Thank you, Don. It is great to join you today.

Thank you to the Halifax Chamber of Commerce for hosting me and bringing us together.

Ahead of my conversation with Seamus, I want to speak briefly about the government’s plan to build Canada strong.

Building Nova Scotia strong is central to our government’s mandate to build Canada strong.

There is an entrepreneurial spirit and drive that makes Nova Scotia special.

That spirit built companies like Mersey Seafoods, Michelin, and social enterprises like Hope Blooms.

Global champions like Oxford Frozen Foods and Stanfield's.

That spirit is developing pillars of the new economy like Volta, COVE, DeNova, and Maritime Launch.

A year ago, I came to Nova Scotia and heard concerns from Nova Scotians about how the world is rapidly changing.

How many of our former strengths – based on close ties to America – were becoming our vulnerabilities.

People sensed the rupture. And I felt the resolve – the determination of Nova Scotians to take matters into our own hands.

To take care of ourselves, so we can take care of each other.

We have a clear mandate:

To focus on what we can control, to build a stronger, more independent, more resilient country.

To build Canada for all.

To build a Canada strong, we must first shore up our own strengths.

That means being our best customer.

That means working together: The federal government with provinces and territories, businesses, and unions – and establishing a true partnership with Indigenous Peoples.

And that requires that we diversify our trade relationships.

The first job of the government is to keep Canadians safe.

To that end, we are recruiting 1,000 new Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers and 1,000 new border services officers.

We have introduced six pieces of legislation to tighten our borders, strengthen public safety, combat hate, and make the biggest tightening of bail and sentencing laws in a generation.

And we are transforming Canada’s defence to take full responsibility for our own security, to be a stronger partner to our Allies, and to build our economy.

Over the past 10 months, we have committed over $60 billion into our defence and security – the single largest year-on-year increase in defence investment in generations.

We streamlined procurement, cut red tape, and ensured our women and men in uniform get the pay they deserve and the equipment they need.

As a result, yesterday, NATO confirmed that Canada has achieved its 2% defence expenditure target – half a decade ahead of the original schedule. And we are just getting started.

The foundation of our defence and security rests on the women and men in uniform.

One of the most important measures we have taken was to grant a pay increase to every member of the Canadian Armed Forces.

And now, recruitment is up by 13% this year.

We have launched Canada’s first Defence Industrial Strategy, which will help catalyse over half a trillion dollars in investment over the course of the next decade: that’s everything from aerospace to artificial intelligence; cyberspace to outer space; critical minerals to essential infrastructure.

Core to our strategy is to become our own best customer – buying from ourselves, building up our own industries, and creating hundreds of thousands of high-paying careers.

We are working with Irving Shipbuilding to build Arctic Offshore Patrol and Surveillance vessels and 15 River-class destroyers, as part of our over $50 billion National Shipbuilding Strategy.

A few months ago, we announced Sydney, Nova Scotia, as the preferred location for the maintenance port for future icebreakers. This deep-water port would support the operation and maintenance of the Canadian Coast Guard’s largest and most capable Arctic-ready ships.

And earlier this month, Minister McGuinty announced a 10-year, $200 million agreement to lease a dedicated space launch pad that will serve as the foundation for a multi-user spaceport near Canso, Nova Scotia.

Yesterday, I was at CFB Halifax, Canada’s largest military base. There, I announced a package of defence infrastructure and property investments across Nova Scotia worth more than $2 billion – investments to modernise critical infrastructure, build new facilities to support the next generation of naval and air fleets, and expand training and operational capacity.

Thousands of new engineering, manufacturing, and construction jobs – and we are just getting started.

To build a stronger economy and help Canadians get ahead, our government has cut taxes on income, housing, capital gains, and business investment.

We have put in place a Productivity Super-Deduction, a broad-based 100% tax write-off for everything from manufacturing assets to intelligence infrastructure, research and development, clean energy, and electric vehicles.

On top of this, we have instituted investment tax credits across the clean energy value chain – from clean electricity to critical minerals and storage.

These measures reduce our marginal effective tax rate for investment to just 13%. That’s 4.5 percentage points below the United States and one half of the G7 average.

No wonder Canada is now rated as one of the most attractive destinations for Foreign Direct Investment.

