing matters to attend to in Washington and at home.
In an interview on local radio on Sunday, Dr. Gonsalves said he left Ottawa on Thursday to attend a fundraising 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 the housing program, the 21 houses we delivered a few weeks ago and the 20 we will 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’s 95th birthday, which I did at Gorse yesterday, or to talk to 50 people, Vincentians, important as they are, in Ottawa –” Gonsalves said on the radio.
“… what’s wrong with me returning to be with…my mother-in-law at her 95th. Since her house was 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 met me in Toronto; they met me where I lay over; they met me in Ottawa.
“I don’t understand. You see, these fellas tell themselves a lie for many years, and they begin to believe it. 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 liberalization of the visa regime for Vincentians.
“I didn’t have a compelling reason to do that. I had a compelling reason this time 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.
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