Quebec’s international relations minister, Pierre Arcand, visited Atlanta Feb. 26 on a tour of the Southeast as part of the Canadian province’s new U.S. action plan.

While the plan calls for strengthening the already important relationship with the United States on a variety of common initiatives including security, economic development and education, it underlined a renewed commitment to the South.

During a video interview with GlobalAtlanta, Mr. Arcand said that Quebec had been “overly preoccupied with the Northeast,” which is a large consumer of Quebec-generated hydroelectric power.

He also said that he wants to cultivate closer ties to Georgia, Texas and Florida, where he sees good prospects for economic growth and recognizes the region's increasing political influence in Washington.

On this tour, he visited Austin, Texas, and Houston, in addition to Atlanta. He included a sentimental visit to Baton Rouge, La., the city with the largest French speaking population in the U.S.

Mr. Arcand is also Quebec’s minister for La Francophonie, the worldwide organization supporting the French language. French is the majority and sole official language of Quebec.

The new 2010-2013 U.S action plan is one of several of Quebec’s international initiatives. Gunther Beckstein, the minister-president of the German state of Bavaria, made a point of stopping in Montreal to visit with Quebec’s premier, Jean Charest, on his way to the winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada.

Quebec and Bavaria have a close relationship that dates back to 1989, according to Mr. Arcand, when Bombardier Inc., the Montreal-based aerospace company, opened a facility there around the time that the Berlin Wall came down.

“Quebec was trying to define its position in Europe,” he said, aware of the political and economic changes on the continent and particularly aware of the growing competition in aeronautics.

Quebec, he added, was looking for synergies between its companies and European counterparts. Besides aeronautics, it was attracted to Munich, Bavaria’s capital, by its life sciences sector, a field in which Quebec is active.

The regional cooperation with Bavaria has expanded into a larger collective including the upper region of Austria; Sao Paolo, Brazil; Shandong province, China; the Western Cape, South Africa and Georgia.

While Georgia and Quebec have long-standing trade ties, the personal relationship between Gov. Sonny Perdue and Mr. Charest resulted in their joint efforts to launch the Southeastern United States-Canadian Provinces Alliance, which formalized ties between six southern states and seven Canadian provinces.

With only 8 million inhabitants, Quebec has had to be export-oriented to survive, Mr. Arcand said, pointing out that 40 to 50 percent of its gross domestic product is derived from exports, with 75 percent of those exports going to the U.S.

Quebec has supported trade agreements with the U.S. since the mid-1980s, he said, and has been supportive of Nafta since its inception.

He cited his relief that the U.S. and Canadian governments agreed to exempt Canadian companies from “Buy America” provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that would have hurt the Canadian economy.

Mr. Arcand also said that despite Canada’s commitment to Nafta including its inclusion of Mexico, Canadians were generally pleased that President Obama’s first overseas trip was to Canada. Former President George W. Bush’s first foreign trip was to Mexico.

Perhaps the most intriguing of Quebec’s outreach initiatives has been to join in an agreement with France to honor each other’s professional accreditations.

Mr. Arcand indicated that this policy grew out of his government’s self-analysis derived from questions such as How can we perform better in the world? or How can we educate our people better?

Quebec officials concluded that if Quebec were to remain competitive, its researchers would have to be able to travel so that they could be exposed to innovations from around the world. “Free trade has always been something difficult to achieve, but what is even more difficult is free mobility,” he added.

It was this attention to the mobility of Quebec’s researchers that led the government to seek out ways of easing the restrictions on their mobility and eventually to signing a wide-ranging agreement with France recognizing mutually professional accreditations, first for doctors and then to include other fields.

Mr. Arcand referred to a similar agreement already in place between the province of Ontario and New York, which in turn enables any U.S. doctor working in Ontario to also work in Quebec.

While some 4,000 professionals have taken advantage of the French agreement to date, he thinks that number will double in the next few years.

In addition, he said that Quebec is interested in enabling companies to be able to transfer employees for short periods of three to six to eight months more easily.

While Quebec will always retain its closest relations with the United States, Mr. Arcand said that the province would continue to forge alliances worldwide.

As minister for the Francophonie, he is looking forward to receiving the “state of French language” report that is to be published in the near future.

He predicted that by 2050 some 80 percent of French speakers will not be in Europe but rather in Africa. The Francophonie organization, he said, provides Quebec and the rest of the French-speaking world with an important North-South axis, providing an active responsibility for global economic development.

Meanwhile, Quebec City, a bastion of Quebecois culture, is seeking to host the Olympic Games in 2022.

For more information about Quebec's relations in the Southeast, go to http://www.gouv.qc.ca/portail/quebec/international/usa or call (404) 584-2995.

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