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Prime Minister Mark Carney delivers a speech during the Canada-UAE Investment Summit in Abu Dhabi. Mr. Carney called the United Arab Emirates’ pledge to invest billions in Canada a ‘vote of confidence in our economy.’Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Mark Carney wrapped up a two-day charm offensive in the United Arab Emirates by promising a sharp increase in investment from the region into Canada and follow-up visits from Canadian businesses and pension funds next year to build on the relationship.
Mr. Carney said investors in Canada and the United Arab Emirates are putting the finishing touches on an agreement exceeding $1-billion to expand the processing of critical minerals in this country.
He said more details will be provided soon and held up the nascent deal as a benefit of his trade mission to the Gulf region, before moving on to the Group of 20 summit in South Africa.
Speaking Friday to a business audience in Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the UAE, the Prime Minister said the Emirates has also pledged to invest $70-billion in Canada. He called it a “powerful vote of confidence in our economy” and a major step forward in new strategic partnership.
Prime Minister Mark Carney concluded a trip to the United Arab Emirates saying Canada had signed both a financial investment promotion and protection agreement and launched a process to start free trade talks. His trip comes as Carney pushes to expand Canada’s trade away from the United States.
The Canadian Press
A senior official said the $70-billion investment pledge represents investments to be made over a roughly one-year period. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the official because they are not authorized to speak publicly.
With its trillions of dollars in investment capital, the Gulf is one of several priority regions for Canada, along with Europe and Asia, as it seeks to diversify trade away from the increasingly unreliable U.S. under President Donald Trump. That has made attracting foreign investment in energy, infrastructure, artificial intelligence and resources a high priority.
The Prime Minister’s trip was also a concerted effort to reframe Canada as a destination for investment in its own right, and not simply as part of the North American economy dominated by the United States. The bilateral meetings Mr. Carney held in the Emirates, where he had already forged high-level relationships as a central banker and investor, were choreographed to set the stage for a new level of engagement in the region, with Canadian business leaders and investors in tow.
Mr. Carney said the critical-minerals deal would boost the long-term supply of minerals essential to energy technologies and advanced manufacturing, and reflects a deepening investment partnership between Canada and the United Arab Emirates.
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Mr. Carney has set a goal of doubling non-U.S. exports in a decade, which means expanding annual sales overseas by $300-billion. And he has said that Canada will draw in $500-billion of new private-sector investment over five years.
A number of Canadian companies joined the trip, such as AI startup Cohere Inc., software services companies BlackBerry Ltd. and Open Text Corp., aviation technology provider CAE Inc., construction giant EllisDon Corp. and Air Canada. Canadian investment bankers and lawyers were also on site, with representatives from TD Securities, as well as investors such as asset manager Power Sustainable and venture capital firm Inovia.
Mr. Carney said Canada will support a delegation of Canadian pension funds that collectively manage more than $2-trillion of capital to visit the UAE next year, in an effort to forge deeper ties and hunt for new investment opportunities.
And in January, International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu will lead a Canadian business delegation to the UAE with companies from the energy, artificial intelligence, infrastructure and agriculture sectors.
The priorities for the meetings held this week, both formally and on the sidelines of the gatherings, were shaped by the Canada-UAE Business Council, which is co-chaired by former Quebec premier Jean Charest and Musabbeh Al Kaabi, chief executive officer of upstream at state-owned oil company ADNOC.
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Speaking in Abu Dhabi, Mr. Carney talked up shared values between the UAE and Canada, including both countries’ support for Palestinian aid.
And he highlighted his government’s support for major new infrastructure and resource projects in Canada including ports, mines, energy transportation corridors and critical-minerals extraction.
“At our core, we are both trading nations: hubs for merchant traders for generations, and home to builders who challenge the scale of ambition,” the Prime Minister told the Canada-UAE Investment Business Summit, hosted by the Canada-UAE Business Council.
“We are both energy superpowers, who can lead in all aspects of the energy transition,” Mr. Carney said. “We can both lead the AI revolution through infrastructure, applications and diffusion.”
Earlier this week, Mr. Carney pitched Canada to heavyweight investors in the UAE and launched negotiations on a free-trade agreement.
