Mark Berman | Sixty years and counting: Why Canada and Jamaica still choose each other

Every July, Canadians pause to ask a quiet question – not the grand patriotic kind, but the honest kind. How are we doing? Not just as a country, but as a people, as a partner, as a presence in the world.

I have been asking that question a lot lately. From Kingston – where I have had the privilege of serving as Canada’s high commissioner for the past 22 months. What I have found, in this corner of the Caribbean, is that the answer is more compelling than I expected.

Canada and Jamaica are both, in their own ways, reinventing themselves right now. And the relationship between us – 60 deep, people-to-people at its core – turns out to be exactly the kind of anchor both countries need.

Canada is navigating one of the most significant shifts in its modern history. The assumptions that governed our international engagement for decades – that stable alliances were permanent, that geography guaranteed prosperity, that the rules-based order would hold without tending – are being tested. Canada’s response has been to adapt without drifting: to pursue our economic and security interests with greater discipline and focus, while remaining anchored in the democratic values that define who we are.

Prime Minister Carney has been direct about this. Canada has what the world needs – critical minerals, clean energy, a highly educated workforce, and 15 active trade agreements, with three more under negotiation. Our goal is to double non-US exports within the decade. Our focus is on building durable partnerships with trusted allies, old and new. Our international assistance is being recalibrated to connect development outcomes with mutual economic opportunity, while maintaining Canada’s commitments to poverty reduction, gender equality, and humanitarian response.

Canada is engaging more deliberately.

Jamaica is doing something similar – and doing it the hard way.

Hurricane Melissa tested this country. Communities lost homes, schools, livelihoods. Western Jamaica bore the brunt. And yet the response was one of the most coherent and determined recoveries I have witnessed anywhere.

Jamaica is rebuilding smarter. The Government’s push to strengthen climate-resilient infrastructure, to deepen the diaspora’s role in national recovery, to modernise economic frameworks and attract investment – these are the moves of a country that refuses to be defined by a storm.

Canada showed up for that recovery – and the numbers tell the story.

Canada provided over J$1.4 billion – more than CAD$13 million – in humanitarian and short-term development assistance following Hurricane Melissa: emergency food, relief supplies, health services, water and sanitation support, and recovery and resilience programming. Canada matched donations to the Canadian Red Cross Hurricane Melissa Appeal up to CAD$1.5 million across the region. Through the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives, nine community-based organisations received CAD$170,000 to address the immediate and longer-term needs of affected communities – including through education recovery programmes that put nearly 3,800 primary school students back in classrooms with the materials they needed.

Two health facilities damaged by Hurricane Melissa are now being retrofitted into climate-resilient smart hospitals – a Canadian-supported initiative that will benefit approximately 250,000 people. Our sustainable agriculture project is working with over 2,000 small farmers, many of them women, to rebuild and adopt climate-smart practices. And the Women’s Voice and Leadership programme is supporting women’s organisations and gender-based violence response across the country.

Canada and Jamaica’s partnership also extends into security and defence, where cooperation is practical and deeply rooted – from Jamaica’s participation in Canada’s Military Training and Cooperation Program since 1965, to joint initiatives like the recent Regional Symposium on Women, Peace and Security. When Hurricane Melissa struck, Canada’s Operational Support Hub in Kingston helped coordinate international assistance, underscoring a simple reality: in a region where challenges cross borders, our security is shared – and so is our response.

The economic partnership runs deeper. Canadian companies have long been part of Jamaica’s growth story – in banking, energy, infrastructure, and tourism. Two-way trade has grown steadily, with Jamaica exporting rum, agricultural products, and bauxite derivatives, while Canadian exports support Jamaica’s construction, finance, and technology sectors. As Canada actively courts new trade partners to diversify its economic relationships, Jamaica’s strategic location, skilled workforce, and stable investment environment make it a compelling partner for the decade ahead.

But the truest measure of this relationship is in people. At more than 300,000, Canada’s Jamaican diaspora is one of the largest, most economically dynamic, and most civically engaged in the world. That is bilateral relationship.

In any given week, Jamaica is one of the top sources of temporary resident visa applications to Canada. Hundreds of thousands of Canadian tourists visit Jamaica annually, making Canada one of the island’s most consistent tourism markets. This year, the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Programme – which began in 1966 with 264 Jamaican workers arriving in Canada to help bring in the harvest – turns 60. Today, more than 9,000 Jamaicans make that journey every year. Some have been returning to the same Canadian farms for decades. Friendships have spanned generations. It is one of the most successful bilateral labour mobility programmes in the world, and it started right here.

What strikes me, after 22 months of travelling this country — from Westmoreland to Portland, from St Elizabeth to St Thomas — is how much Canada and Jamaica share beneath the surface differences. A commitment to democracy that is practised. A belief in multilateralism, in the rules-based order, in the idea that smaller countries have a right to a voice at the table. A spirit of resilience that refuses to be defeated by hardship.