Ottawa, Ontario - 10 April 2014
The Government of Canada is committed to strengthening its defence relations with partners in the Americas, in support of its Strategy for Engagement in the Americas, a foreign policy priority since 2007. To this end, on April 10, 2014, Prime Minister Stephen Harper together with His Excellency Ollanta Humala Tasso, President of the Republic of Peru, announced that Peru's membership status within Canada’s Military Training and Cooperation Program (MTCP) has been upgraded to Category “A”, effective immediately.
As a Category “A” member country of the MTCP, Peru will gain access to the full spectrum of the program's training activities, including opportunities to participate in courses offered to senior officers at the CanadianStaffCollege in Toronto. More specifically, Peru will be offered one position on the National Security Programme at the CanadianForcesCollege, one position on the Junior Officer Training and Education Programme, and an increased number of positions on MTCP courses.
Canada-Peru defence relations have grown in recent years, as a result of cooperation through the MTCP, multilateral exercises such as the Multilateral Naval War Game, and defence fora such as the biennial Conference of Defence Ministers of the Americas, which Peru will host in 2014.
During Minister of Defence Pedro Cateriano Bellido’s visit to Ottawa in March 2013, a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding on Defence Cooperation was signed, which aims to guide and promote further cooperation in areas such as defence policy, research and development, defence procurement, peace and humanitarian operations, and military education and training.
The Department of National Defence’s MTCP coordinates and provides training to foreign militaries among developing non-NATO countries. It serves to promote defence diplomacy, advance Canada’s contribution to international peace and security, and expand and reinforce Canada’s bilateral defence relations.
Since the program’s inception in the 1960’s, more than 4,400 candidates from Latin America and the Caribbean have received training in language proficiency, communications, leadership, professional development and peace support. Since Peru's admission to the MTCP in 2005, 88 Peruvian officers have been trained under the auspices of the program. In 2014-2015, because of its upgrade to Category “A”, Peru will be offered 21 positions on MTCP courses in operations training, English language training and civil-military relations training.
