Canada, UK Deepen Five Country Conference Relationship

Canada-United Kingdom joint declaration: “A Stronger Partnership for the 21st Century”

Securing our Countries
We will continue to work with Afghan and international partners to help build a more viable country that is better governed, more stable and secure, and never again a safe haven for terrorists.  Through the training of Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), regional diplomacy, and development assistance, we are working to help enable the transition of security in Afghanistan to the ANSF by the end of 2014.

We will create greater interoperability between our defence forces and deepen cooperation on procurement and capabilities, to be enabled in part by a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Defence Material Cooperation, existing MoUs and the “Partners in Defence” dialogue, which will draw on the lessons of current and recent national and NATO-led operations.

We will strengthen our counter-terrorism collaboration, in particular in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel and South Asia, including our efforts to tackle terrorist finance activity in third countries.

We will advance shared objectives on migration, including through the Five Country Conference on biometric and other information sharing and service delivery partnerships.

Building on the excellent relationship following evacuations of our nationals from Libya and Egypt this year, we will improve cooperation on consular services through joint contingency planning in third countries, and through staff exchanges between our Crisis Centres.