PM to visit Canada, finalize purchase of firefighting planes
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will travel to Canada later this week, where he will finalize a deal to purchase seven DHC-515 Firefighters, the newest water bombers built by De Havilland, Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper reported Wednesday.
“The DHC-515 is an updated version of the CL-415 water bomber, which used to be built by Montreal’s Bombardier. It has yet to enter production,” Globe and Mail reported.
The red and yellow planes are used in several European countries, including France and Italy, where they are universally known as Canadairs, after the company that originally developed the amphibious tankers in the late 1960s.
Five of the seven planes in the Greek fleet would be purchased by the Greek government. The other two would be purchased by the European Union for its civil protection arm, known as rescEU, Globe and Mail reported. The last two will be based in Greece, but will fly, as a priority, to other countries to assist in wildfire emergencies.
The cost for the purchase of the firefighting planes is estimated at €360 million.
Mitsotakis’s official visit will be the first to Canada by a Greek prime minister in 41 years. “The delay was inexplicable, given the strong ties between Greece and Canada,” he said in an interview to the Globe and Mail. “I had made it a priority to officially visit Canada…to engage with the Greek-Canadian community and to talk about the economic aspect of our co-operation.”
Mitsotakis will meet his Canadian counterpart and fellow son of a Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau in Montreal on Sunday. Then the two leaders will attend the city’s Greek Independence Day parade and an evening event sponsored by the Greek community.
On Monday, Mitsotakis will go to Toronto to meet business representatives at the Economic Club of Canada, followed by a Greek community event at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where he will make a speech, Globe and Mail said.
After a lengthy exposition of Greece’s financial woes and its recovery, Globe and Mail reports that “Toronto’s Fairfax Financial Holdings bet heavily on the Greek turnaround and became one of the biggest foreign investors in the country. Its holdings include 32 per cent of Eurobank, one of Greece’s largest lenders. In an interview Tuesday, Fairfax’s chairman and chief executive officer, Prem Watsa, called Greece ‘the best country in Europe for investments.’”
Mitsotakis told Globe and Mail he will discuss the Ukraine and Israel-Hamas with Trudeau.
“We are pushing the European Union hard to reach a statement that will very, very clearly express our deep concerns for the humanitarian situation in Gaza, put pressure on Israel not to invade Rafah [in southern Gaza], and make it very, very clear that, at the end of the day, only a two-state solution can solve the overall political problem of the Middle East,” Mitsotakis said in his interview.
He added that the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas when it attacked Israel on Oct. 7 must be released.
