Your Excellencies,
The Distinguished Foreign Ministers of
Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let me first thank you, Foreign Minister Alatas, for your opening remarks on Canada's relationship with ASEAN. During the past three years Indonesia has coordinated and managed our Dialogue relationship with skill and dedication.

Canada attaches great value to its privileged Dialogue relationship with ASEAN, one of the world's most successful regional organizations. The Canada-ASEAN relationship has become a broad-based political and economic partnership of mutual benefit that has evolved from Canada's early development-focused bilateral contacts with individual ASEAN countries in the 1950s. Our artnership continues to evolve and grow. Economic cooperation for shared benefit now underpins our relationship.

Our development cooperation now encompasses activities in forestry, agriculture, fisheries, marine environment, telecommunications and training. We aim to create the basis for ustaining long-term linkages. self The Canadian International Development Agency's funding of the Canada-ASEAN Center is one example of this. I look forward to exploring further potential areas of cooperation, such as in science and technology and environmental management.

At the official or government level, our Dialogue relationship has intensified and the pace of progress has accelerated. At last year's PMC in Singapore, Canada and ASEAN signed a new Economic Cooperation Agreement to promote closer industrial,commercial and development cooperation.

Reflecting the future direction of cooperation between Canada and ASEAN, this new Agreement will foster greater private sector cooperation, assist in and target development to the mutual benefit of us all.

As a further indication of the intensification of the Dialogue relationship, meetings of the Canada-ASEAN Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC) this year moved from an eighteen-month to an annual cycle with the holding of the Ninth JCC in Ottawa in June. This meeting reviewed a wide range of economic and trade issues of mutual interest, from the completion of the GATT Uruguay Round and creation of the World Trade Organization, to regional trading relationships (AFTA, NAFTA and APEC), to questions of market access. With the complexity and variety of issues under discussion, Canada regards the JCC as an important venue for policy dialogue with its ASEAN partners in the run-up each year to the G-7 Summit and the PMC. As we will be hosting the next G-7 Summit in Halifax, we especially look forward to hearing your views. We also look forward to sharing views with Brunei as chair of next year's PMC.

Economic and commercial relations are an area of increasing promise and opportunity as private sector linkages continue to develop and expand. Two-way trade between Canada and ASEAN, now at almost $5 billion, has more than doubled in the past five years and has tripled over the past decade. While we are confident that trade will expand even further, we are conscious of the need to remain competitive. However, we also need to work with ASEAN for greater mutual trade liberalization to improve market access for goods and services. I would look forward to hearing your views on how each of our governments can change our rules and regulations to allow greater trade and investment based on GATT-compatible principles.

For Canada's part, we view many of the provisions of NAFTA as a model of how Canadian and ASEAN markets may be liberalized. For example, we are looking to start negotiations with a number of ASEAN countries on a new Foreign Investment Protection Agreement (FIPA) based on NAFTA principles. ASEAN countries received copies of the model agreement at the JCC. Over the coming months Canada will also be tabling, through the JCC process, a number of market access issues in the insurance field that I hope ASEAN governments will review positively. We need more ideas on how we can help each other to give our respective private sectors a "head start into the Asian and North American markets. Perhaps we can discuss this issue further today.

Canadian activity in ASEAN countries through joint ventures and other forms of investment continues to expand. At almost $4 billion, Canadian investment in ASEAN represents an increasing proportion of overall Canadian foreign direct investment. We would like to see this figure increase and we also want to see more investment from ASEAN countries in Canada.

ASEAN's concerns about investment diversion caused by NAFTA have been studied and the early evidence is that less than one percent diversion will occur.

Canada firms make good partners for ASEAN manufacturers interested in the growing NAFTA market. Canadian firms have the understanding of North American distribution that will be costly for ASEAN firms to acquire alone. As governments, we should facilitate these private sector partnerships.

Finally, I should like to say a few words here about our commitment to APEC and broader cooperation in the Asia Pacific region. Canada regards our joint work in APEC and ongoing cooperation with ASEAN in the PMC as complementary and mutually reinforcing. We commend the leadership role of Indonesia this year in hosting the next APEC Ministerial and Leaders' Meetings. As we work together with our Indonesian friends, we see future opportunities to cooperate with ASEAN in APEC. I note that after Japan chairs APEC next year, the Philippines and then Canada will follow. Already we are consulting our Philippine colleagues to ensure good management of APEC over 1996-97. It is essential that as APEC evolves it should contain a strong ASEAN. You can count on Canada's support as we cooperate to build APEC as a new bridge across the Pacific.

I would like to close by inviting you Foreign Ministers, and your three ASEAN colleagues, to join me in Canada, at some appropriate time in the future, for an informal gathering on our common destiny.