This is politics. The point here is that Trudeau can't pretend to know about QC and then make huge cuts to science without it being terrible optics. It's easier to go with a Palin/Trump stance of "science is sometimes right, but often wrong, especially when it's inconveniently opposed to my policy" when you plan to defund science.

After the last Canadian PM took a hatchet to non-energy sector science funding, this and other recent trips to science centres like the McGill Neurological Institute, is about bridge building with the Canadian public.