Lisée on whirlwind visit to Washington

QUEBEC — One-time Washington-based foreign correspondent Jean-François Lisée was back at his old haunts Tuesday on a two-day whirlwind mission to the U.S. capital before he joins Premier Pauline Marois in New York on Thursday.

Marois, whose handlers insist she is not going to New York to reassure the bond-rating agencies, as opposition members in the National Assembly have been suggesting, will meet with potential investors.

She will also address a sellout crowd at a luncheon of the Foreign Policy Association “about her administration’s plans for achieving a robust economy in Quebec,” says the association’s site.

Former Liberal premier Jean Charest made his New York debut at the Foreign Policy Association soon after he was first elected premier in 2003.

The association, which actively follows Canadian affairs, recently presented its FPA Medal to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.

Lisée’s schedule in Washington includes meetings with Gary Doer, the former Manitoba premier who is Canada’s ambassador in the U.S. capital, and Alan Bersin, a senior official of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. A news release from Lisée’s office said they would discuss border security.

The Quebec minister had a meeting planned with New York congressman Billy Owens, whose district includes Plattsburgh, and Albert Ramdin, assistant secretary general of the Organization of American States, a Washington-based group made up of 35 countries in the hemisphere. On the agenda was Quebec’s role in the hemisphere, particularly its commitments to Haiti.

Lisée’s schedule said he was invited to the Council of the Americas and would be speaking at the Woodrow Wilson Centre. But a press officer for the centre said the Quebec minister was there “only briefly for a private meeting” and did not make a speech.

Lisée was also to meet Representative Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, who has been an advocate of cap and trade, a process that seems to have stalled, calling for limits of carbon emission and a market where polluters could buy credits.

Charest was a promoter of the concept, which appears to have been overtaken in the United States, as less-polluting natural gas replaces coal as the major fuel for generating electricity.

In North America, only Quebec, in partnership with California, is going ahead with a cap-and-trade plan, starting Jan. 1 when 75 industrial and electricity-generating facilities in the province, producing the equivalent of 25,000 tonnes a year of carbon dioxide, will be regulated under the system.