Australia and Canada have a longstanding positive relationship fostered by shared history, culture, and political institutions. Both countries are federal Westminster parliamentary constitutional monarchies in personal union with each other as Commonwealth realms, sharing King Charles III as head of state (legally, the King is equally and separately the sovereign of both countries, as King of Australia and Canada). The two countries have a deep and institutionalized political relationship as well as close cultural ties due to their shared history as British Dominions.
Both countries are members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Cairns Group, Commonwealth of Nations, Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, Five Eyes, OECD and the United Nations. Universities in both countries are also part of Association of Pacific Rim Universities.
History
Reluctant relations: 1886–1939
The earliest connections between the two nations was the deportation of Canadian rebels who instigated an uprising in Upper and Lower Canada to Australia. One hundred fifty-four convicted rebels from Upper Canada were sent to Australian shores. Those involved in the Upper Canada rebellions were sent to Van Diemen's Land (modern-day Tasmania). There are two monuments in Hobart, Tasmania's capital city, commemorating the Canadian convict presence in Tasmania, one at Sandy Bay and the other in Prince's Park, Battery Point.
The rebels from Lower Canada were French Canadians known as les patriotes. Like their Upper Canada counterparts, they rebelled against the appointed oligarchy that administered the colony and les patriotes, along with their English-speaking neighbours, clamoured for responsible government. As with the Upper Canada rebellions, the armed insurrections in Lower Canada also failed and 58 French Canadians were sentenced to transportation to New South Wales. Thanks to the intervention of John Bede Polding, Bishop of Sydney, they avoided the horrors of Norfolk Island and were allowed to serve their sentences in Sydney. They were eventually assigned as labourers to free settlers, contributing to the development of the colony, including the building of Parramatta Road. Place names like Canada Bay and Exile Bay and a monument at Cabarita Park in Concord, Sydney (unveiled in May 1970, by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau), attest to their presence in Australia.
In the last quarter of the 19th century, the distances that separated Canada and the six Australian colonies suddenly narrowed. Victorian England's string of imperial successes in Africa and Asia, which gave London control over a quarter of the globe and over a fifth of its people, sparked a wave of romantic enthusiasm for the Empire. This was particularly true in Canada, where economic stagnation, French–English tension, and the lure of easy American wealth caused some to doubt the young country's capacity to survive on its own. By the mid-1880s, as the Canadian Pacific Railway wove its final few miles through the Rocky Mountains to the edge of the Pacific, several influential Canadians began to envision the new railway as an integral part of a network that would unite Britain with its Asian empire. Throughout the decade, as Canada settled its western provinces and looked outward across the Pacific, popular support for an "All-Red Route" that would link Canada by cable and steamship to Australia grew steadily.
The romance of empire made a much smaller impression on the Canadian government. Nevertheless, it was soon forced to consider its relations with the Australian colonies. A slump in world trade, unrelenting pressure from Vancouver logging interests, and the persistent arguments advanced by Sir Sandford Fleming, a leading advocate of the Pacific cable, prompted it to accord the colonies a new importance. In May 1893, cabinet agreed to give an Australian, James Huddart, a £25,000 subsidy to operate a regular steamship service between Canada and New South Wales. Shortly after, Canada's first minister of trade and commerce, Mackenzie Bowell, agreed to lead a delegation to Australia to seek new markets for Canadian exports. He was not optimistic. "I do not," he wrote on the eve of his departure, "anticipate any great immediate results from our visit to Australia. The parties with whom we have been estranged so long can scarcely be brought into a close relationship at a moment's notice." Bowell was surprised then upon receiving a warm reception in Australia, and upon his return in the winter of 1893 reached two decisions designed to enhance Canada's relations with Britain's Pacific colonies; first, it agreed to convene a colonial conference in the summer of 1894; and second, it resolved to send John Short Larke to Australia as Canada's first trade commissioner.
Canada held the 1894 Colonial Conference in Ottawa, drawing representatives from the six Australian colonies, New Zealand, the South African colonies and Britain. Frustration in Ottawa arose though, when the Canadian proposal to strengthen imperial trade relations through a system of preferential British tariffs was effectively defeated by the opposition of two of Australia's largest colonies, New South Wales and Queensland, who were suspicious the Canadian initiative seemed designed to undermine Australia's protective tariffs. The visit of John Short Larke also did not go as planned, as he was met with a protectionist press, warning "[t]he measure of [Larke's] continuous success will also be the measure of our suicidal folly." Only the colony of New South Wales heeded the plead of Larke to help Ottawa subsidize Huddart's struggling steamship line. The Eastern Extension Company, which operated a telegraph service linking Australia to Egypt and thence to Europe, promoted widespread opposition to the whole idea of a Pacific Cable. The only sign of Australian interest in trade with Canada disappeared abruptly when exploratory talks between Larke and the premier of Victoria were suspended pending Federation of Australia.
