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Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you, Ambassador Hillman, for the warm introduction and for all your hard work on this relationship and in this important time in the world.

Thank you for the work you do every single day to uphold and strengthen the special bond between Canada and the United States.

It’s also a great pleasure to be here with Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, the Minister of National Defence, Bill Blair, and other parliamentary colleagues – Julie Dzerowicz, Vance Badawey, James Maloney, Judy Sgro, Francesco Sorbara, Anthony Housefather, and Kody Blois.

I also want to thank the numerous people from our NATO Allies in attendance for today’s event to celebrate the NATO Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence.

And before I continue, I also want to recognize General Wayne Eyre, who is joining us here today and is attending his final NATO Summit before retiring later this month.

General, thank you for your many years of outstanding service, not just to Canada but to NATO and to the world.

Canada and NATO have long recognized an indisputable fact: climate change is not only an existential environmental threat, but one of the defining security challenges of our time.

Rising sea levels and increasingly frequent and intense natural disasters threaten security infrastructure like ports and military bases that keep our Alliance safe.

A warming Arctic is opening up a new arena of competition that our adversaries are eager to exploit.

And climate-induced floods, famines, and droughts exacerbate inequality, fuel conflict, and drive displacement across the globe.

All of this disproportionately harms marginalized and vulnerable populations.

Overall, climate change risks creating a less stable, less prosperous, and less secure world.

That is why we acted.

Back home, our government has shown global leadership in addressing the climate crisis.

We have placed a price on pollution that simultaneously reduces our emissions and puts more money back in the pockets of eight out of 10 Canadians.

We launched Canada’s first National Adaptation Strategy to build stronger and more resilient communities.

We became the first major oil producing nation to introduce a cap on emissions from the oil and gas sector.

And we’re creating hundreds of thousands of good-paying, sustainable jobs from coast to coast to coast with a $160 billion investment in our net-zero economic plan and green industrial strategy.

We are showing every step of the way that good climate policy is good economic policy.

And what gathers us here today is that it is also good security policy.

Addressing a global problem like climate change requires a global response. A global response which we have been coordinating in close partnership with our 31 fellow member states in NATO.

Our government has been a strong advocate for ensuring that climate change is an integral part of NATO’s agenda and, together, we’ve acted to make that a reality.

In 2021, the Alliance published the NATO Climate Change and Security Action Plan, a plan which recognized the risks that climate change poses to NATO and pledged to take action to address those challenges.

In 2022 and 2023, Canada co-led a climate change working group with Denmark and Norway to identify and establish NATO’s climate research priorities.

And we spearheaded the NATO Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence, which we were proud to launch last year and which will be housed in downtown Montréal.

This Centre serves as a critical research platform to ensure that NATO Allies and partners are equipped with the information they need to succeed in a climate-changed world. To plan for, adapt to, and mitigate the security risks and impacts caused by climate change. And to forge strong partnerships with organizations like the Munich Security Conference and the CDA Institute that are also committed to addressing the security challenges posed by the climate crisis.

So today, I’m excited to celebrate an important milestone for the Centre.

Just a few weeks ago, the Alliance accredited it as an official NATO Centre of Excellence, Canada’s first.

This important step was many months in the making and was only made possible by the strong support of the 11 sponsoring nations. Eleven NATO allies who, like us, saw the value of standing up a world-class security-focused climate research body.

We’re looking forward to seeing what the Centre can accomplish, and we expect to see many more nations join in this work in the coming years.

This Centre of Excellence – along with our leadership of the multinational NATO Battlegroup in Latvia, our continued efforts to train Ukrainian military personnel through Operation UNIFIER, and our new defence policy vision which invests $73 billion in defence over the next two decades – demonstrate Canada’s unwavering resolve to support the Alliance.

A resolve that continues to grow stronger.

Before 2015, Canada was spending less than 1 per cent of our GDP on defence every year.

But we vowed to change that, and we have followed through on our word.

We’re investing more in our troops, in our capacity, and in our capabilities. All while continuing to provide assistance to our Allies resisting Russian aggression.

NATO is the strongest military Alliance in the world.

And to keep it that way, we must continue to step up, individually and collectively, to strengthen both our Alliance and the collective peace it protects.

Canada stands with our NATO Allies.

Canada will always defend the values of democracy, freedom, and the rule of law, and it is more important today than it ever has been.

My friends, we must be clear-eyed about the current state of global affairs.

The long peace after the Second World War is over.

We’re living in an increasingly dangerous, unstable, and complex world.

Cyber warfare, resurgent authoritarian forces, expanding regional conflicts, and the impacts of climate change – all represent growing threats to our collective security and continued prosperity.

This is the sobering reality we must all face.

That’s why Canada will continue to work closely together with like-minded Allies to tackle these challenges directly, to build a better world for all.

We will grow our global partnerships, and we will always do what is needed to forge a stronger and more united NATO to keep us all safe.

Thank you.