While Prime Minister Mark Carney is in Australia, Canada is trying to build on already strong intelligence ties by expanding collaboration on trade and defence.
The Prime Minister arrived in Sydney on Tuesday afternoon local time, Monday evening in Canada. He is expected to meet business leaders in Sydney.
“This is a very important relationship for Canada to continue to build. It’s predicated on years of cooperation,” Defense Minister David McGuinty said Tuesday in Sydney with Carney.
He told reporters that Canada is building its relationship with Australia on two tracks — deeper economic connectivity and defense and security.
“There’s a new openness in Australia to work with Canada,” McGuinty said.
“I would say that the Prime Minister’s influence and suggesting that there is another way for middle powers to come together and cooperate on the economy, defense, security is a message that resonates very strongly.”
Although McGuinty had a media availability shortly after arriving in Sydney, Carney did not speak to reporters for several days. His office canceled a press conference in India on Monday after meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His office declined reporters’ requests to make him available to answer questions Tuesday.
On Thursday, he will leave for Canberra to address the Australian Parliament. Carney then leaves for Tokyo.
Carney will meet Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who will hold office from 2022. Both countries are partners in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, along with Commonwealth nations and the US, UK and New Zealand.
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“Australia is obviously a natural partner for Canada in the Indo-Pacific,” Asia Pacific Foundation vice-president Wina Nadzibulla said in an interview last month.
Both countries are commodity exporters, and Nadjibullah noted that Beijing has shifted sourcing imports from one country or the other during times of conflict, such as buying Australian canola products when Beijing blocked Canadian imports over diplomatic lines.
Among the Indo-Pacific countries, Australia is the “leading source” of foreign direct investment in both directions to Canada, Nadzibulla said, particularly for Canadian pension funds.
Canberra has signed on to some of the initiatives launched by Canada to boost supply chains for critical minerals to reduce Western countries’ dependence on China. Nadzibulla said Canada could learn from Australia’s initiative to procure some strategically important critical minerals.
At the G20 summit in South Africa last November, Carney launched an emerging technologies partnership with India and Australia, though none of the three countries provided much detail on what that work would entail.
Ottawa and Canberra signed an agreement last year for Canada to buy an over-the-horizon radar system from Australia for use in the Arctic, and Nadzibulla said both could build on it through defence-industrial projects that touch on cyber security or quantum technology.
Australia was among the countries Canada singled out last month in a strategy for how Ottawa aims to spend billions to boost its defences.
The prime minister’s visit is spearheading efforts to get the European Union to join some form of partnership with the massive Pacific Rim trade bloc, known as the CPTPP, which includes Australia. Canada is a member of that bloc and has a trade agreement with the EU.
The idea, Nadzibulla said, is to sidestep the dysfunctionality of Beijing and Washington at the World Trade Organization and allow other big economies to trade on predictable terms.
“In the absence of an overall multilateral framework, the best next option is a small coalition like this, of countries that are still interested in rules-based trade and are interested in upholding these values,” he said.
As Australia grapples with US President Donald Trump’s erratic policies, Nadzibulla said it’s important to remember that Canada is more integrated into the US economy due to proximity.
“They are less exposed to Trump’s volatility and unpredictability,” he said. “Public opinion is not focused on President Trump in Australia. He is more focused on regional issues and Chinese threats in the Indo-Pacific than on China.”
Nadzibulla said Canberra was unlikely to take a strong stand against Washington. But he said Australia could be a guide for Canada to boost economic and security ties with countries in Southeast Asia, where Ottawa has signed and is negotiating various trade deals.
“Australia has more inputs into its relationships, and Canada wants to do more. We can essentially pull resources and bring greater scale and greater depth to our presence in the region if we partner with Australia,” he said.
– with files from Dylan Robertson in Ottawa.
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(tags to translate)Mark Carney
