TRUDEAU ANNOYED ABOUT VISIT OF FRENCH AGENT’

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31783, 13 September 1968, Page 15

TRUDEAU ANNOYED ABOUT VISIT OF FRENCH AGENT’

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) OTTAWA, September 12. The Prime Minister, Mr Pierre Trudeau, said today the Government of France had acted in “an underhanded and surreptitious” way in sending an agent to “agitate” among French-speaking Canadians in Manitoba.

He said this “distasteful” action taken without knowledge and permission of the Canadian Government could have a harmful backlash and damage the cause of Frenchspeaking minorities in this country.

Mr Trudeau was asked at a news conference to comment on reports that a Phillipe Rossillon had spent two week in Manitoba encouraging French-speaking persons in efforts to safeguard their language.

He replied: “If my information is correct, Mr Rossillon is on the staff of the Prime Minister of France .... "I don't want to insist on the impropriety of someone coming to Canada if he wants. But this is the kind of action that can do damage to the cause of French Canadians in Manitoba and other provinces where they are in a minority.

“It can harm the acceptance of bilingualism if an agent of a foreign state comes in and agitates, as it were, to have the citizens in that province act in a certain way.” “This action . . . can cause a backlash which is very undesirable,” the Prime Minister said. Mr Trudeau said he was making inquiries to determine precisely what Mr Rossillon had been doing. There was a cultural agreement between Canada and France to promote the cultural activities of France in this country. It was “distasteful” that the Government of France had chosen to act “in this under-

hand and surreptitious way,” he said.

A spokesman for the French Embassy in Ottawa described Mr Rossillon as Chief of France’s Committee for

the Defence and Expansion of the French Language. He came to Canada at the invitation of a French language cultural group in Manitoba, the spokesman said. He described it as “a purely private visit,” believed to have resulted from a visit to France earlier this year by a representative of the Manitoba group.