The Fréchette government is lobbying for Montreal to be the headquarters of the new NATO Defence Bank.
Following multilateral negotiations, Canada was selected on Wednesday to host the Defence, Security, and Resilience Bank, but several cities are in the running to host it, including Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa.
Premier Christine Fréchette indicated that she is lobbying intensively to ensure that the Quebec metropolis hosts the new institution.
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“I am doing everything I can,” she assured reporters at a press conference on Friday, on the sidelines of a caucus meeting of Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) elected officials in Rivière-du-Loup.
She said she had discussed the matter with her federal counterpart Mark Carney, as well as with cabinet ministers such as François-Philippe Champagne and Mélanie Joly.
Fréchette also tasked her Minister of International Relations Christopher Skeete with “working on this project.”
She believes that Montreal has everything it needs to secure the institution.
“We need this organization,” she argued.
“We have expertise in finance, expertise in defence, as well as the aerospace industry (…) and we speak French; our multilingual population is an asset in this context.”
Fréchette cited 3,000 potential jobs with the bank’s eventual arrival.
But in an interview with Radio-Canada on Thursday, Canada’s chief negotiator, Isabelle Hudon, was more cautious and declined to confirm such a high number of jobs.
The Defence Bank would essentially be an international defence financing mechanism aimed at reducing borrowing costs for military spending.
It would thus address a certain need, as many Western countries, including Canada, are currently increasing their military budgets and making massive investments.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
