Canadian Member of Parliament Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, who represents the Bloc Québécois (BQ) party, urged the Canadian government not to send a delegation to the FIFA World Cup opening Sunday in Qatar, a country that should never have hosted this global event in his opinion.

"I hope there won't be," Brunelle-Duceppe said in an interview with Radio Canada, regarding the possibility of the Canadian government’s Minister of Sport, Pascale St-Onge, attending the tournament in Qatar. Brunelle-Duceppe also expressed his hope that Canada would not send any diplomatic representative to Qatar.

Three days before the tournament's opening, Justin Trudeau's Liberal government had not yet announced whether it would send a delegation to this small Gulf country or not. "Plans will be announced in due time," Minister St-Onge replied yesterday by email to a question posed by Radio Canada on this matter.

But in Brunelle-Duceppe's view, Canada should not send a delegation to Qatar, thus sending a clear message to this Arab country as well as to the entire world: "We will not go to Qatar because members of the LGBTQ+ community, for example, are sent to prison there, and because foreign workers die there, quite frankly."

Likewise, the Bloc Québécois MP believes Canada should play a leading role in human rights respect, a historic role that Justin Trudeau has been unable to confirm, according to Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe.

Canada should seize the opportunities that allow it to resume this historic role in defending human rights, adds Brunelle-Duceppe, who does not hesitate to point out that he says this even though he belongs to a party that wants Quebec province to separate from the Canadian federation.

It is also noted that Qatar’s selection 12 years ago to host the FIFA World Cup is condemned in many forums.

Even Joseph Blatter, who was president of FIFA at the time, said earlier this month that awarding Qatar the hosting rights for this year’s tournament was a "wrong decision."

The World Cup runs from November 20 to December 18. The Canadian team plays its first match on November 23 against Belgium.

In the same regard, this will be Canada's first participation in the world's most popular sport’s World Cup since 1986 in Mexico, and the second ever since the first tournament in Uruguay in 1930.

Additionally, Canada and Qatar have maintained diplomatic relations since 1974. The Canadian government’s website states that in 2020 Qatar was Canada’s third-largest trading partner in the Gulf region, and the volume of trade between the two countries that year reached 196.2 million dollars.