Still, from the Canadian perspective, there seemed every reason to persevere. Despite initial financial reverses, the Canadian-Australian Steamship Line managed to establish a regular shipping service. Bilateral trade, though still minuscule, slowly increased as a result. Canadian exports to Australia—principally timber, canned salmon and manufactured farm implements—tripled in value between 1892 and 1900. Moreover, Canada enjoyed a tidy surplus: in 1900, it exported over $1.6 million worth of goods to Australia in exchange for imports worth only $660,000. Facilitated by regular steamship and cable connections, commerce between the two British dominions seemed certain to expand following the federation of the Australian colonies in January 1901. Canadian exporters encouraged Canada's Liberal prime minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, to take advantage of these developments, which he did by appointing a second trade commissioner to Australia in 1903.
The new trade commissioner, D.H. Ross, made little progress with the Australians. Most of Australia's exports to Canada were agricultural and so were already admitted free of duty; it had little need for the kind of broad reciprocal trade deal desired by the Laurier government. Instead, Australia suggested that the two countries negotiate an agreement that covered a very limited number of items. Protectionist sentiment, whose influence on Australian policy was magnified by a series of unstable minority governments, further complicated negotiations. These dragged on inconclusively for much of the decade, slowly straining Canada's patience. When Australia failed to respond promptly to a 1909 offer to conclude a treaty on the narrow basis it favoured, Ross erupted with exasperation:
"From several successive Ministers, I have heard [such] strong expressions of sympathy towards the desires of the Canadian Government in regard to preferential trade that I am almost inclined to think that such sentiments are nothing more than empty platitudes."
Laurier shared his trade commissioner's indignation and, as trade relations with the United States began to show evidence of a new vigour, he became less interested in concluding a trade agreement with Australia. Few Australians were probably surprised by Laurier's change of heart; many were already convinced that "within a few years Canada [would] either be an independent republic or an integral part of the United States." Indeed, with their broad Yankee accents and populist attitudes, Canadians seemed more American than British. Canada's efforts to reconcile these two influences on its national life increasingly led to friction with Australia over the nature of relations within the Empire. The imperial outlook that fostered Canada's interest in Australia also spawned a number of proposals for some form of imperial federation. Advocates of such schemes pointed out that federation would allow the dominions an opportunity to reconcile their interests with imperial foreign and defence policy. In exchange, they would assume a small share of the financial burden associated with defending the empire. In Australia, particularly after the South African War, this imperialist vision was embraced with considerable sympathy. Isolated by the vast Pacific Ocean, where German, French and Japanese imperialism seemed to roam unchecked, imperial federation offered Australia an opportunity to ensure that its interests were kept front and centre when British decision-makers tinkered with the disposition of the empire's naval resources. Canadians, on the other hand, were disillusioned by the Boer War and were increasingly alarmed by the notion of imperial federation. The country's significant French-Canadian minority, profoundly North American in outlook and sceptical of Britain's imperial mission, viewed the imperial connection as a trap whose only purpose was to force the self-governing dominions to assume greater responsibility for imperial defence.
By common consent, the prime ministers of Britain's self-governing Dominions skirted this contentious issue at the 1902 Colonial Conference. The question, however, could not be avoided indefinitely. Frustrated by his repeated inability to persuade Britain to eject France from its possessions in the New Hebrides, the Australian prime minister, Alfred Deakin, arrived in London for the 1907 Colonial Conference determined to change the very basis on which the empire was organized. He proposed that the conference create an Imperial Council that would assume responsibility for the general shape of imperial defence and foreign policy. A secretariat would carry out agreed policy and facilitate communications between meetings. Laurier was unconvinced. Aware that closer imperial relations would inflame French Canadian opinion, Laurier charged the Australian with endangering dominion self-government. The debate raged for days, but Laurier, whom Deakin later denounced for his "fifth-rate part in the Conference", defiantly stood his ground. For the moment, this fundamental difference over how the empire might be organized precluded close relations. Even the election in 1911 of a Conservative and imperially minded prime minister, Sir Robert Borden, had little immediate impact on Canada's wary approach to imperial issues. However, the swirling passions that accompanied the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 swept away many Canadian doubts about the value of the Empire. The country plunged into battle alongside Australia and the other overseas dominions. The war revived the debate over imperial organization. This time, Canada and Australia were firmly united in pursuit of identical goals.