Historie

The Delegation for relations with Canada (D-CA) is one of the oldest delegations in the European Parliament, its first meeting taking place in March 1975.

Forty-three inter-parliamentary meetings (IPMs) between the European and Canadian parliaments have since been held. The most recent took place in Ottawa in October 2025. The next is planned for autumn of 2026.

To further enable the D-CA Members to deepen their understanding of the breadth of issues across this vast and diverse country, and its federal structure, IPMs include visits to the provinces. Some examples of such visits were those to the Oceans Network Canada in the University of Victoria, the CANMET Energy Research Centre in Varennes and the Centre of Prevention of Radicalisation Leading to Violence in Quebec.

Bilateral relations

The original delegation was created one year before the EU-Canada Framework Agreement for Commercial and Economic Cooperation was signed, in 1976. This Framework Agreement was the first of its kind that the European Community signed with an OECD country.

The EU and Canada signed two key agreements in 2016:

• the Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA), which provides a more ambitious framework for deepening the political and parliamentary cooperation between Canada and the EU,
• the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which is already leading to more trade and prosperity for EU and Canadian citizens.

The agreements have been provisionally applied since April and September 2017 respectively.

Historic visit by the Prime Minister of Canada

On 16 February 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed the European Parliament plenary in Strasbourg and on 23 March 2022 in Brussels, the first Canadian Prime Minister to do so. Prime Minister Trudeau underlined the commitment of both the EU and Canada to certain common causes, including individual liberties, free trade, tackling climate change, combatting gender-based discrimination, fighting for justice and maintaining global security. In 2022, the Prime Minister condemned "Putin's criminal invasion of a sovereign, independent, democracy: Ukraine" and stressed that NATO and the EU are more resolved and united than ever.

Canadian counterpart

The Delegation's counterpart in the Parliament of Canada is the Canada-Europe Parliamentary Association (CAEU).

The CAEU was established in 1980 to provide a structure for exchanges between Canadian parliamentarians and several parliamentary interlocutors: the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, similar European parliamentary organisations and individual parliaments of all European countries.

Deepening of parliamentary relations

Over the European Parliament's ninth legislature (2019 - 2024), the delegation meetings and the IPMs focused on a wide range of issues, including trade and economic issues, foreign, security and defense policies, energy, environment and climate change, new technologies, migration, visa and privacy and arctic cooperation.

The SPA provides a framework for deepening the political cooperation between the two sides. Specifically, under Article 27(e), the promotion of exchanges of delegations from the European Parliament and the Parliament of Canada is foreseen.

Building on the Agreement, the 38th Inter-Parliamentary Meeting (2017) adopted a joint statement in which both Parliaments committed to strengthen the level of discourse between them, as a counterpart to other bodies set up under SPA, such as the Joint Cooperation Committee and the Joint Ministerial Committee.

With a view to transforming the IPMs into an ongoing and uninterrupted dialogue, they agreed to additional (videoconference) meetings of delegations. Such meetings have taken place regularly since the signing of the Joint Statement.