SUBJECTS: Australia-Canada defense relationship; Combined Maritime Activity; Global rules-based order; Royal Canadian Navy.
MINISTER OF NATIONAL DEFENCE OF CANADA, BILL BLAIR: Deputy Prime Minister Marles, it is a very sincere and great pleasure to welcome to you to Canada on your first official visit to our country. For very many years Canada and Australia have been brought together by a deep and unshakeable bond.
We have our shared history, with our determination to defend freedom, the rule of law, and human rights, and the strength of this bond can be felt at all levels of our defense relationship. Whether it’s our sailors who are working side by side on training exercises in the Indo‑Pacific, or our work together as members of the Five Eyes, the Commonwealth and the Ukraine Defense Contact Group and as the global security situation has become more challenging we are fortunate to count on trusted partners like Australia. Canada and Australia are both Pacific Nations and the security of the Indo‑Pacific is crucial for the security of both of our nations and today that security has been challenged in a number of significant and difficult ways. China is pursuing the most ambitious military build‑up of any nation since the Second World War and it’s looking to reshape the international system to advance its own interests. It is using force to reduce freedom of movement in the region and we are concerned by its increased level of military activity in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. We believe that China’s expansive maritime claims are inconsistent with International Law, and Canada’s concerned by China’s dangerous actions against Philippine vessels which jeopardize regional stability. This week Australia, Canada, the Philippines and the United States are conducting a multilateral military cooperative activity in the Philippines exclusive economic zone to uphold freedom of navigation and overflight. We are also troubled by the deepening partnership between China and Russia and their mutual reinforcing attempts to undercut and reshape the system of international rules.
But as we face these challenges there is good news, and the good news is that we have close friends and partners like Australia. As a Pacific nation Canada shares Australia’s commitment to helping to maintain stability and security in the Indo‑Pacific. Canada has reaffirmed these commitments through our Indo‑Pacific Strategy, as well as our new defense policy, Our North- Strong and Free, which bolsters our ability to uphold these values. That’s led to an increase in Canada’s military presence in the Indo‑Pacific, and this is the second year in a row in which we’re deploying three of our warships per year into the Indo‑Pacific and that commitment will continue. Because of our increased naval presence, Canadian sailors are able to participate in more military exercises in the region with valued partners like Australia, and in fact members of the Canadian and Australian Navy’s recently took part in RIMPAC, the Rim of the Pacific exercise in Hawaii, whose naval component was commanded this year by a Canadian officer. Indeed Canada, Australia and the United States are the only countries to participate in every iteration of that exercise since it was launched in the 1970s. In this coming September hundreds of Canadian Forces members will participate in the Royal Australian Navy‑led exercise in Kakadu where they will train for a number of scenarios, including maritime warfare.
In our meeting earlier today Deputy Prime Minister Marles and I agreed to strengthen the Canada-Australia defense relationship and to pursue closer collaboration between our countries. Today Deputy Minister Marles and I are releasing a joint statement outlining the path forward for the future of Canadian and Australian defense relationships. Specifically, we have agreed to pursue closer collaboration by enhancing the interoperability of our armed forces, and by deepening our operational cooperation. This will be done by exploring opportunities to conduct more joint sails, conducting more cooperative deployments and pursuing more multilateral exercises and training together. We further intend to reduce barriers to cooperation including through agreements to facilitate defense industrial activities and greater operational cooperation. And further, as Canada recapitalizes its major fleets, we’ll be soon welcoming new F-35 second-generation fighters, the P-8 patrol aircraft, and warships based on the 1026 design of the BAE systems; all of which are platforms that we will share in common with Australia. And today we have committed to exploring mutual training and learning to increase the interoperability and skill set of our forces on these important essential platforms. In addition, Canada and Australia will continue to reinforce collaboration with space, to cyber, research and development, advanced capabilities and science and technology. Canada looks forward to discussing opportunities for cooperation on the AUKUS second pillar. Together we have agreed to look for areas of further collaboration across all domains so that we can be ready to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow, and to deepen our relationship. Though Canada and Australia may find themselves on opposites sides of the world and separated by the Pacific Ocean, we will always be connected by our history and our common values and as our world grows increasingly volatile it’s vital for us to continue working together to uphold the values we hold dear and to support peace and stability around the world. Deputy Prime Minister, I look very much forward to continuing this work together with you. Thank you for making this trip to Canada, and I’ll now turn over to Richard.
DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER, RICHARD MARLES: Thank you, Bill, and Minister, it is an enormous honor to be here in Vancouver today on my first official visit to Canada. As Bill indicated, our two countries have a deep shared history, we have deep shared values, and we are two countries which operate on the greatest basis of trust and the closest of friendships. It’s a history which has been expressed in terms of defense in two world wars, and in conflicts since, and it has a contemporary expression. As Minister Blair just said, right now as we’ve met today, there are Canadian and Australian personnel working together in a Maritime Cooperative Activity along with personnel from the Philippines and the United States in the West Philippine Sea. That activity is based on our shared values. It is based on asserting the global rules-based order, freedom of navigation, in the Indo‑Pacific. Both of our countries are looking at a world today which is fragile and complex where we are dealing with perhaps the most complex strategic circumstances that the world has seen since the end of the Second World War.
As Canada has gone through its process of reviewing its strategic circumstances with its report, Our North, Strong and Free, Australia also went through a similar exercise in the Defence Strategic Review which we released just over a year ago. That has informed new thinking about the kind of strategic challenges we face and the kind of Defence Force we need in terms of facing them. Both of our work has emphasized the significance of the Indo‑Pacific and the challenges that we face here, and as Bill has said on a number of occasions, Canada is a Pacific nation as is Australia. So, we find ourselves increasingly operating in a shared theatre, and it’s really important that we are doing that with the greatest cooperation, and that is very much our intent. But as we look beyond that, there is so much that we have, that we do together. Bill mentioned in terms of the platforms that we operate, from P-8s to the F-35s, to the Type 26 frigates. These are critical platforms which underpin our military capability and the way in which we can work together in terms of learning to operate those platforms better represents one of the great opportunities for us to move forward as two countries, and it’s why we’re so excited to be able to announce the agreement that we’ve struck today in terms of having much closer cooperation across our Defence Forces and our defense industry spaces. We want to see our personnel working more closely together, we want to look at more opportunities in relation to exercises, building on what already happens at RIMPAC, at Exercise Kakadu, at Exercise Pitch Black in Darwin just last month, Australia’s marquee exercise Talisman Sabre last year, and again next year, Canada has participated in that as well. But we want to look at other opportunities for our Defence Force personnel to work together, and we want to look at ways in which we can improve our joint learnings in respect of the equipment that we operate and the defense industrial space in which we engage.
When we think about our two countries, there are perhaps no two countries in the world which, on one level, are so far apart but have so much in common as Australia and Canada. And as we reach our agreement today, it is based on a shared set of values, shared strategic perspective, but it is built on the closest of friendships and the greatest of trust, and really that’s what enables us to do so much more in the future. We really are pleased with the opportunity of being able to meet today. We look very much forward to the way in which we can move forward together. Ours is an old friendship and an old relationship, but to have a relationship as close and as trusted as ours is actually something which is rare in the world today, and ultimately that’s where we ended up in our discussions during the course of the morning and this afternoon. This is something we must not take for granted, and we are certainly committed to not doing that. This is something that should be the platform for us moving forward, and we’re really excited about our future.
SPEAKER: Thank you very much, Ministers. We’ll now take your questions. If you could state your name and outlet, and limit yourself to one question, one follow‑up, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
JOURNALIST: I’m Dale Gray with the Canadian Press. I’m wondering, you know, like Canada and Australia, it’s not really a secret or surprise that we’re close. Why now? Are we anticipating, are you anticipating some kind of a pending global conflict that signals the need to strengthen this relationship? Like how is a member of the Australian or Canadian public supposed to take this other than as you are preparing for war?
