Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, on his first overseas trip as leader of the official opposition, is pitching a new plan to bind Canada closer to the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
The plan that would go beyond existing trade deals each country has with each other to do more to boost defence co-operation and cut regulations that inhibit trade.
Poilievre sketched out his plan for a new partnership at a small reception given Monday night by the Conservative Party of Great Britain at the party’s 194-year-old “home” at the Carlton Club near St. James Palace in central London.
On Tuesday, Poilievre will present the complete plan as he delivers the annual Margaret Thatcher Lecture hosted by the Centre for Policy Studies, a leading centre-right think tank in the U.K.
“The time has come for a new partnership among Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand – a modern CANZUK – a pact to open our economies further, remove barriers, recognize credentials, expand skilled labour mobility, and deepen capital markets,” Poilievre will say in the lecture.
An excerpt from a draft copy of Tuesday’s speech was provided to Global News.
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Poilievre, according to the draft, will argue that regulatory barriers in the UK are blocking meaningful access to the UK market for Canadian beef producers and ought to be eliminated.
He will say that, should he become prime minister, he would advance policies that would allow for automatic professional recognition for doctors, nurses, engineers and so one so that credentials earned in one country would be accepted by all four.
“If someone can perform heart surgery in Sydney, Australia, they should be able to do so in Sydney, Nova Scotia,” Poilievre is to say.
Similarly, Poilievre will argue that the four countries ought to agree on a “regulatory presumption of equivalence,” the idea that if a product is approved as safe in one country, it should be deemed 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 will say.
Poilievre’s overseas trip is part of plan by the Conservatives to get Canadian voters to see Poilievre in a different light and hear him proposing different policies, in the hope of reversing some polling data which shows Poilievre and the Conservatives falling further behind Mark Carney and the Liberals.
In the last election, Poilievre faced criticism that he tended to substitute slogans — “Axe the Tax”, for example — for policy. The sloganeering has now been shelved in favour of keynote speeches chock full with new policy proposals.
In his speech Tuesday night, Poilievre will also repeat ideas he first advanced last week in front of a Bay Street crowd in Toronto, that Canada should create an Energy and Critical Minerals Reserve, controlled by Canada but which would be shared with its allies during times of conflict.
After spending two days in the British capital, Poilievre will travel to Berlin and Hamburg where his office says he will meet with German officials and business leaders. He will also deliver a keynote speech at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation on the Canada-Europe transatlantic relationship.
The cost of Poilievre’s travel is being borne by the Conservative Party of Canada, his office says.
He returns to Canada on Sunday.
David Akin is the chief political correspondent for Global News.
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