Canada, Philippines continue to build bridges across the Indo-Pacific

Historical accounts say that the first Filipino immigrant to Canada arrived in 1861 – a young man named Benson Flores, who lived as a fisherman and trapper on Bowen Island in British Columbia, on Canada’s Pacific coast.

Today, 162 years after Mr. Flores arrived in Canada, approximately one million people in Canada claim Filipino heritage. The Philippines is Canada’s second largest source country for new immigrants, and third largest source of foreign students.

Wherever I travel in the Philippines, I am hard pressed to find a Filipino who does not have a friend or family member in Canada.

Filipinos have become an integral part of Canada’s multi-cultural mosaic, living across our vast country, from the high Arctic to our cities in every province and territory.

Robust people-to-people ties underpin this relationship.

It is unsurprising, therefore, that when Canada announced its Indo-Pacific Strategy in November of last year, the Philippines was identified as a priority partner for the implementation of our strategy.

Over the past 12 months, my team and I at the embassy have been working hard to translate our vision for the Canada-Philippines relationship into reality:

• We have increased our engagement between our Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers with their Filipino counterparts;

• We have worked together with the Philippines at the UN, in ASEAN and bilaterally to uphold a rules-based international order; and have supported each other for key candidacies in multilateral institutions;

• We have been clear, consistent and vocal in our support for the 2016 Arbitral Award and in condemning acts of coercion in the West Philippine Sea;

• We have enhanced our diplomatic presence, adding new embassy staff, to give us the human resources necessary to pursue our ambitious program of cooperation with the Philippines;

• We held the inaugural Canada-Philippines Joint Economic Commission, to deepen cooperation on clean energy transition, critical minerals, food security, education, creative industries and science, technology and innovation;

• We opened a new global processing center in Manila to reduce visa processing times;

• We introduced the Electronic Travel