Justin Trudeau made a stop in Kingston Thursday to meet with children and their families.
The prime minister visited the city’s west-end Boys and Girls Club on Bath Road, where he shook hands with parents and high-fived kids.
He even took a turn down the playground slide.
Although Trudeau was not in Kingston to make an announcement, he did take time to note that the Canada Child Benefit is going up 6.3 per cent for Canadians with children this month.
Trudeau came to Kingston on the seventh anniversary of the introduction of the tax credit, and said since its inception, it’s lifted 435,000 children out of poverty.
He then took on questions from the media, mostly on national issues like the B.C. port strike.
But he did address the recent news that Kingston’s Bellevue House, Sir John A. MacDonald’s one-time home and a national historic site, is being reimagined.
The matter was tabled in Parliament Wednesday, with a plan suggesting new ways of dealing with the home of the Canada’s first prime minister and his controversial past with residential schools.
The plan includes “an evolving understanding of Sir John A. Macdonald’s legacy,” more “community involvement” at the site, and a more modern “heritage experience.”
Trudeau was asked how he thinks Macdonald’s legacy should be treated in federally run sites like Bellevue House.
“What we need to do is make sure we’re listening to people,” Trudeau said.
“Listening to the broad range of perspectives of people who’ve been hurt by terrible errors of the past, as well as people who look at this great country today and know that it’s because of leaders of generations past who were not perfect but pushed us towards where we are today.”
The prime minister then ended the short question period to continue his tour of the province in Belleville later in the day.
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