Thank you very much, President von der Leyen.

We were last together less than a week ago in Strasbourg, discussing how nations coming together can achieve things that none of us would be able to do individually – and it’s in the same spirit as Strasbourg that we’re here today.

Let me begin by observing that Canada is an ocean nation. We border three oceans. We have the world’s longest coastline.

That is our inheritance. And we recognise the obligations and responsibilities that come with that – to lead efforts to understand those oceans, and of course, protect them.

We have many resources dedicated to oceanographic science and technology – and with other members of the Arctic Council, we’re focused on conservation through that.

Because of President von der Leyen and the European Union’s leadership, we are really stepping up as a part of OceanEye.

I was going to say that we’re matching the European Union’s commitment by pledging $82 million over five years to OceanEye to expand our ability to observe our ocean – and we have preserved that – but, of course, the European Union’s commitment has just increased. That’s the spirit of this event, which underscores the urgency.

The Arctic is warming at nearly four times the global average. We know its ice is thinning; and we can see its waters are opening. But we recognise our picture is incomplete.

Of course, this is the spirit of OceanEye. We cannot protect what we cannot see. We cannot manage what we do not understand.

Our commitment today will lead to real-time moorings in the Arctic that report year-round – including through the depths of winter, when almost every other form of observation goes dark.

We will send autonomous underwater gliders under the region’s frozen waters, operating for months at a time, to observe waters few instruments can reach.

And we will expand our monitoring of the Labrador Sea and Davis Strait – critical currents that shape weather, ice flows, and fisheries on our Atlantic coast.

Beyond the waters of the Arctic and North Atlantic, Canada will more than double our contribution to the global Argo network, the world’s largest ocean climate monitoring system.

We will continue to work with others in Antarctica and contribute data through a shared system.

The spirit of this event is to move to action, and so I want to say a couple of quick words about what we are doing on conservation.

Canada is protecting more of our oceans than ever before. A decade ago, we had safeguarded only 1% of our marine area. Today, it is more than 15% – over a million square kilometres.

We are committed, under our new national nature strategy, to double that by the end of this decade, to 30% of our lands and waters, with new marine protected areas across various coasts, including in the Arctic.

This is a race against time, so as much as possible, we will be using the data that is collected here in real time to inform those decisions.

We are also formally ratifying the High Seas Treaty, the BBNJ.

Next spring, Canada will welcome the world to Halifax for the Our Ocean Conference – we hope to see as many of you there as possible.

We intend to be at every table where the future of the ocean is decided, and to continue to raise our ambitions.

In a moment, we’ll hear from Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk and French astronaut Sophie Adenot on the value of space-based ocean observation.

I’ll finish by observing that the first Canadian woman in space, Roberta Bondar, once said that “to fly in space is to see the reality of Earth”.

This room is here because we know the reality of the Earth is that it is a blue planet, and we need to better understand it to better protect it, manage it, and pass it on for the future.

Thank you.