French president postpones July visit to N.B.

French President Emmanuel Macron will not travel to New Brunswick next month as planned.

“The province was notified by the French Consulate earlier this week that the visit has been postponed,” said Bruce Macfarlane, a spokesperson for Premier Blaine Higgs’s cabinet, in a statement.

A spokesperson for Macron confirmed the delay to Radio-Canada.

“The visit will not take place in July,” Marie Tausig said by email.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that Macron would visit the province “for the first Canada-France Joint Council of Ministers in order to deepen the bilateral relationship between the two countries and promote shared priorities.”

But the makeup of Macron’s cabinet could change based on the outcome of legislative elections being held in two rounds on June 30 and July 7.

Macron called those elections after his party suffered losses in European parliamentary elections.

France’s acting consul-general in Moncton said on June 6 that Macron’s visit would be to that city. 

The idea of a visit by Macron was first raised in 2021 when he named acclaimed Acadian author Antonine Maillet a commander of the French Legion of Honour during a visit to France by an Acadian delegation.

Two French presidents have visited New Brunswick previously. François Mitterrand made a brief stop in the province as part of a Canadian visit in 1987, and Jacques Chirac attended the Francophonie Summit in Moncton in 1999.