MINISTER BLAIR: Actually, if I may just provide a little clarity to your question, we’re preparing to avoid war. I think the best way to prevent conflict is through strength in preparation. Doing that collaboratively with our closest partners is the way we have always approached the maintenance of global peace. We have relied, since the Second World War, on an international rules-based order, which is being challenged, as we’ve already articulated in our earlier remarks. But the best way to respond to that is with unity of purpose, with strength, and with resolve. And I think if we are able to demonstrate to those who may act adversarial to those global interests of maintaining a peaceful environment, then I think our best hope for achieving that is doing it together.
As you’ve already acknowledged, there’s a long‑standing and trusting relationship that exists between our two countries. It is, I think, the basis of the strength of that relationship that we are always looking for opportunities to build upon. This is a long‑standing partnership that does not require renewal, it just requires a continued commitment, and we’ve had an opportunity to discuss that today.
DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, I think Bill’s put it very well in the sense that our cooperation is based on seeking to deter. We are absolutely about working with each other so that we can avoid conflict. That is obviously front and center in terms of the way in which we are engaging in our cooperation. You asked the question as to why now, and that’s a fair enough question to ask. The world is facing a situation today where the global rules-based order, an order which seeks for countries to resolve their differences not through power and might but by reference to a set of rules, that system is more under pressure now than at any point since the Second World War. We’re seeing it in Eastern Europe, in Ukraine, we’re seeing expressions of it in the Middle East, but we’re seeing it in the Indo‑Pacific as well. And what’s become manifestly clear is that theatres are becoming inter‑connected. What happens in the Indo‑Pacific is relevant to what’s happening in the North Atlantic and in Europe. So we, for example, in Australia find that the moment China and Russia entered into a no limits agreement on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, suddenly a conflict in Eastern Europe became deeply relevant to us in the Indo‑Pacific, to Australia, because the lessons that would be learnt there, good or bad, would be lessons that would stand in terms of the Indo‑Pacific.
So we live in a much more connected world, we live in a world where there is fragility and where the Indo‑Pacific is highly relevant, and as both of our countries have gone through separate exercises to try and understand the strategic challenges that we face and therefore what kind of a Defence Force we need to build in order to meet those challenges, both of us have come to the conclusion that the Indo‑Pacific matters, and that’s why now. And in that context, you know, we find ourselves as countries who have always had the closest of friendships, who have deep trust, with the opportunity to use that as a platform to work much more together in the future, and that’s what we’ve agreed to do today.
JOURNALIST: You were talking about China’s military expansion and their cozy relationship with Russia. There’s no sign of them backing down, they’ve already broken the rules. You know, what’s it going to take for Canada, Australia and its other allies to actually take a stand instead of just using, say, diplomatic language and rhetoric to talk about how they don’t follow the law?
DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: Well, I think to answer that question, what’s at issue here, as I said, is the global rules-based order. Firstly, diplomacy matters, it’s actually the frontline of the way in which we engage, but we are doing more, and we’re doing more than that on this day. Both of us mentioned the Maritime Cooperative Activity which is being undertaken as we speak between Australia, Canada, the Philippines and the United States. That involves a joint sail in the West Philippine Sea, the purpose of which is to assert freedom of navigation, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. It is absolutely about maintaining the global rules-based order, and that activity, and the raft of activities that we have done like that, actually is making a difference in ensuring that the rules that we all understand are still maintained and still apply. And we see that there is going to be a need to do more of that in the future. We need to be doing that with our friends and we do not have a closer friendship in the world than we have with Canada, and that’s why we see affirming that friendship with the agreement that we’ve reached today as being so important.
