News about the 2021 Canadian GP should be forthcoming "this week".

That is the claim of Quebec's economics and innovation minister Pierre Fitzgibbon, amid reports regional and federal health authorities consider the Montreal race too unsafe to go ahead amid the pandemic.

"The sea freight to Baku and Montreal should have left already," Alfa Romeo team manager Beat Zehnder told Auto Motor und Sport.

Fitzgibbon insisted that authorities are dealing with the situation as quickly as possible.

"We are currently in negotiations," he told Le Journal de Montreal newspaper. "It is a tourist event of paramount importance for Quebec and, in fact, it is the most important in Canada.

"There are health issues that we are all aware of, so we will try to come to terms with that," he added. "We are talking to the Formula 1 people and I think we will be able to make announcements this week."

When asked how he is feeling about those talks, Fitzgibbon said he is "an optimist by nature".