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Prime minister Mark Carney is inside Australiaas Canada seeks to build on already strong intelligence ties by expanding trade and defense cooperation.
The Prime Minister arrived in Sydney on Tuesday at noon local time, which was Monday evening in Canada. He is expected to meet with business leaders in Sydney.
“This is a very important relationship for Canada to continue to build on. It’s a relationship built on years of cooperation,” Defense Minister David McGuinty, who is in Sydney with Carney, said on Tuesday.
He told reporters that Canada is building a relationship with Australia on two tracks – deeper economic engagement and defense and security.
McGuinty said there was “a new openness here in Australia to work with Canada”.
“I would say that the prime minister’s outreach and indication that there is another way for the middle powers to come together and cooperate on the economy, defense, security is a message that resonates very strongly.”
While McGuinty was available to the media shortly after arriving in Sydney, Carney had not spoken to reporters for days. His office canceled a press conference on Monday in India, following his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His office declined reporters’ requests to make him available to answer questions Tuesday.
On Thursday, he will head to Canberra to address the Australian Parliament. Carney will then go to Tokyo.
Carney will meet Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has been in power since 2022. Both countries are Commonwealth nations and partners in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, along with the US, UK and New Zealand.
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“Australia is clearly Canada’s natural partner in the Indo-Pacific,” Asia Pacific Foundation vice president Vina Najibulla said in an interview last month.
Both countries are commodity exporters, and Najibulla noted that Beijing has switched imports from one country or the other at times of friction, such as buying Australian canola products when it restricted Canadian imports during a diplomatic standoff.
Among Indo-Pacific nations, Australia was “by far the leading source” of foreign direct investment in both directions for Canada, Nadjibulla said, particularly for Canadian pension funds.
Canberra has also signed on to a handful of initiatives launched by Canada to strengthen supply chains for key minerals to reduce Western countries’ reliance on China. Nadjibulla said Canada could learn from Australia’s initiative to stockpile certain strategically important critical minerals.
At the G20 summit in South Africa last November, Carney launched a new technology partnership with India and Australia, although none of the three countries gave much detail on what the deal would entail.
Ottawa and Canberra signed an agreement last year to see Canada buy an over-the-horizon radar system from Australia for use in the Arctic, and Nadjibulla said both could build on that through defense-industrial projects touching on cyber security or quantum technology.
Australia was among the countries highlighted by Canada last month in a strategy outlining how Ottawa intends to spend billions to bolster its defences.
The prime minister’s visit comes as he spearheads a push for the European Union to join some form of partnership with a huge Pacific Rim trading bloc that includes Australia, called the CPTPP. Canada is a member of that bloc and has a trade agreement with the EU.
The idea is to bypass the dysfunctionality that Beijing and Washington have created in the World Trade Organization and force most other major economies to trade according to predictable rules, Najibulla said.
“In the absence of a general multilateral framework, the best next option is this kind of smaller coalition, of countries that are still interested in rules-based trade and interested in upholding those values,” she said.
As Australia grapples with the erratic policies of US President Donald Trump, Najibulla said it was important to remember that Canada was far more integrated into the US economy thanks to its proximity.
“They are less exposed to the volatility and unpredictability of Trump,” she said. “Public opinion is not so focused on President Trump in Australia. They are much more focused on closer, regional issues in relation to China and China’s threats in the Indo-Pacific.”
Nadjibulla said Canberra was unlikely to take a hard line against Washington. But she said Australia could be a guide for Canada as it seeks to strengthen economic and security ties with countries in Southeast Asia, where Ottawa has various trade deals under negotiation.
“Australia has a lot more penetration in its relationship, and Canada wants to do more. We can attract resources essentially and bring more scale and more depth when we show up in that region, if we partner with Australia,” she said.
— With files from Dylan Robertson of Ottawa.
© 2026 The Canadian Press
