A New Chapter in an Old Friendship

The following is a transcript of the Hon. Pierre Poilievre's remarks from March 4, 2026. These remarks have been edited for clarity. Check against delivery.

Berlin, Germany - It's an honour to be in Berlin, a city that once stood at the fault line of worldwide struggle between freedom and tyranny. For almost three decades, a wall cut through this city. It was not just a wall of concrete and wire; it was the dividing line between two systems. One system: free nations, rule of law, open markets, accountable government. And the other: command economies, secret police, socialism and state power.

In 1963, standing only a few streets from where we are now, US President John F. Kennedy captured the meaning of the divide, saying, "Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in."

The Berlin Wall fell because freedom proves stronger than fear. Free societies outbuilt, outworked and out hustled closed ones. Alliances held, but history did not end with the Cold War. The line did not vanish; it moved.

Today, we face a new divide: not of concrete walls, but of power, pressure and coercion. Russia invades its neighbours and redraws the borders. China uses trade, minerals, technology and finances - tools of state power. The regimes differ, but the aim is the same: to bend the will of free nations.

Now, some say it is unsophisticated to speak in such clear terms. That the world is filled with too much complexity for simple distinctions. But Konrad Adenauer understood something vital because he knew that a city like this had seen greatness, collapse and division. In 1956, he warned that civilizations are all too perishable unless we defend them and adapt to new conditions.

That is why I'm here to share with our German friends a vision to fuel freedom, rearm and lock arms to secure our allies and ourselves. Doing so will make us stronger at home and give us unbreakable leverage abroad.

Today, that means rebuilding and reinforcing Western alliances, especially NATO and the wider circle of democratic law-abiding nations, to bolster against the threats of China, Russia and others. It means military strength, it means economic strength, and it means something too often overlooked: energy strength.

The Cold War was fought with tanks, missiles and standing armies. Today, the struggle is for pipelines, ports, rare earths, shipping lanes, data cables and supply chains. Russia does not only threaten Europe with soldiers. It has long weaponized energy, as you know better than anyone on earth.

This is a result of a kind of complacency on both sides of the ocean. For years, cheap gas lulled Europe into a false sense of comfort. The price seemed low, the risk seemed distant until it wasn't. Russia invaded Ukraine, the bill came due.

China has drawn the same lesson. It dominates mining and refining of critical minerals. It builds ports abroad, lends through state banks and trades all of this leverage for political obedience. It does not separate commerce from strategy.

These regimes do not see trade as neutral, voluntary exchange. They see it as a tool for state power and realpolitik abroad.

Free nations trade to grow. State-controlled regimes trade to control. Totalitarians invest to gain dominance. This does not mean withdrawing from the world. It means trading more deeply with trusted partners and reducing exposure in order to build economic independence and leverage.

And that requires energy and resource production. It requires supply security. It requires that free nations can rely on one another for food, fuel, minerals, technology and defence equipment. No alliance can endure if its members deepen their reliance on hostile regimes for the things that keep the lights on and the factories going.

Energy is not a side issue; it is the foundation. No army moves without fuel. No industry runs without power. No home stays warm in winter without heat. When energy comes from the regimes that do not share our values, our choices narrow and our leverage fades.

If we want to defend freedom abroad, we must secure the means to sustain it at home. Power must be powered, freedom must be fuelled. That is true for Germany, for Canada and for every nation that intends to shape its own future rather than have it shaped by others.

That's why I want to talk about energy as leverage today. Europe has lived through a hard lesson. When Russia invaded Ukraine, decades of energy assumptions collapsed almost overnight. Governments across Europe had to secure supply quickly, and Germany moved with urgency. Urgency, I might add with great humility, that Canadians can learn from.

You built LNG terminals in record speed. Dr. Bernd was telling me the timeline earlier. On February 24th, 2022, the invasion happened, but it didn't stop Germans from acting. By May, you had issued a permit, and construction was underway for an LNG import terminal to source natural gas from Qatar and the United States. Contracts were signed, supply lines were drawn.

And within 194 days, your incredible engineers, architects and workers had completed the entire project. This is a magnificent achievement. I did share with the good doctor that in Canada, it took 14 years to provide a permit for an LNG liquefaction plant in British Columbia, by contrast. So we have a lot to learn from you on how to move quickly and get things done.

