‘The world needs us’: Carney pushes Australia and Canada to deepen trade, defence ties

Australian and Canadian troops would move easily between each other’s military facilities under a new treaty-style agreement being pushed by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney as part of his campaign for middle powers to unite against coercion from global superpowers.

Carney – who electrified fellow world leaders in Davos, Switzerland with a dramatic speech about the end of the global rules-based order – will unveil his vision for a major deepening of defence and economic ties with Australia in a speech to a rare joint sitting of parliament on Thursday and in a formal meeting with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

“Middle powers like Canada, and I would suggest Australia, should recognise that the rupture in the international system represents just that,” Carney told the Lowy Institute think tank on Wednesday evening, echoing his Davos speech.

“When we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness, we accept what’s offered, we compete with each other to be the most accommodating. And this isn’t sovereignty, it’s the performance of sovereignty.

“In a world of great power rivalry, countries like ours have a choice: compete with each other for favour, or combine to create a third path with impact.”

Carney said Canada was pursuing a “dense web of connections” with like-minded countries such as Australia to ensure they could not be subordinated by major powers.

“Middle powers have more power than many realise,” he said.

While both Canada and Australia backed the US and Israel’s initial strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Carney called for a “rapid de-escalation of hostilities” and a political solution to avoid the devastating consequences of a prolonged conflict in the Middle East.

Two of Carney’s most senior ministers – National Defence Minister David McGuinty and Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne – foreshadowed Carney’s speech to parliament by telling this masthead they believed the Canada-Australia relationship, while strong, had been undervalued and needed to be lifted to a new level.

Reflecting previous remarks from his leader, Champagne said in an interview: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. If we don’t want to be on the menu, let’s organise a table where we have a seat.”

He called for Canada and Australia, which have two of the world’s reserves of critical minerals, to boost their economic resilience by working together on processing and refining so countries such as China could not turn off the supply of these essential resources, as it recently did to Japan.

“The world needs Canada and Australia,” Champagne said, arguing that “critical minerals will be akin to oil in the 21st century” in terms of their importance to the economy.

He said the fact that it had been 20 years since a Canadian prime minister visited Australia “tells you everything you need to know” about how the nations had failed to prioritise the relationship as they focused on courting Washington.

McGuinty said Canada wanted to pursue a “more direct and overt presence in the Indo-Pacific”, even as its closest neighbour and ally becomes increasingly assertive and self-interested under US President Donald Trump, who menacingly refers to Canada as the “51st state” of America.

“The prime minister’s speech in Davos really indicated clearly that things have changed,” McGuinty said.

“There will be hegemonic powers. They’re going to continue, and we’re all going to manage our relationship with them.

“But there’s another way, which is mid-powers come together; like-minded, values-driven democracies can come together and share on intelligence, security and defence. That’s what this mission here is about.”

Carney and his delegation’s visit to Australia comes between stops in India and Japan, as he seeks to diversify Canada’s trade and security ties away from a narrow focus on the US.

Arguing that both Canada and Australia had taken the relationship “for granted for a while”, McGuinty said that “its time has come”.

Asked how Australia and Canada should co-operate on defence, McGuinty said he would like the nations to formalise their partnership by striking what is known as a visiting forces agreement.

Visiting forces agreements, usually formalised by treaty, provide a legal framework for countries’ military personnel to operate in each other’s territories. Australia currently has such agreements with countries such as Japan, Fiji and the Philippines.

McGuinty said that “there’s an opportunity here for our military to have a further approachment, and this involves the exchange of officers, of personnel coming in and coming out, the use of different locations, bases ... the sharing of personnel on our vessels, working together on air force matters, working together in Central Command”.

Australia and Canada, he said, should also conduct more joint military training exercises and pursue “mutual planning and execution of responsibilities in the Indo-Pacific”.

McGuinty said the Canadian and Australian defence ministers should also hold annual, or biannual, meetings to bed down the relationship, while seizing an “enormous opportunity” to partner on military technology.

Australia last year sold a new, long-range, over-the-horizon military radar system to Canada for $6.5 billion in the nation’s biggest defence export deal.

“Australia has a lot to teach Canada,” he said. “This is your backyard. We are a Pacific nation, but your scope, your reach, your experience in this region, is second to none. So we would very much like to co-operate and work and build on it.”

Champagne said the “name of the game” for critical minerals was refining and processing as he urged the nations to work together on this endeavour.

“That’s what we’re not scaled,” he said. “I mean, we’re good at exploration and extraction. But I would say ... where we have not stepped up in the way we need to is on the refining and processing.”

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.