Conservative Leader Pierre Poilivre, on his first overseas trip as official opposition leader, is laying out a new plan to bring Canada closer to the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
The plan, which goes beyond existing trade agreements, calls for each country to do more to increase defense cooperation and cut trade-inhibiting provisions.
Poilievre laid out his plan for the new partnership at a small reception Monday night for Great Britain’s Conservative Party at the party’s 194-year-old “home” at the Carlton Club near St. James’s Palace in central London.
On Tuesday, Poilievre will present the full plan when he delivers the annual Margaret Thatcher Lecture hosted by the Center for Policy Studies, the UK’s leading centre-right think tank.
“The time has come for a new partnership between Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand – a modern CANZUK – an agreement to further open our economies, remove barriers, recognize credentials, expand skilled labor mobility and deepen capital markets,” Polivre says in the lecture.
An excerpt of a draft of Tuesday’s speech was provided to Global News.
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Poilievre, according to the draft, argues that regulatory barriers in the UK are restricting Canadian beef producers from meaningful access to the UK market and should be removed.
If he becomes prime minister, he says he will push for policies that would allow automatic professional recognition for doctors, nurses, engineers, so that all four would accept credentials earned in one country.
“If someone can do heart surgery in Sydney, Australia, they should be able to do it in Sydney, Nova Scotia,” Poilivre said.
Similarly, the four countries argue that the “regulatory presumption of equivalence” should be accepted, meaning that if a product is approved as safe in one country, it should be considered safe for us in all four countries.
“If a drug or auto part is safe in London, England, it should be safe in London, Ontario,” he says.
Poilievre’s overseas trip is part of the Conservatives’ plan to get Canadian voters to see Poilievre in a different light and hear him propose different policies, in hopes of returning some polling data that has Poilievre and the Conservatives falling behind Mark Carney and the Liberals.
In the last election, Poilivre faced criticism that he tended to substitute “tax ax” slogans for policy. Announcements are now shelved in favor of keynote speeches filled with new policy proposals.
In his speech Tuesday night, Poulievre repeated ideas he first advanced last week before a Bay Street crowd in Toronto that Canada should create reserves of energy and critical minerals that would be controlled by Canada but shared with its allies in times of conflict.
After spending two days in the British capital, Poilivre will travel to Berlin and Hamburg, where he will meet with German officials and business leaders, his office says. He will deliver a keynote address at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation on the Canada-Europe Atlantic relationship.
Poilivre’s travel expenses are being covered by the Conservative Party of Canada, his office says.
He will return to Canada on Sunday.
David Akin is Global News’ chief political correspondent.
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(tags to translate)Pierre Poilivre