There is a serious need though for both of us to act more quickly because the story does not end there with your construction triumph because while you did sign, and I don't blame you for signing, a supply agreement with Qatar, a country that is located in a volatile region of the world, just the other day, the Qatari LNG plant was struck with a drone from Iran, limiting its export capability and driving up the price of natural gas by 25 per cent almost immediately.

That will hit industry and consumers here with higher prices. But there is an enormous opportunity because Canadian natural gas right now is trading at $1.25 per million metric British thermal units. In Europe, it's trading at $14.80.

To put it into perspective, we could increase our price in Canada by 400 per cent, and you would be paying half of what you're paying now. In other words, we could be making a lot more, and you could be paying a lot less if we could get our gas to your import terminals.

In 2022, Chancellor Scholz asked Canada's Prime Minister whether Canadian LNG could play a major role in replacing natural gas. The answer he received was that there was no strong business case. Three months later, Germany signed the deal with Qatar, and the rest is history.

We, as Canadians, have learned from that history. We, as Canadians, are determined not to make that mistake again. We, as Canadians, are going to be moving with record speed to permit liquefaction facilities to supply the world, and we have enormous advantages.

To put it into context, it takes 11 days to ship from Eastern Canada to Europe, 20 days from the US Gulf Coast, so we have half the shipping time. And what does it take to liquefy natural gas? Compression and cold weather. What is Canada's number one natural resource? Cold weather.

It is actually 25 per cent cheaper to liquefy gas in Canada than it is to liquefy it in Qatar or on the US coast because Mother Nature takes much of the heat out of that gas, so we don't have to supply electricity to do so. In other words, we can do it cheaper, cleaner and faster than our American friends, as long as we learn to get out of our own way.

Free nations should not have to rely on less stable suppliers when a trusted ally sits on abundant reserves. Canada can be your supplier; we will earn that role. Our resource base is even larger than our competitors'. Vast offshore gas fields off the coast of Newfoundland, which are automatic byproducts of existing oil production, could be put on compression and cooling vessels to liquefy and ship across the ocean.

Canada can supply energy produced under some of the highest environmental and labour standards in the world from a country backed up by the rule of law and a commitment to the Transatlantic Security Alliance.

But resources under the ground do not strengthen alliances. They must be developed, transported and exported. That means permitting pipelines, approving LNG plants and building the infrastructure that connects demand with supply. It means moving beyond memorandums of understanding toward real exports of real products.

For example, in 2022, we signed a hydrogen deal with Germany, and it was to deliver in 2025. Of course, not yet a single tablespoon of hydrogen has travelled in a ship for your use. My future government is going to take the words of Elvis Presley - "A little less conversation, a little more action please" - in getting the job done.

My government will use the constitutional and legal powers necessary to pre-permit right-of-ways for pipelines and LNG liquefaction terminals. We will override bureaucracies and other levels of government if needed to get projects approved and under construction. We will also move to six-month permitting times for major projects like LNG.

We will commit all of this in a binding agreement with willing European allies to guarantee you the energy you need from a friend you can trust. This will make us stronger at home and unbreakable abroad.

Aujourd'hui pour assurer la sécurité de nos ressources, voici ce que je propose : un accord d'approvisionnement pour le gaz naturel du Canada vers l'Allemagne. Pour y arriver, on va s'assurer que le Canada s'engage à accélérer les permis de construction pour permettre les pipelines et les usines de gaz naturel. Un accord d'une réserve stratégique pour les minéraux dont on a besoin pour fournir nos alliés en cas de guerre. Ça va nous permettre d'avoir de l'énergie et des ressources dont vous avez besoin de la part d'un allié envers lequel vous pouvez avoir confiance. Ça nous permettra aussi d'être maîtres chez nous et d'avoir plus de leviers ailleurs.

So what I am proposing to you, our German friends, today, are two things. First of all, a supply agreement for natural gas that will require our government rapidly approve liquefaction facilities and pipelines to supply you with a predictable, low-cost source of natural gas into the future.

