GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

As this coun­try con­tin­ues to grap­ple with crime, Cana­da’s High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T, Michael Callan, is re­it­er­at­ing his coun­try’s com­mit­ment to strength­en­ing se­cu­ri­ty ties.

“Af­ter get­ting to­geth­er with our col­leagues and my oth­er am­bas­sado­r­i­al high com­mis­sion­er col­leagues from the re­gion, we’ve re­al­ly set­tled on two an­chor points for our en­gage­ment over the com­ing pe­ri­od. One, there’s se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns and I think one thing we of­ten say is that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s se­cu­ri­ty is di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to Cana­di­an se­cu­ri­ty,” Callan said.

“We treat it se­ri­ous­ly for every­thing that hap­pens with­in the coun­try’s bor­ders and be­yond, on the seas and what hap­pens in be­tween the is­lands in the re­gion. We do take it se­ri­ous­ly, and we have a good, strong foun­da­tion of part­ner­ships in mul­ti­ple se­cu­ri­ty sec­tors, and we’re look­ing to build those even deep­er.”

The High Com­mis­sion­er, who took up his post four months ago, out­lined gen­er­al plans to en­hance part­ner­ships be­tween his coun­try and T&T dur­ing CNC3’s Big In­ter­view last night.

He said part­ner­ships in se­cu­ri­ty al­ready ex­ist, in­clud­ing with the TTPS, mil­i­tary, Coast Guard, and Cus­toms and Ex­cise among oth­ers.

“We have pro­found re­la­tion­ships al­ready in ex­is­tence and there’s much more room to grow,” Callan em­pha­sised.

Re­gard­ing ed­u­ca­tion, he said giv­en the shift­ing dy­nam­ics of col­lege ed­u­ca­tion in the Unit­ed States, Cana­da re­mains an op­tion for lo­cal stu­dents.

“We have wel­comed over 4,000 stu­dents over the last 10 years and they con­tin­ue to be wel­comed. Far from me to say if we can fill gaps left by Amer­i­can de­ci­sions, but I do know that Trin­bag­o­ni­ans will con­tin­ue to be wel­comed,” he added.

Callan al­so not­ed there are about 25 dif­fer­ent agree­ments be­tween Cana­di­an uni­ver­si­ties and The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

He said trade is an­oth­er im­por­tant com­po­nent in the ties that this coun­try and Cana­da share and one that will re­main sig­nif­i­cant.

“Our new prime min­is­ter has re­ferred to the changes af­fect­ing the glob­al trade regime right now as be­ing more dra­mat­ic than we’ve seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and so it’s in­cum­bent on us to ad­just and adapt and flex to those. Part of that flex­i­bil­i­ty means di­ver­si­fy­ing our trade re­la­tion­ships and re­al­ly con­cen­trat­ing and tak­ing se­ri­ous­ly those trust­ed re­la­tion­ships, such as the one that Cana­da, Trinidad and To­ba­go share to­geth­er,” Callan said.

He fur­ther ex­plained that T&T al­so plays an im­por­tant part in this di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­fort.

“It’s not just di­ver­si­fy­ing in­to new sec­tors, but it’s tak­ing our trade re­la­tion­ships out­side of our dom­i­nant ones even more se­ri­ous­ly, and again, there’s a good, strong foun­da­tion to build up­on, be­cause if you just look at com­mer­cial­ly, ba­si­cal­ly Cana­di­an busi­ness­es are every­where,” Callan said.

“We’re in fi­nan­cial ser­vices and cer­tain­ly in oil and gas and food and se­cu­ri­ty prod­ucts, I think Trin­bag­o­ni­ans’ pass­ports and coins are made by a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny. We re­al­ly have deep and pro­found links right across the econ­o­my, and so there’s a good foun­da­tion to build off of,” Callan added.

The High Com­mis­sion­er de­scribed the re­la­tion­ship be­tween T&T and Cana­da as “su­perb” and one with an ex­cel­lent foun­da­tion.

He said while there are all kinds of geopo­lit­i­cal tur­bu­lence tak­ing place at the mo­ment, the strength of these con­nec­tions across many dif­fer­ent ar­eas means that Cana­da and T&T are well-po­si­tioned to nav­i­gate the tur­bu­lence ahead.

On what are the biggest chal­lenges fac­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween T&T and Cana­da to­day, Callan said this could be “the un­known,” as he ex­plained it is re­al­ly un­known what is ahead in terms of the broad­er geopo­lit­i­cal con­text.

Adding that tech­nolo­gies are dri­ving ahead faster than some can keep up with, Callan said ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, for ex­am­ple, is tak­ing peo­ple in new di­rec­tions.

“And so, in those mo­ments of tur­bu­lence, I think it’s dou­bly im­por­tant again to get back to ba­sics and get back to those re­la­tion­ships that we can re­ly on, that we can count on, and it’s so sat­is­fy­ing to know that we have just such a re­la­tion­ship here,” he added.