OTTAWA / LONDON – Mark Carney, prime Minister of Canada, and Sir Keir Starmer, prime minister of the United Kingdom (UK), met in Ottawa on Sunday, to reaffirm the profound friendship and shared values that unite both nations. The Canada-UK partnership, rooted in a common history and enduring people-to-people ties, continues to grow stronger, with a focus on delivering prosperity and security for the working people of Canada and the UK alike.
The two leaders discussed the many geopolitical challenges currently facing the world, including in the Middle East and tensions in the Indo-Pacific region, and reaffirmed their steadfast support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s illegal and unjustifiable war of aggression.
The two leaders underscored the importance of a fair, open and predictable global trading system; reiterated their commitment to a rules-based international order underpinned by respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity; and committed to advancing peace and trans-Atlantic security.
They agreed on the following joint initiatives aimed at strengthening economic growth and prosperity and enhancing collective security and defence:
Growth and innovation partnership
Canada and the UK are committed to delivering economic growth for their people. The two prime ministers announced further collaboration on trade, science, technology and innovation.
Through their partnership, Canada and the UK will work together:
- Trade: Strengthen trade ties as trusted, reliable partners. This will include expanding trade under the Canada-UK Trade Continuity Agreement. We will establish a new structured UK-Canada Economic and Trade Working Group to deepen our existing trading relationship further, including to address existing market access barriers, to expand existing arrangements into new areas, such as digital trade, and to explore cooperation in the development of critical minerals and sovereign artificial intelligence infrastructure. The working group will report back to both prime ministers within six months. Canada will seek to introduce legislation this autumn to ratify the UK’s accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership.
- Semiconductors: Deliver industrial R&D projects to enhance both nations’ complementary strengths in semiconductors, photonics, emerging materials and chip design. They will deepen connections between the innovation rich semiconductor ecosystems in Canada and the UK to help build resilient supply chains and accelerate breakthroughs in this key sector that is driving economic growth.
- Quantum: Announce a joint commitment to develop secure, transatlantic communications based on quantum technologies, allowing us to connect our national systems and lay the groundwork to create a truly global, next-generation network, with applications across our financial and telecoms sectors.
- Digital: Mutually reinforce nation-building digital public infrastructure by co-developing policy levers and standards, and common technology components.
- Artificial Intelligence: Deepen and explore new collaborations on frontier AI systems to support our national security. This will include a partnership agreement to strengthen existing collaboration on AI safety and security between the Canadian AI Safety Institute and UK AI Security Institute, and new Canadian and UK MOUs with leading Canadian AI firm Cohere. Under the Canadian MOU, Cohere will collaborate with the Canadian AI Safety Institute and develop their commitment to building cutting-edge data centres in Canada.
- Under the UK MOU, Cohere will expand their UK presence to support the delivery of the UK AI Opportunities Action Plan. Both MOUs reflect ongoing collaboration on the application of AI tools in security and intelligence and are rooted in Cohere’s strong foundations in Canada and ongoing commitment to the UK.
- Biomanufacturing: Strengthen collaboration to deliver economic growth and be better prepared for future health emergencies, including a joint investment of $14.8 million to support joint biomanufacturing research and development that will grow the talent and skills pipeline in both countries, and to help businesses scale.
- Civil Nuclear: Develop a world-leading fusion energy collaboration and deepen cooperation on nuclear energy from fission to reduce the influence of Russia on our international fuel supply chains.
- Critical Minerals: Intensify bilateral cooperation by conducting a strategic mapping exercise to pinpoint key critical minerals, infrastructure, production and processing capacities. They will identify projects for joint investment to support secure and sustainable critical minerals supply chain development and leverage all available financial tools to mobilize funding and drive production to strengthen our manufacturing and mining sectors.
Enhanced defence and security partnership
The two leaders agreed to strengthen cooperation – both bilaterally and through the NATO Alliance and Five Eyes partnership – to safeguard democratic values advance global stability and ensure the safety of our people in an increasingly complex world. To achieve this, they committed to:
- Ukraine: Further support Ukraine in its self-defence against Russia’s war of aggression. This will include continued support for the Coalition of the Willing and respective efforts to support Ukraine’s domestic defence industrial production. The UK and Canada will continue to work together to support the Air Force Capability Coalition and develop cutting-edge aircraft weaponry technology in support of Ukraine.
- Military Cooperation: Position the Canada-UK defence relationship for further growth across military operations, industrial collaboration, and defence innovation, catalyzed by Canada’s newly announced defence investment trajectory and the UK’s Strategic Defence Review. Canada and the UK will work towards a new permanent arrangement for the long-term and sustainable use of British Army Training Unit Suffield (BATUS) through the “BATUS Future Project”. The Project will deepen the Canada-UK relationship on defence and showcase CFB Suffield as a multi-purpose facility for the development and testing of new equipment and cutting-edge technology which are vital to maintaining our shared security and prosperity.
- Intelligence: Build on the long history of deep and productive collaboration between our security and intelligence organizations by launching coordinated operational campaigns to combat terrorism and violent extremism, and deepening collaboration on enhanced intelligence collection, including by expanding officer exchange programs.
- National Security: Tackle evolving state threats together, including sabotage, transnational repression, foreign interference, malicious cyber activity, information manipulation and economic coercion, all of which seek to undermine our national security and that of our Allies and partners. This will include joint work to invest in civil society organizations actively working to counter digital transnational repression through the Joint Canada-UK Common Good Cyber Fund, a first-of-its-kind multilateral fund aimed at supporting civil society actors at high risk.
- To kickstart this fund, Canada and the UK are providing $5.7 million in seed funding to the Fund, which will be disbursed over five years. They also agreed to strengthen bilateral development and delivery of secure communications products and cutting-edge cryptography and explore new research partnerships to address gaps in AI security and evolve AI models to support national security.
- Border Security: Strengthen bilateral cooperation to tackle transnational organized criminal organizations engaged in the illicit movement of goods and narcotics, and bolster our response to combat irregular migration, migrant smuggling and human trafficking, including through deeper bilateral information and knowledge exchange.
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