Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon has confirmed thatrelationship with Vietnam are working well and said he was lookingforward to enhancing relations and cooperation with the Southeast Asiancountry.

Bilateral relations will become stronger in the coming years, he added.

Whentalking to a Vietnam News Agency reporter on the sidelines of the ASEANmeetings in Hanoi on July 23, Cannon said that the relationshipthe two countries enjoy has many advantages. Currently, Canada isincreasing its tr ade, commercial relations and political presence inSoutheast Asia .

He said that there are 250,000Vietnamese Canadians out of the one million immigrants from SoutheastAsian nations who now live in Canada .

The FM praisedVietnam ’s role as ASEAN chair and said that he is pleased with theway Vietnam has facilitated the association’s activities.

Healso confirmed Vietnam ’s contributions as a member of ASEAN, to speedup the process that helped Canada to become a partner to the treatyof amity and cooperation (TAC).

Cannon is leading theCanadian delegation at the ASEAN-Canada Foreign Ministerial Meeting andthe ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).

At the ASEAN-CanadaMinisterial Meeting, both parties ratified an action plan to carry out adeclaration to strengthen the ASEAN-Canada partnership during the2011-2015 period and agreed to put together an ASEAN-Canada Trade andInvestment Framework Agreement to boost trade and investment.

Adocument recognising Canada ’s accession to the TAC was signed inHanoi on July 23, marking an important development in ASEAN-Canadadialogue as well as Canada ’s commitment to regional peace, stabilityand cooperation./.