Philippine Intervention
delivered by
Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro L. Locsin, Jr.
during the
ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conference Session with Canada
05 August 2021
Co-Chairs, Excellencies.
Minister Garneau, I am glad to see you again. I was unable to say this when we met last week, but what an honor it is to meet one of the very first Canadian astronauts, and the first Canadian to have been to outer space. There I was commiserating with your notetaker, having been one myself as a young lawyer. And you’d been one too, you modestly added. I know lawyers chase stuff for a living; but you were chasing the stars.
Canada is a valuable partner of ASEAN with a high potential for synergies. We therefore support Canada’s elevation to Strategic Partner. We also support Canada’s interest, as a Pacific Rim country, to join the East Asia Summit and the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus as observer.
Canada has stuck fast to its commitments both to ASEAN and the Philippines. You have remained sincere, generous, forthright and transparent. We appreciate that. That is why the Filipinos residing there, almost a million of them, do not hesitate to embrace Canada as their second home and country. I had misgivings co-authoring a dual citizenship law that it might dilute allegiances. But not in Canada’s case. When the remains of resistance hero Jean Moulin were moved to the Pantheon, Malraux said the brave have another fatherland to which all the brave under all the flags belong. Good is another fatherland too, to which everything and everyone good belong in addition to their country of birth.
Canada’s inclusive society and sustainable economic policies translate into its well-deserved reputation for ready and unconditional generosity in hard times. We in ASEAN are the better because of it. We have every confidence Canada will live up to its reputation in dystopian movies, like the last Wolverine, as the last best place of remaining mankind.
You came to our rescue in the fight against COVID. Thank you for the commitment to contribute 3.5 million Canadian dollars to the COVID-19 ASEAN Response Fund. I hope ASEAN and Canada can work together on increased production, equitable distribution, and affordable access to COVID-19 vaccines.
Climate change is another shared challenge. If climate action does not measure up to what is needed, we all face the same fate of diminished existence or extinction altogether. Glasgow in November is a decisive crossroads for our common goal of zero net emissions, and by existential necessity the planet’s survival as more than just sand and stones or ocean covered planet. Canada plays a crucial role as co-lead with Germany for the COP26 process to build an international climate finance action plan; we developing countries look to you with much hope.
This highlights the urgency of taking decisive action under the new ASEAN-Canada Plan of Action 2021-2025 particularly on environmental protection, water and waste management, pollution control, and biodiversity management.
Negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement between ASEAN and Canada have stumbled, but let’s raise each other up to put our shoulders to the work again. We both know that an FTA will be monumentally beneficial to both our economies. That gives us a good reset point.
Our cooperation in cybersecurity, transnational crimes, connectivity, trade and investment, green growth and other areas rests on stable foundations held firmly in place by shared interests and more important values, by common objectives of wider import than just ourselves and by concrete and sustained collaboration proving constant commitment.
Gender and migration is one of the strong areas of cooperation between ASEAN and Canada. We both have proud histories as places of refuge for the dispossessed, the wretched of the earth. We make not big statues but enough room for them in that shared concern.
We encourage Canada to continue exploring synergies between its Feminist International Assistance Policy and the 2017 ASEAN Declaration on Gender-Responsiveness. As countries once liberated fall again into the clutches of gender tyranny demanding submission or stoning, let us join in fighting this ultimate disgrace of the human race: human trafficking and coming to the rescue of its wretched merchandise.
With the resurgence of terrorism, violent extremism, and transnational crimes like drugs and prostitution, women’s roles in peace and security has never been more important. They fight best whose gender has suffered most from enemies that make the bodies of mothers, sisters and daughters their battlefield and spoils. We ask Canada to work with us through the framework of the Joint Statement in that respect.
The Philippines aspires for the South China Sea to remain a sea of peace, security, stability, and prosperity; though never at the price of honor nor a square inch or drop of water we call our own. As outgoing Country Coordinator for negotiations on the Code of Conduct, the Philippines takes pride in such progress in a pandemic as we’ve achieved on the COC. The Preamble is agreed on, if only provisionally; the job’s now Myanmar’s. Call us Brother Myanmar if you need help.
We welcome Canada’s renewed message of support for the 2016 Arbitral Award, and for expressing its concern over recent escalatory and destabilizing actions in the South China Sea. Didn’t you lose a slice of your Western seaboard to a rising hegemon — I think as a wildlife preserve?
The Award is the Philippines’ contribution to strengthening legal order over the seas. It must be seen for what it is: a benefit to all the world across the board. It singles no one out; was carefully crafted as to be unusable as a weapon for conflict; and most helpful in clarifying maritime issues. It is not to serve as casus belli for any purpose other than we what we argued for: right in law and reason as the only path of peace.
On Myanmar, we remain firm on the need to swiftly implement the Five-Point Consensus. The Chair’s Special Envoy must be allowed to start work so unhindered humanitarian assistance be provided. For dialogue amongst involved parties to be effective, we call for the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other political detainees and her foreign adviser. Constructive dialogue is what the Five-Point Consensus calls for; it can only happen when everyone concerned is at the table — where the food is served; and not the table where only the cooks dine on the cuisine they alone prepared. Thank you.