CARTA­GE­NA, COLOM­BIA-Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Sat­ur­day morn­ing held talks with Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harp­er pri­or to the com­mence­ment of a Cari­com-Cana­da meet­ing at the Sixth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as. Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Per­sad-Bisses­sar "ex­pressed her sat­is­fac­tion with on­go­ing re­la­tions be­tween the two Com­mon­wealth na­tions, with a par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing the lo­cal health care sys­tem.

"We have been col­lab­o­rat­ing with the T&T based Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion on all as­pects of health care, and a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny has been iden­ti­fied to con­struct an on­col­o­gy cen­tre in Pe­nal to treat with non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases," she said.

The re­lease said the two lead­ers al­so dis­cussed T&T's re­cent 80 mil­lion-bar­relled Ju­bilee oil find. En­er­gy Min­is­ter, who was present at the bi­lat­er­al meet­ing, said there are sev­er­al Cana­di­an com­pa­nies al­ready work­ing in T&T, name­ly Parex Re­sources Inc, Niko Re­sources Ltd and Voy­ager En­er­gy Trinidad Ltd.

The re­lease said Harp­er in­di­cat­ed he was anx­ious for Cana­di­an com­pa­nies to par­tic­i­pate as they have much ex­pe­ri­ence in the en­er­gy in­dus­try. Harp­er ex­pressed his sur­prise that T&T al­so had oil sands as he thought on­ly Cana­da had oil sands: es­sen­tial­ly a mix of bi­tu­men and quartz sand.

Ram­nar­ine said T&T is es­ti­mat­ed to have ap­prox­i­mate­ly two bil­lion bar­rels of oil in "oil sands" lo­cat­ed in Trinidad's south­west­ern penin­su­la, whilst Cana­da holds the world's third-largest re­serves of crude oil and has the world's largest re­serves of oil sands.