Canada in Talks With UK About Merging Defence Financing Institutions

The United Kingdom and Canada are talking about merging their proposed defence financing initiatives to amplify their effects, says a senior Canadian government official.

The official, who was briefing reporters on background, says Ottawa is confident they’ll reach an agreement on bringing the two proposals together to form a joint institution, though that decision may not emerge from meetings this week.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has championed the creation of a global Defence, Security and Resilience Bank to supply allies with low-cost borrowing for defence, and he’s enlisted support from eight countries, including Latvia, Luxembourg and Ukraine.

The United Kingdom’s separate effort, called the Multilateral Defence Mechanism, is designed as a financing vehicle for joint purchases of military equipment and has won support from the Netherlands, Finland and Poland.

Carney is stopping in Liverpool today for his first meeting with British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who recently took office after Keir Starmer resigned over the summer.

The government official says Carney has also been involved in a series of conversations about the Joint Expeditionary Force, a U.K.-led multinational Arctic security military coalition of which Canada is not a full member.