The Mexico-Canada Partnership Meeting Concludes in Calgary

Monday, September 15, 2014

The Mexico-Canada Partnership Meeting Concludes in Calgary

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The tenth annual meeting of the Mexico-Canada Partnership (MCP) concluded (September 9) in Calgary, Canada. The MCP is a public-private partnership that promotes binational cooperation programs.

The co-chairs for Mexico, Sergio Alcocer, Undersecretary for North America, and Canada, David Morrison, Assistant Deputy Minister for the Americas, coordinated the discussion, stressing that after ten years in existence the partnership should be reengineered in order to stimulate the creation of new synergies in the cross-cutting work of the groups and both countries’ interest in deepening the bilateral relationship as a whole.

One of the main measures agreed to in order to reinvigorate the MCP is the creation of an executive committee, which will meet periodically to assess the progress made by each working group and to make recommendations on how they can function more efficiently to benefit the societies of both countries.

They also agreed to create transversal links between the various working groups to enable them to work together and to seek funding to develop specific projects.

As part of this new structure, the group on trade, investment and innovation will expand to include the issues of infrastructure and tourism, key areas for making North America into a more dynamic and competitive region.

The human capital group will seek to expand its work by including research and innovation. The forests and environment group and others shared their best practices and models for synergies with other processes such as the North American Leaders’ Summit. As part of the biodiversity and conservation efforts, the trilateral action plan for protecting the monarch butterfly was highlighted.

In the agribusiness group, it was agreed to make proposals that involve the labor mobility, infrastructure and transportation sectors.

The labor mobility group committed to binational collaboration by working with Mexico’s embassy and five consulates in Canada to ensure respect for the rights and safety of Mexican workers in their workplaces and compliance with the requirements of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program and International Mobility Program. This includes consular notification and the exchange of information.

Regarding sustainable urban development and housing, it was agreed to work on housing models for low-income and indigenous populations.

The main theme of the 10th MCP was energy. The group’s work reflected the sector’s impact on the actions proposed by the partnership. The importance of promoting training in various areas of energy and regulation was also agreed on.

Undersecretary Alcocer and Assistant Deputy Minister Morrison welcomed the broad participation of prominent Mexican and Canadian actors from business, academics and civil society as well as representatives from the Canadian provinces and Mexican states.

They also urged the co-chairs of the working groups to ensure communication between themselves in order to identify potential areas of collaboration, increase the partnership’s visibility and maintain a consistent level of interrelationships during the year with a view to the next annual meeting, which will be held in Mexico in 2015.

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Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE), Sep 9, 2014, Mexico, DF; SRE translation