The core of our economic strategy is to catalyse $1 trillion in new investments in Canada – in major projects, housing, defence technologies, artificial intelligence and quantum, critical minerals, and clean energy.

In August, we opened the Major Projects Office as a single point of contact to get nation-building projects built faster.

We’ve already referred over $126 billion worth of projects – from nuclear and LNG to critical minerals.

Projects like Mackenzie Valley Highway.

That’s a project I’ve heard about since I was a kid growing up in the Northwest Territories. We’re breaking ground this summer.

Working with Premier Houston, we are advancing Wind West – a project with offshore wind potential to power a quarter of Canada’s electricity needs.

Over the coming weeks, we will focus on strengthening Canada’s clean energy capacity.

We will publish an electricity strategy to double our grid by 2050, while building a stronger, more sustainable economy.

We launched Build Canada Homes to turbocharge housing construction and catalyse an entirely new housing industry.

We’re using new factory technologies – cutting building timelines by 50%, reducing costs by 20%, and lowering emissions by 20%.

Nearly 9,000 units are already being fast-tracked before the legislation tied to create Build Canada Homes has even passed, including hundreds of homes at Shannon Park in Dartmouth.

We are building great things with speed and ambition.

That is why the whole world wants to do more business with us.

One year after we took office, Foreign Direct Investment in Canada reached its highest level in two decades.

And it’s not just what we’re building. It’s how we’re building.

We are building inclusively, in full partnership with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. We are building in solidarity with workers, creating good union careers. We are building sustainably.

And we are building Canadian by becoming our own best customer.

With our new Buy Canadian Policy, whenever the federal government is spending, we are selecting Canadian suppliers by default, rather than the previous “best efforts” approach.

Our Buy Canadian Policy includes federal infrastructure spending, ensuring that as much as possible of the $70 billion we are planning to invest in the roads, bridges, and community centres Canadians rely on come from Canadian-made suppliers.

We have the right plan and momentum is building.

But some of the biggest payoffs will take time.

And many Canadians are feeling the pressures of everyday expenses right now.

That’s why, from the start, Canada’s new government has been relentlessly focused on making life more affordable for Canadians.

On my first day in office, I kept a promise I first made here in Halifax to cancel the divisive consumer carbon tax.

We then cut taxes for 22 million middle-class Canadians – saving a two-income family up to $840 this year.

We have cut taxes for first-time homebuyers, saving them up to $50,000 on their first home.

We reduced tolls for vehicles on the Confederation Bridge from over $50 to $20 and cut fares by 50% on ferries here in Atlantic Canada.

We launched the new Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit, which will deliver hundreds of dollars more into the bank accounts of more than 12 million Canadians.

We can control how we support one another in difficult times. We can control what we build, to give ourselves a better future.

As we build our economic strength at home, we’re diversifying our trading partnerships abroad so we no longer rely on a single trade partner.

Our mission is to double non-U.S. exports – $300 billion in new trade.

We have secured over twenty trade and security partnerships on four continents in less than a year.

This includes the new landmark agreement with China, which will help unlock more than $7 billion in export markets for Canadian farmers, ranchers, lobster harvesters, and agri-food workers across our country.

I will be in Southwest Nova Scotia later today, meeting many of the Lobster harvesters who help feed our nation and our world, and who will directly benefit from this progress.

We’re delivering for Canadians and for Atlantic Canadians. And we’re just getting started.

We are negotiating new trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, the Philippines, and Mercosur.

To build a strong economy, we need to have our own house in order.

So, we are returning immigration to sustainable levels.

Over the past 12 months, Canada’s population declined by over 100,000 after years of record-setting increases, driven by a sharp reduction in non-permanent residents, such as temporary workers and study permit holders.

We’re also spending less so Canadians can invest more.

To do that, we launched a Comprehensive Expenditure Review, which will save taxpayers a total of $60 billion.

All while protecting the vital services Canadians rely on to make life affordable, including child care, dental care, and pharmacare.

Canada sees the world as it is, and we are just as determined to forge a new path.

Over this past year, we have delivered with speed, ambition, and focus for Nova Scotians and all Canadians.

We’ve started as we mean to go on.

We are a confident, ambitious, and united nation.

It’s our country. It’s your future.

We control our own destiny. We are the masters of our own house.

We are building Nova Scotia strong. And building Canada strong.

Thank you.