The Guadalajara Reporter

Canadian consul in conversation

Francis Uy, the recently appointed Canadian Consul and Senior Trade Commissioner in Guadalajara, is looking forward to January 2014.  

That’s because this month sees Canada and Mexico commemorate two landmark anniversaries in their relationship.

On January 1, 2004, Canada entered into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and the United States, an entente that has helped trade between three nations to grow in leaps and bounds.  And a little over 60 years prior to this date, on January 29, 1944, Mexico and Canada formally initiated diplomatic relations.

“We’re hoping to have a lot of events to promote these two dates,” Uy told the Reporter in an interview last week.

Uy is the sixth of seven siblings who emigrated to Canada from the Philippines in 1980 at the age of 13.
With President Marcos ailing and the threat of civil war looming over the island nation, Uy’s family uprooted to Toronto, where his father had cousins.

“Of all the countries that were taking immigrants at the time, Canada was the most welcoming,” Uy says.
Settling in was relatively easy, he remembers, as English is spoken widely in the Philippines and he had just finished grade school and was able to enter high school from scratch.

Uy says an early turning point in his life was taking part in the Encounters with Canada program at the Terry Fox Canadian Youth Centre in Ottawa, when he visited the Senate for the first time.

“As a new immigrant, it helped me understand what Canada was all about.  It truly changed my life as from there I started getting involved with youth parliaments – regional, provincial, federal – which then helped prepare me for my current job representing Canadian interests around the world.”

The Encounters program is still active and more than 95,000 young people have participated thus far.   
“It is a fantastic initiative,” Uy says. “I was able to meet lots of young Canadians from all over the country and understand them better.”  

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