Canada will expand cooperation with Ireland in several areas including food security, artificial intelligence, and skills development, Prime Minister Mark Carney said after talks with Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin in Dublin.
Carney said that his government plans to advance work on establishing a regenerative medicine hub in Ireland as part of broader efforts to strengthen ties in the health and biotech sectors, while describing the bilateral relationship between the two countries as “already flourishing.”
‘New World Order’
While in Dublin, Carney also spoke at Trinity College Dublin, where he delivered the inaugural De Chastelain Public Lecture and participated in a broader geopolitical panel discussion on the upcoming G7 summit in France from June 15 to 17, which he will be attending.The De Chastelain Public Lecture is a named public lecture series hosted at Trinity College Dublin as part of a broader academic and peace-and-reconciliation initiative connected to Irish–Canadian relations.
The lecture is named after General John de Chastelain, a retired Canadian general and diplomat who played a central role in the Northern Ireland peace process, including serving as chair of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, which oversaw the disarmament of paramilitary groups following the Good Friday Agreement.
During the lecture, Carney talked about the G7 summit as a place where the “strands” of “a new world order” may be woven.
He noted that the upcoming G7 summit will include countries other than the main G7 nations as well, such as Brazil, India, Egypt, and Gulf states. He said this will bring a “broader perspective and a broader element of the solution.”
“It’s a recognition that the G7, if it ever did run the world, no longer runs the world or pretends to,” he said.
Carney has in the past described recent global developments as part of a shifting international order, referring to a “new world order.” During a visit to Beijing earlier this year, he also said Canada’s new “partnership” with Beijing “sets us up well for the new world order.” His Beijing trip in January was followed a few days later by a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he indirectly criticized U.S. tariffs and foreign policy, while urging middle powers to band together in the face of unnamed great powers.
“Canada, Ireland, and Europe are increasingly and immediately vulnerable to once-distant threats,” Carney said in Dublin. “Amidst this disruption, Canada, Ireland, and Europe can be pivotal, powerful, and purposeful—a force for good.”
During his six-day trip to Europe, Carney met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris earlier this week, and will next head to Évian-les-Bains in France for the G7 summit.
The Conservatives criticized Carney’s Ireland trip, saying “Canada already has trade with Ireland.”
“Making expensive trips to sign fake agreements and advance another country’s trade with other countries does not help the steel, aluminum, forestry and autoworkers who are losing their jobs in Canada right now,” the office of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said.
