PM to visit site of wildfires

Cabinet holds retreat in Nanaimo as B.C. faces provincewide emergency

NANAIMO, B.C.— Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his newly shuffled cabinet gathered Tuesday for a retreat on Vancouver Island, under smoke-filled skies amid a provincewide wildfire emergency.

Ministers are to discuss plans for the fall sitting of Parliament, including proposals to beef up measures aimed at protecting Canadian elections from foreign interference.

But Trudeau’s first order of business was to meet with British Columbia Premier John Horgan, who had toured one of the hardest hit areas in the northern part of the province earlier in the day on Tuesday with federal Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan.

“I want to start by saying, obviously, our thoughts are with all the first responders, the firefighters and the residents who are struggling through the wildfires that are raging across the province,” Trudeau said during a brief photo op at the start of his meeting with the premier.

Trudeau is planning to take time out from the cabinet retreat on Thursday morning to personally meet with firefight- ers and evacuees in Prince George.

“As a born and raised Vancouver Islander, I was racking my brain trying to think of the last time a federal cabinet would have come to hold a meeting here and I can’t remember it ever happening,” Horgan said.

“So, it’s a delight to have the prime minister and his team here.”

Horgan noted that this is the second consecutive summer that B.C. has declared a state of emergency, an unprecedented situation that “speaks to the challenges of climate change, which again are values that we share” with the federal government.