Prime Minister Mark Carney met with Turkish President Recep Erdogan and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Tuesday on the margins of the NATO leaders' summit in Ankara.
Carney met with Erdogan, who is hosting the annual event, shortly after arriving in Turkey, and the two announced their governments are formally launching free trade negotiations.
Carney also met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speaking about air defence and how Canada can continue to support Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Later Tuesday, Carney is scheduled attend a trilateral meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Norwegian Prime Minister Gahr Store.
On Monday Carney named a German and Norwegian consortium TKMS as the preferred bidder for a fleet of submarines for the Royal Canadian Navy.
Defence Minister David McGuinty said Tuesday in Ankara that the choice to select TKMS as the preferred submarine bidder means there will be greater interoperability in Arctic defence, including sharing crews with Germany and Norway.
Carney also met with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on the sidelines of the NATO leader's summit. Carney said Monday he had also spoken to Lee on the weekend before he announced that TKMS had beaten out South Korea's Hanwha Ocean to negotiate a contract to build a fleet of submarines.
McGuinty said it was a good meeting and reiterated Carney's pledge that Hanwha remains a bidder in reserve for the submarine contract, depending on how formal negotiations with TKMS go.
"There's a lot of co-operation possibilities here between Canada and Korea. We're going to continue building that relationship, and that's exactly what the prime minister mentioned to President Lee," McGuinty said.
The NATO summit is expected to focus on a collective increase in defence budgeting and alliance unity amid an increasingly threatening world.
The ongoing threats from U.S. President Donald Trump to reduce American commitments to NATO has most other countries in the alliance scrambling to do more.
Countries are expected to announce tens of billions of dollars in military spending around the margins of the summit.
McGuinty said Canada has hit the initial NATO target of putting two per cent of GDP into defence spending and the next goal is to hit 3.5 per cent by 2029. The minister said Tuesday those numbers will be in the fall budget document.
"Our objective here is to continue showing to our NATO partners that we are moving forward. We are making significant investments, we've just chosen the submarines, we are building out our economy in this area, we're procuring lots of goods and services, we rebuilding our bases. We've extended our stay in Latvia by three years. We're making massive investments," McGuinty said.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said the alliance is angling to purchase a fleet of Saab GlobalEye radar jets largely manufactured in Canada.
Carney has been campaigning for allies to set up a multinational defence bank to help finance growth in the global defence sector.
Carney was to speak at a panel at the summit about financing the defence sector, but that was removed from his schedule. Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand will take part.
Leaders are expected to gather for a dinner event Tuesday evening before the main North Atlantic Council meeting on Wednesday.
The summit is being streamlined this year, which experts say is to avoid diplomatic frictions.
Picture Courtesy: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