Second, my future government plans to create a Strategic Mineral and Energy Reserve that will be available to our allies in the case of war or other crises. We would make this available to our German friends as part of an enhanced trade relationship.

These two steps would help secure your present energy needs and create contingencies for any minerals that you might require if, God forbid, we were jointly involved in a conflict against a shared enemy.

Canada is not a military superpower. We do not have the largest armies or command the largest fleets, but we do have something else: we are a resource powerhouse. Canada possesses some of the largest natural gas and oil reserves in the world. We have 10 of the 12 NATO defence minerals. We have the biggest supply of uranium and potash anywhere in the world.

In the 20th century, industrial strength determined military strength. In the 21st century, resource security determines both. These materials are not abstract commodities; they are the physical inputs of modern security.

Aluminum strengthens aircraft and armoured vehicles. Gallium powers semiconductors and radar systems. Germanium enables infrared imaging and night vision technology. Graphite is essential for batteries and other advanced materials. Tungsten hardens armour-piercing ammunition and medical imaging equipment. Cobalt strengthens the heat resistance of super alloys used in jet engines.

In war, you will need all of those things, and in war, we have all of these things. Natural gas heats homes and powers industry, uranium keeps electrical grids running without dependence on hostile states. And so it is important that we make these available to you as our allies.

Free nations should never discover in the middle of a crisis that the materials required for their own defence are exclusively in the possession of hostile forces. Nor should they awaken to learn that the refining and processing capacity sits in enemy jurisdictions during war. Stockpiling is not enough though, resources under the ground must be brought to the surface with clear rules and quick approvals.

That is why we must work together to be stronger in our respective homes and have more leverage abroad, so that we can anchor our freedom, not in words, but in watts, barrels, tons, cubic meters, in atoms and in molecules. Energy and resources are foundations, but they are not shields. Free nations must also be able to defend themselves. Canada must strengthen its military.

For too long, the West assumed that major war in Europe belonged to the past, that Russia's invasion would never happen. But we've learned our lesson again. Military spending alone is not the goal though. We must ensure that we develop capabilities with dollars. Procurement must be faster, more agile, focused on outcomes rather than process.

Modern warfare evolves quickly. Systems that did not exist a year ago are now being actively deployed in Ukraine. In fact, in Ukraine, their systems are changing on a weekly basis. They are purchasing things that do not even exist, and their engineers and their garage tinkerers are actually making things that were unimaginable only months earlier. That is why we need to be agile in how we purchase equipment and how we compete in order to produce the best.

For Canada, that also means reasserting Arctic sovereignty. The Arctic is not remote; it is strategic. It is a recurring activity where Russia has invested heavily in infrastructure, airfields and military bases. Canada must be capable of defending every square inch of its sea, skies and soil while carrying out our responsibilities to continental and transatlantic defence.

NATO remains the cornerstone of transatlantic security. Burden sharing, readiness and interoperability matter. An alliance is only credible if its members can act together and follow through on their word to deter aggression and fight aggression when it strikes.

Konrad Adenauer warned that civilizations are fragile. They endure only if we defend them and if we adapt to the modern conditions.

Our condition today is clear: Power has shifted form, supply chains have been altered, dependence has narrowed choices, while independence and sovereignty will strengthen. If we want a free world, we must fuel it and fight for it.

We must reinforce the Western Alliance, NATO and the wider circle of democratic law-abiding nations. We must strengthen our armed forces. We must strengthen our alliances, and we must ensure that the economic foundations of freedom are secure within the alliance itself.

For Canada, that means unblocking our resources, building the infrastructure and becoming stronger at home for an unbreakable leverage abroad.

Ça veut dire qu'il faut qu'on soit maîtres chez nous avec des leviers de négociation ailleurs.

For Germany, it means anchoring supply in stable democracies. Together, it means that we will defend the free world with energy and with arms alike.

Berlin once stood at the line between two worlds, but those divisions between freedom and tyranny are still there. Canada is on the side of freedom and friends. We will power our friends. We will fuel our freedom. We will re-arm and lock arms.

My friends, here in Germany, you need to know that Canada stands with you because we are stronger together in freedom and friendship.

Thank you very much.