MINISTER BLAIR: And if I may add, you’ll see in our new defense policy update, Our North, Strong and Free, the acknowledgement of our responsibility to assert and maintain and protect our sovereignty is being challenged by a number of potential adversaries, Russia and China in particular, but not exclusively. And our response to that is to acknowledge that challenge and to talk about, to Canadians, about the investments that we’re going to have to make in order to defend that sovereignty and to assert our defense in the north, and to respond I think appropriately, proportionally, but with resolve to adversarial actions in the region. It’s very similar to what we’re seeing in the Indo‑Pacific, with real challenges– Canada has recently, for example, just over the past two years engaged in a number of sails through the Taiwanese Strait. That has on occasion elicited a response from the People’s Republic of China. But our intent there is not to provoke, our intent there is to assert principle, and it’s a principle of the freedom of that navigation, of international waterways. It is one of those international rules on which we have all come to [indistinct]. It is the rules that have really been the forefront of defense of all free nations in the world. We’re standing up for that principle, and it’s more than just complaining about their activities. I think it’s demonstrating that we are prepared, not just to work unilaterally, but to work in alliances and in partnerships with our closest allies, to stand strong in the face of those challenges.
JOURNALIST: Jennifer Meyer from Radio Canada, CBC French. Can you, Minister Blair, comment on the state of the fleet of vessels in Canada and mainly the ones that are currently in Esquimalt and if they will be part of the warships that are sent to the Pacific each year?
BLAIR: Yes. First of all, we have three warships that we are deploying, and currently the HMCS Montreal is deployed in that multilateral exercise that Richard spoke about earlier in the West Philippine Sea. The state of the Canadian Navy– we have currently a number of different platforms, and relying most heavily on the Halifax fleet of frigates that we are deploying in the Indo‑Pacific, but also in the Atlantic and around the world. We are committed to maintaining, and in our latest budget we included money for the maintenance, but we are also undertaking a very ambitious program of updating our surface combatant fleet. And so, we have already embarked on our program of replacing and creating six new Arctic and offshore patrol vessels, and we are beginning the construction – and we’ve cut steel on the very first one – of a new surface combatant ship, ultimately which we’ll deliver 15 of those ships to the Royal Canadian Navy to replace our aging Halifax fleet.
We are also undertaking and beginning the process of identifying the right submarine capability for our Royal Canadian Navy, and there are a number of, you know, I think excellent options available to us, and the Navy will tell us what they need, and we’ll both pursue that. We recognize that, and through our defense policy I think we’ve made very clear, that there are new challenges facing our national defense and that we have to invest significantly in upgrading our platforms. And so, although we have great confidence in what we are currently sailing on and flying, we recognize that many of those fleets, both air and naval, are ageing and need to be replaced, and we’re making those very significant investments to do just exactly that.
JOURNALIST: Thank you. And my other question is about Lebanon. Given the personnel shortage in the Canadian Armed Forces, does the military have the capacity for an immigration operation in the Middle East like it did in 2006, or will Canada have to rely more on its allies this time?
MINISTER BLAIR: To be very clear, we have been preparing, and as you’re aware, I’m sure, we’ve deployed Canadian Armed Forces assets into the region in order to prepare for a potential evacuation of Canadian citizens if that area of the world becomes engaged in conflict. There’s still very important work, I think, going on on the diplomatic front in order to try to avoid conflict, but we will be prepared and ready to respond to defend Canadian interests. We are working very closely with the Lebanese Government through our local affairs, we are deploying Canadian Armed Forces assets to the region, and quite appropriately we are working very collaboratively with a number of our allies, because we all have an interest in protecting our innocent civilians who may be engaged in conflict should it occur. We’re all working very hard to avoid that conflict, but should it occur, we will have the resources necessary to protect Canadian interests.
SPEAKER: Are there further questions?
MINISTER BLAIR: I want to thank you all for being here with us today. I appreciate your time, and again, I’d like to again offer my very sincere appreciation and gratitude for Richard making a very long journey for what I hope has been a very, very helpful discussion between us.
DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: Thank you.