Celebrations marking Italy\u2019s National Unity and Armed Forces Day took place yesterday at the Rideau Club in Ottawa.<\/p>\n
Guests of honour included Senator Peter Boehm, Chair of the Canadian Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade; Lieutenant-General Jamie Speiser-Blanchet, Commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force; Lieutenant General Luca Goretti, former Chief of Staff of the Italian Air Force and current President of Leonardo US Corporation; and the Honourable Marco Mendicino, former Canadian Minister of Public Safety and Minister of Immigration. The event also brought together numerous parliamentarians and representatives of government institutions, the Armed Forces, the diplomatic corps, and the Italian and Canadian defence sectors.<\/p>\n
In his opening remarks, Major General Davide Marzinotto, Defence Attach\u00e9, highlighted the strong ties of cooperation between the Italian and Canadian Armed Forces, from Latvia, where Italian troops are deployed under Canadian command to protect NATO\u2019s eastern flank, to the International Flight Training School (IFTS) in Decimomannu, where pilots from both air forces train together.<\/p>\n
In his address, the Ambassador of Italy to Canada, Alessandro Cattaneo, stressed the importance of strengthening defence capabilities and cooperation among NATO Allies as an investment in collective security, sovereignty, and the protection of democratic values.\u00a0Ambassador Cattaneo also emphasized the opportunities for further industrial cooperation in the defence sector, highlighting Italian excellence in aerospace, naval technologies, electronics, and cybersecurity. He recalled the success of the Italy\u2013Canada Business Forum, held in Toronto on October 29, which brought together over 300 business representatives from both countries, as well as ongoing cooperation involving Leonardo in military pilot training and Fincantieri in naval and underwater technologies. The Ambassador also recalled the recent visits to Canada of the Italian Navy vessels Amerigo Vespucci<\/em> and Alpino<\/em>.<\/p>\n The strong prospects for bilateral cooperation, rooted in shared values and a common worldview, were also emphasized by Senator Boehm and Lieutenant-General Speiser-Blanchet.<\/p>\n The participation of prominent figures from the political and industrial sectors, including General Luca Goretti and the Honourable Marco Mendicino, provided a further opportunity to highlight this strategic dimension of bilateral relations at a time of significant opportunities for cooperation.<\/p>\n A moment of silence was observed to honour the sacrifice of fallen service members, with particular remembrance of the victims of the recent tragic incidents affecting the Canadian Armed Forces, which lost four service members at the Wainwright military base in Alberta, and the Italian Armed Forces, which lost four service members in a helicopter accident during the EUFOR Althea mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Celebrations marking Italy\u2019s National Unity and Armed Forces Day took place yesterday at the Rideau Club in Ottawa. Guests of honour included Senator Peter Boehm, Chair of the Canadian Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade; Lieutenant-General Jamie Speiser-Blanchet, Commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force; Lieutenant General Luca Goretti, former Chief of […]","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambottawa.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambottawa.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambottawa.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ambottawa.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ambottawa.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ambottawa.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11845,"href":"https:\/\/ambottawa.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11842\/revisions\/11845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambottawa.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ambottawa.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}