OTTAWA — Canada should align its trade and labour regulations with three of its “like-minded” anglophone allies in a partnership that would exclude the U.S., says Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
Speaking in London at the Institute of Directors, a British business group, Poilievre on Tuesday revived an idea previously embraced by past Conservative leaders that Canada should strengthen its ties with its anglosphere cousins that share the British Westminster parliamentary system.
He proposed what he called a more “modern CANZUK” — an acronym to describe a would-be Canada, Australia, New Zealand and United Kingdom trading and security partnership. That concept has never included the U.S., his office said.
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Poilievre, who last week said Canada should not declare a “rupture” with the U.S., its most important trading partner, argued in his London speech that Ottawa should nevertheless strengthen free trade with “like-minded free nations” at an uncertain time in the world.
There was an echo of the alliances Prime Minister Mark Carney proposed in his widely praised speech in Davos to the World Economic Forum. In that speech, Carney argued like-minded middle countries and companies should band together in the face of great-power rivalry among superpowers, arguing that there is strength in numbers.
However, Poilievre said Canada should turn to its old friends.
“Warm words about old alliances are not enough. When the treaties and agreements that allow us to trade freely face upheaval, we need to double down and deepen our ties with our olden and most-trusted friends. Instead of shrinking markets behind tariffs, we should expand opportunities among friends,” he said.
Delivering the “Margaret Thatcher Lecture” at the invitation of a British conservative policy centre, Poilievre said it would help all partner countries become stronger “by diversifying markets, lowering costs for consumers and boosting wages for workers.”
“Tariffs are not the only or even the biggest barrier to our trade. More often, trade is slowed by regulations, standards, product approvals, licensing and rules of procurement.”
Specifically, Poilievre proposes the four members of a new partnership would adopt harmonized rules related to professional credential recognition, product approvals, labour mobility, defence procurement, and energy policy, including critical minerals development.
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It would require automatic professional recognition to ensure doctors, nurses or engineers licensed in one country could practice in all four. In an advance copy of his speech, Poilievre admitted it would require Canada’s provinces to sign on, adding “but they need doctors,” which he did not include in the delivered version.
“If you’re capable of doing a heart surgery in London, England, surely you can do one in London, Ontario,” he told the audience.
The partnership would align product approvals or provide “regulatory presumption of equivalence” meaning, Poilievre said, that a product approved in one country is approved in all four. “If a drug or auto part is safe in London, England, it should be safe in London, Ontario.”
It would adopt a skilled labour mobility framework to make it easier for high-skilled workers to move among the four countries, filling shortages and boosting economic growth at home, he said.
It would integrate defence procurement, he said, to “build stronger militaries and keep our countries safe from shared threats like China, Russia and others.”
Finally, it would set out a critical minerals and energy pact that would support all four nations’ modern defence capacity and, he suggested, lower prices for allies.
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The Conservative leader acknowledges there would have to be exceptions to the harmonized policies, including immigration policies “which I don’t believe should be part of the first steps,” and Canada would carve out and continue its protections for “French language policies in Quebec,” he said.
Poilievre re-upped one recommendation made in a major speech he delivered in Toronto last week on Canada-U.S. trade, in which he proposed an energy and critical minerals reserve that would make resources available to allies which provided tariff-free access for Canada to their markets, and suggested those reserves would be available to a new CANZUK alliance.
Poilievre said nuclear energy co-operation should be part of this partnership.
And he proposed a deal to supply Canadian liquefied natural gas to Britain, saying Canada would commit to ensuring any permits necessary for private-sector terminals and pipelines needed to meet Britain’s future LNG demand, “so all of your natural gas comes from Canada, not from Qatar, not from Russia, and not from any other unstable or hostile supplier.”
Right now, there are no LNG refineries on Canada’s east coast, but Poilievre has long promised to expedite any such facilities.
Without mentioning U.S. President Donald Trump’s name — unlike his speech to the Economic Club of Canada on Thursday — Poilievre said Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom “will each be stronger at home, with unbreakable leverage abroad.”
Quoting economist Adam Smith, former British prime minister Winston Churchill, and the folklore surrounding Robin Hood, Poilievre said the free markets that created the “wealth of nations” face pushback from the “twin threats of socialism and protectionism.”
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He contended there is “a backlash because working people across the western world have been thoroughly betrayed” by governments that build bureaucracies, overtax citizens, protect corporate monopolies, push restrictive “net-zero” environmental programs, fail to contain migration, and resort to “inflationary money printing” policies.
The result, he said, has put home ownership out of reach of young people, widened the gap between rich and poor, and hurt ordinary working people.
He urged Conservatives around the world to adopt his Conservative party’s approach, saying, “We must be the party of balanced budgets and sound money, to preserve and even strengthen buying power. We must support lower taxes on work, investment, homebuilding and energy.”
Although Poilievre’s Conservatives won some amendments, they did not block the Liberal government’s budget implementation act last week — a bill to execute a federal budget that notches up a $78 billion deficit. It passed without a recorded vote, and is now in the senate.
Poilievre claimed political success in the last federal election, saying he broadened the party’s coalition by adding 2.5 million votes “many of them in working class communities,” despite his party’s loss in a national vote that saw his opponent Liberal leader Mark Carney become prime minister.
Poilievre’s office said it would not make sense to include the U.S. in this proposal and referred to Poilievre’s Canada-U.S. trade speech last week for his views on bilateral trade.
Spokesman Sam Lilly said in an email reply the Conservatives “didn’t invent the policy, it has existed as a concept since 1967.”
“CANZUK has never included the U.S. It wouldn’t be CANZUK anymore if the U.S. was included. It would be something else. It’s like asking why we are not including the UK in the future of CUSMA.”
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