Canada’s courtship of the Persian Gulf is about to face its first major test, as Prime Minister Mark Carney prepares to host investors from the region at the Canada Investment Summit in Toronto on Sept. 14 and 15.
The summit follows a rapid diplomatic push that culminated in the Canada-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, signed July 24 after negotiations that both countries’ trade officials described as their fastest ever. According to the Globe and Mail, Carney set negotiators a target of 47 days from the start of talks to a finished deal, a timeline motivated in part by a desire to move faster than a trade agreement the UAE had struck with India. Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu and the UAE’s Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi finalized the agreement in Toronto.
While the UAE deal itself was not among the largest or most complex trade agreements for either country, the speed of the negotiation was described as a deliberate signal of Canada’s broader intentions toward the Gulf region.
The UAE has already committed to investing US$50-billion in Canada. Among the deals under discussion, XRG — the foreign-investment arm of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company — has reportedly been examining a potential investment in the second phase of LNG Canada, the liquefied natural gas export terminal in Kitimat, B.C.
Several major Gulf sovereign wealth funds are expected to attend the Toronto summit, including the UAE’s US$1.2-trillion Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, along with the Investment Corporation of Dubai, ADQ and Mubadala Investment Co., each of which manages hundreds of billions of dollars in assets.
Despite the scale of these funds, the flow of capital into Canada so far has been modest by comparison. Diego López, managing director of fund-tracker Global SWF, said Gulf sovereign wealth funds collectively hold $5.6-trillion in assets, but that only $6.2-billion has flowed into Canadian deals over the past five years — a figure he characterized as still very small relative to the size of the Canadian economy and its potential.
The Globe and Mail reports that Carney’s government has treated the Gulf as a top foreign-policy priority second only to Europe, as part of a broader strategy to diversify Canada’s trade relationships away from dependence on the United States amid trade tensions with President Donald Trump’s administration. According to government and business sources not authorized to speak publicly, this effort has unfolded over roughly 18 months, involving visits by Carney to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar — a region that had not hosted a Canadian prime minister in decades — along with repeated visits by cabinet ministers and a senior prime ministerial aide.
Arif Lalani, a former Canadian ambassador to the UAE and now a senior adviser with StrategyCorp, said Canada’s renewed focus on the Gulf was overdue, noting that other Western allies have prioritized the region for decades.
Carney’s personal history in Gulf financial circles predates his time in office. He had previously met Saudi Arabia’s finance minister and central bank governor while serving as governor of the Bank of England in 2015, and attended the COP28 climate conference in Dubai in 2023 as the United Nations’ envoy for climate action and finance. He also worked on deals involving Gulf sovereign wealth funds during his time as vice-chair and later chair of Brookfield Asset Management.
Since taking office, Carney has maintained direct contact with Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of ADNOC and chairman of XRG and Masdar, the UAE’s state renewable-energy company. The two had previously worked together when Al Jaber chaired COP28, where the UAE announced a US$1-billion commitment from its Alterra energy-transition fund to Brookfield’s Catalytic Transition Fund.
According to a government source, Carney’s administration developed an internal national-security strategy shortly after taking power aimed at strengthening Canada’s strategic autonomy, built around diversifying trade, bolstering the domestic economy and attracting foreign investment. That strategy reportedly placed the Gulf region just behind Europe in terms of priority, viewing it not only as a source of capital but as a geopolitical hub for international business, trade and technology.
The approach has also reflected a shift in tone from previous Canadian diplomacy in the region. In 2018, a public call from then-foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland for Saudi Arabia to release detained women’s rights activists led to a five-year diplomatic chill between the two countries. In July, following a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, Carney said publicly that lecturing countries was not part of his approach — signaling a more pragmatic diplomatic strategy that separates disagreements from economic interests.
The upcoming Toronto summit will offer the clearest indication yet of whether Canada’s sustained diplomatic investment in the Gulf translates into a substantial increase in capital flowing into Canadian infrastructure, resources and industry.
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