Ontario says Ottawa should pay for the ‘mess’ caused by illegal border crossers

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with new Premier Doug Ford at Queen’s Park today.

The two had a 30 minute meeting behind closed doors and while they don’t agree on things like climate policies and border issues, the Prime Minister says he hopes they can work together.

It was their first official meeting since Doug Ford became Premier.

“We are going to sit down and have a chat and look forward to our meeting.”

The two talked behind closed doors for about half an hour. The topics: NAFTA, carbon tax and boarder crossing.

After, Ford went out a back door to return to a caucus meeting.

But the Prime Minster took some questions from media. One of those about the accusations the Ford government made shortly before the meeting; that Ottawa is to blame for a housing crisis caused by people crossing the border illegally and should pay all the costs.

Something the Prime Minister was quick to correct, “It didn’t seem to me that the Premier was quite as aware of our international obligations to the UN convention on refugees as he might have been, so I spent a little time explaining how the asylum system works.”

He said he also stressed the need for collaboration, saying officials from both levels of government should get together.

“To ensure we are holding true to our values but making sure our immigration and refugee system is being applied in its integrity.”

Political analyst Keith Leslie says that doesn’t look good for Ford, “That did not particularly look good and I am surprised the Premier wouldn’t want to come out and defend himself because the PM sounded almost like he was pretty condescending.”

As for the province’s Cap-and-Trade system, which Ford scrapped as his first order of business, the Prime Minister says:

“The federal government will move forward on bringing in a carbon price back stop and returning directly to Ontarians the money collected on the pricing of pollution.”

While they don’t see eye to eye on those issues, they do agree on international trade and protecting canadian jobs.

“I don’t see very much in cooperation between these two governments at all except in the way of tariffs and international tarde. On everything else from climate change on down they are going to fight and on immigration that’s today’s fight.”

Trudeau was also asked again about an 18 year-old groping allegation, saying:

“I do not feel that I acted inappropriately in any way but I respect the fact that someone else may have experienced that differently.”

When asked whether he would support an independent investigation, Trudeau did not specifically address the question, but said he apologized at the time.