To our esteemed guest, a very welcome to His Excellency Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
It has been five years since we last demonstrated our highest-level commitment to ASEAN-Canada relations and that was in Manila, commemorating its 40th Anniversary.
I am fortunate that my first ASEAN-Canada Summit is once again a celebration and a reflection of 45 years of our relationship. As this important milestone proves to be an opportune time for us to elevate our ASEAN-Canada relations to Strategic Partnership, please be assured of the Philippines’ commitment to a more robust and substantial cooperation. ASEAN’s long-standing partnership with Canada manifests our dedication to achieving our common goal of peace, security, stability, shared prosperity, and social progress.
In the past years, ASEAN and Canada have continued to explore common ground to address traditional and non-traditional security issues, to accelerate our economic cooperation, and to promote the rights of women, children, and migrant workers while expanding our people-to-people ties. Allow me to focus on three main areas:
Canada is considered home by over 900,000 fellow Filipinos, and may I say that I have experience of the stories that these people tell me and it is that they have been assimilated into society and into the workforce so smoothly. And this is completely due to the warmth and the kindness of Canadian people. For that, we thank you very much.
These 900,000 fellow Filipinos, many of them started off as migrant workers, who now form an essential part of Canadian society. That is why I highlight Canada’s support for the TRIANGLE in ASEAN project which promotes fair migration across the region. The project has promoted labor mobility across the region along with the improvement of working conditions and labor protection policies, particularly for low-paid migrant workers. The Philippines is committed to working with ASEAN and Canada to deliver on our commitment to protect and promote the rights of migrant workers through various initiatives that have now become available to us.
With the synergies between Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy and ASEAN’s priorities on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS), the Philippines welcomes Canada’s continued support for ASEAN initiatives in this regard such as the implementation of the ASEAN Regional Plan of Action on Women, Peace and Security (WPS). This aims to support the upskilling of women and empowering women entrepreneurship, particularly of MSMEs in ASEAN. Our women stand to benefit from Canada’s support for ASEAN’s digital transformation efforts that are inclusive and enable women to participate in the region’s development.
Finally, I invite Canada to support the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB). Canada may undertake cooperation with the ACB related to the latter’s efforts in preserving ASEAN’s varied ecosystems, and also in mainstreaming biodiversity across relevant sectors to increase resilience against climate change impacts and natural disasters. We must also work to prevent and mitigate the threats of emerging and…
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