Marcos in Canada: Closer trade, security in a turbulent world

VANCOUVER, Canada — On the eve of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.‘s departure for Vancouver, there were a few hours of uncertainty on whether or not his official visit to Canada would push through.

Earlier on Tuesday, June 30, Marcos skipped two public events after a surprise protest by influential religious group Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC) stalled traffic along Metro Manila’s busiest highways. The protest was against the possible arrest of one of its members, Senator Rodante Marcoleta, over a plunder complaint. A briefing of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) was put on hold, and then eventually scrapped.

It was not until past 3 pm on Tuesday when Palace Communications Secretary Dave Gomez confirmed that there would be no change of plans. Marcos, the first Philippine president to make an official visit to Canada in over a decade, would push through with the trip. 

In a chance interview right before boarding PR001, Marcos said he had faith in the INC because in its “history” of protests, chaos was never its goal.

“That for me was the main concern that somebody might get hurt. Ang problema lang namin is that merong impormasyon na siyempre merong mga, mag-infiltrate; mag-agitate. ‘Yun ang inaalala namin. Ang pinaka-importante sa amin, walang masaktan.… So let’s just keep everything stable and peaceful. And so far it has been,” he said.

(Our only problem was we got information that there were those who wanted to infiltrate and agitate. That’s what worried us. What’s important to us is that everyone is safe.)

It’s an episode that illustrates the kind of turmoil that Marcos, with just over two years left in his term, faces at home. The domestic mess is backdropped, too, by even more upheavals and chaos globally — a reality middle countries like the Philippines and Canada have borne the brunt of. 

Sustaining ‘unprecedented momentum’

Marcos will be in Vancouver from July 1 to 5 and is expected to hold several meetings, including a bilateral meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. 

The choice of Cabinet ministers joining Marcos in Canada reflects the trade and business focus of his official trip.

Aside from Foreign Affairs Secretary Maria Theresa Lazaro, with Marcos are Finance Secretary Frederick Go, Trade Secretary Cristina Roque, Environment Secretary Juan Miguel Cuna, and Migrant Workers Secretary Hans Leo Cacdac. First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos is also part of the President’s delegation. 

In a briefing on July 1, hours before Marcos left for Vancouver, Palace press officer Undersecretary Claire Castro said Marcos will be witnessing the signing of frameworks and cooperation agreements covering energy, natural resources, trade and investment, labor and immigration, tourism, and culture and the arts. 

He is also set to meet with various Canada-based businesses and officials covering mining, IT and business process management, telecommunications, nuclear energy, and financial services.

“With Canada, we have seen an unprecedented momentum in the deepening of bilateral relations,” Marcos said on Wednesday, hours before departing for Vancouver.

“It is thus imperative that we further strengthen this connection with our longstanding friend and partner, as we navigate the shared challenges we face as Pacific nations,” he added.

PH, Canada ties 

Canada and the Philippines, though oceans apart, share very close ties. 

Ottawa’s envoy to Manila, Ambassador David Hartman, said said that Philippine-Canadian bilateral relations and the greater Indo-Pacific are “dinner table” talk in Canada — a reflection of the two nations’ close political and people-to-people ties. As of 2024, Canada ranks as the Philippines’ 20th largest trading partner. 

Nearly 1 million people of Philippine descent reside in Canada, making it home to the second-largest Filipino diaspora in the world, next only to the United States.  

Since Hartman made those observations in 2024, bilateral ties have only deepened. Manila is the hub for Canada’s Indo-Pacific Agriculture and Agri-Food Office. In 2023, Canada gave the Philippines access to its Dark Vessel Detection System.

In 2025, the two countries signed a Status of Visiting Forces Agreement (SOVFA) which allows their militaries to train in each others’ soil. Although the Philippine Senate has yet to concur with the Canadian SOVFA, Ottawa’s military has had a wide array of engagements, including participation in war games, with the Armed Forces of the Philippines. 

Canada is also among the countries that have consistently backed the Philippines in its bid to uphold its sovereign rights in the West Philippine Sea based on international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the 2016 Arbitral Award.

High-level engagements between Ottawa and Manila have increase in tempo and frequency, particularly under Marcos.

Middle powers pitch 

The two also consider the US — Canada’s neighbor to its south — as a close ally. The Philippines is Washington’s oldest treaty ally in Asia. 

So in an era where the US, a superpower that had long been seen as a source of global stability, has turned unpredictable under President Donald Trump, Manila and Ottawa find themselves navigating the same rough seas. Both the Philippines and Canada have been threatened with US tarrifs in the early months of Trump’s presidency. 

The US and Israel’s war on Iran in late February 2026 has wreaked havoc on the global oil market — a crisis that has hit Middle East oil-dependent countries like the Philippines the most. Its effects are expected to persist even if US-Iran peace talks succeed and the Strait of Hormuz is fully reopened. 

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in early 2026, months before Trump launched a war on Iran, Carney declared that the world was “in the midst of a rupture, not a transition” amid daily reminders “that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.” It was a warning against a “world of fortresses.”

“The middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” Carney said in January. 

It was a decidedly bleaker view than that of Marcos when he speaks of his and the Philippines’ take of challenges to international law and the rules-based order. 

Still, the call has been the same: for middle powers to work together. 

At the 2024 Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, the premiere defense summit in Asia, Marcos had called multilateralism “the single viable platform for collective action against transcendent global challenges.” “This requires active leadership on the part of middle powers, which have the capacity to cross political and ideological lines, forge genuine consensus, and lead credible efforts towards decisive multilateral solutions,” he said. 

Much has changed since Marcos’ June 2024 speech in Singapore and even Carney’s January speech in Davos. 

As the two leaders meet in Vancouver, they are no doubt bound to speak of where their countries lie — and how they are to thrive — in a world whose order is far from forgone.

“While we have renewed our focus towards the bilateral partnership, Philippines-Canada relations cannot grow in a vacuum. Recent developments have shown that despite the more than ten thousand kilometers of distance that separate us, our regions are interconnected,” the Philippine president said in his departure speech.

“I intend to work with Prime Minister Carney in adapting to shifting global realities, addressing shared challenges, and building capacities for a future-ready partnership,” he added. – Rappler.com