Ambassador Helga Pritz used to be in Algeria, but now she has become Consul General in Montreal, and she covers the French province of Québec, which has approximately 8,5 million inhabitants.
For a long time, there was no separate Hungarian representation in Quebec - the Ottawa Ambassadors were responsible for the region. The Consulate General in Montreal is the third independent and fourth professional representation of our country in Canada. Because of this, the consulate is facing difficulties, it is difficult to reach the Hungarian population there. The ArchEnerg Cluster wants to help with this: building Hungarian-Québec business relations; in accordance with the new law, involve them in EU projects, university relations, etc. ArchEnerg has cooperation agreements with almost all Central and Eastern European countries, and we are founding members of the first cluster organization in Uzbekistan. With these connections, we want to contribute to the establishment of closer Hungarian-Quebec cooperation.
The new representation provides an excellent opportunity to get to know Quebec's economic and market opportunities better, and to present Hungarian economic results and players here. This work is connected to higher education and research and development cooperation, which we also want to focus on, strengthening cultural relations. There are 4 universities in Montreal: McGill University, Concordia University, Université de Montréal and Université du Québec à Montréal. These institutions have approximately 250,000 students.
The emerging Hungarian-Québec relations hold many new opportunities, which our cluster also considers to be an important task.