Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, on his first overseas trip as leader of the official opposition, is pitching a brand new plan to bind Canada closer to the UK, Australia and Latest Zealand.
The plan that might transcend existing trade deals each country has with one another to do more to spice up defence co-operation and cut regulations that inhibit trade.
Poilievre sketched out his plan for a brand new partnership at a small reception given Monday night by the Conservative Party of Great Britain on the party’s 194-year-old “home” on the Carlton Club near St. James Palace in central London.
On Tuesday, Poilievre will present the entire plan as he delivers the annual Margaret Thatcher Lecture hosted by the Centre for Policy Studies, a number one centre-right think tank within the U.K.
“The time has come for a brand new partnership amongst Canada, the UK, Australia, and Latest Zealand – a contemporary CANZUK – a pact to open our economies further, remove barriers, recognize credentials, expand expert labour mobility, and deepen capital markets,” Poilievre will say within the lecture.
An excerpt from a draft copy of Tuesday’s speech was provided to Global News.
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Poilievre, in accordance with the draft, will argue that regulatory barriers within the UK are blocking meaningful access to the UK marketplace for Canadian beef producers and should be eliminated.
He’ll say that, should he turn out to be prime minister, he would advance policies that might allow for automatic skilled recognition for doctors, nurses, engineers and so one in order that credentials earned in a single country could be accepted by all 4.
“If someone can perform heart surgery in Sydney, Australia, they need to have the opportunity to achieve this in Sydney, Nova Scotia,” Poilievre is to say.
Similarly, Poilievre will argue that the 4 countries should agree on a “regulatory presumption of equivalence,” the concept that if a product is approved as secure in a single country, it needs to be deemed secure for us in all 4 countries.
“If a drug or auto part is secure in London, England, it needs to be secure in London, Ontario,” he’ll say.
Poilievre’s overseas trip is an element of plan by the Conservatives to get Canadian voters to see Poilievre in a unique light and listen to him proposing different policies, within the hope of reversing some polling data which shows Poilievre and the Conservatives falling further behind Mark Carney and the Liberals.
Within the last election, Poilievre faced criticism that he tended to substitute slogans — “Axe the Tax”, for instance — for policy. The sloganeering has now been shelved in favour of keynote speeches chock full with latest policy proposals.
In his speech Tuesday night, Poilievre may even 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 could be shared with its allies during times of conflict.
After spending two days within the British capital, Poilievre will travel to Berlin and Hamburg where his office says he’ll meet with German officials and business leaders. He may even deliver a keynote speech on the Konrad Adenauer Foundation on the Canada-Europe transatlantic relationship.
The associated fee 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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