Irish PM, Trudeau to march in pride parade
Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s taoiseach, or prime minister, will join Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at Montreal’s pride parade during a threeday visit that gets underway Saturday.
The two leaders met in Ireland in July, shortly after Varadkar took office as the country’s first openly gay prime minister.
Trudeau says he and Varadkar plan to discuss issues related to diversity and inclusion and how both countries can benefit from the Canada-Europe Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, which goes into effect next month.
Trudeau’s office says the Sunday event will mark the first time a foreign leader has joined the prime minister in a Canadian pride parade.
The prime minister stressed the close ties between the two countries, saying more than 4.5 million Canadians claimed Irish ancestry in 2011.
He also said the two-way economic links are strong.
“Our two countries enjoy strong family ties, common values, and a shared history,” Trudeau said in a statement. “Now we are collaborating again to ensure that CETA creates good, wellpaying middle class jobs on both sides of the Atlantic.”
A physician and the son of an Indian immigrant, Varadkar’s election marked a generational and social shift for Ireland. The country, which voted in a national referendum to recognize same-sex marriage in 2015, was among the last European Union members to decriminalize homosexual activity.
Earlier this month, Varadkar said it is “only a matter of time” before same-sex marriage is legalized in Northern Ireland — the only part of the United Kingdom where it still is banned.
He made the comments at a gay pride event in Belfast.
The issue has been one of the sticking points preventing the restoration of the Catholic-Protestant power-sharing government in Northern Ireland.
The Democratic Unionists, Northern Ireland’s biggest British Protestant party and a key partner to British Prime Minister Theresa May’s government, has opposed same-sex marriage.
The Catholic nationalist Sinn Fein supports it.