Investment summit will test Carney’s Persian Gulf trade strategy

There was a mood to get a deal in record time. Canada and the United Arab Emirates agreed in November, 2025, to strike a trade agreement, and as they prepared to open negotiations, the Emirati President, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, mentioned his country had worked out a deal with India in record time. The Canadians told the Emir they’d beat it.

Prime Minister Mark Carney gave trade negotiators a deadline: from the start of negotiations to the finish line in 47 days. Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu hosted his Emirati counterpart, Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, in Toronto during the last days of the talks. When they signed the deal on July 24, they both boasted the negotiation was their fastest ever.

The timeline wasn’t really crucial. The Canada-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement was not the biggest or most complicated deal for either country. The speed was a statement of intent.

The UAE, and the wider Persian Gulf region, is now a major Canadian foreign-policy priority.

There will soon be a show-me-the-money test. Gulf investors will be among the biggest players at the Canada Investment Summit taking place in Toronto on Sept. 14 and 15, where Mr. Carney will lead a pitch to draw massive sums into Canadian infrastructure, resources and industry.

Already, the UAE has committed to investing US$50-billion in Canada. XRG, the foreign-investment arm of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, has been kicking the tires on an investment in LNG Canada Phase 2, the expansion of the liquid-natural gas export facility in Kitimat, B.C. The UAE’s US$1.2-trillion Abu Dhabi Investment Authority will be at the summit, as will Investment Corporation of Dubai, ADQ and Mubadala Investment Co. – each with hundreds of billions in holdings.

Everything we know about Carney’s investment summit

Together, the Gulf’s sovereign wealth funds hold $5.6-trillion in assets, according to Diego López, managing director of fund-tracker Global SWF. But the flow of deals to Canada, $6.2-billion over five years, is “still very insignificant when it comes to the size of the Canadian economy and potential,” he said.

In Toronto, executives of those funds will look for returns. But the deal-making of Gulf funds is also linked to their nations’ economic strategies. And Mr. Carney hopes to link them to Canada’s.

Europe has been Mr. Carney’s high-profile priority in his campaign to diversify trade and relationships – an effort to reduce dependence on the United States sparked by the domineering trade tactics of President Donald Trump.

But the Gulf has ranked a close second, as Mr. Carney’s government wooed the region with a quiet intensity. The message is that Canada wants investment, but also broad relationships in a region it has long treated as a troubled money pot.

Prospectus for Carney’s summit highlights more than 160 projects open for investment

“I think it’s long overdue that the Canadian government gives the Gulf region this level of priority,” said Arif Lalani, a former Canadian ambassador to the UAE and now a senior adviser with government relations firm StrategyCorp. “All of our European and other allies have made the Gulf a priority for decades.”

The catch-up has been an 18-month pursuit, according to government and business sources from Canada and Gulf countries whom The Globe and Mail is not identifying because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

It wasn’t just that Mr. Carney made trips to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, a triangle of wealth that hadn’t hosted a Canadian prime minister in decades. Cabinet ministers went, too. There were diligent, repeated visits by a senior prime ministerial aide – and Mr. Carney’s own personal relationships.

Before he took office, Mr. Carney was already well-known in circles of finance and power in the Gulf. He’d visited often, including meeting the Saudi finance minister and central bank governor as governor of the Bank of England in 2015, and attending the COP28 climate conference in Dubai as the UN’s envoy for climate action and finance in 2023. And he did deals with Gulf sovereign wealth funds as vice-chair, then chair, of Brookfield Asset Management.

In office, Mr. Carney texted directly with Sultan Al Jaber, the chief executive officer of ADNOC and chairman of XRG and Masdar, the UAE’s state renewable-energy company, and also the UAE’s Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology. The two had worked together unofficially when Dr. Al Jaber chaired COP28 – where the UAE launched an energy-transition fund, Alterra, that committed US$1-billion in Brookfield Asset Management’s Catalytic Transition Fund.

Canada and UAE sign free trade deal, signal investment deals in energy sector ‘very soon’

Soon after taking power, Mr. Carney and his advisers put together an internal national-security strategy for achieving greater strategic autonomy, according to a government source, revolving around now-familiar themes: diversifying trade, strengthening the domestic economy and attracting investment. Relationships outside of North America were reordered, with the Gulf a priority second only to Europe.

Beyond money, the rethink saw the Gulf as a “hinge region” in geopolitics, a hub for international business, trade, travel and, increasingly, technology – as well as key diplomatic players.

The courtship also epitomized Mr. Carney’s harder-headed foreign policy approach, where disagreements are compartmentalized from interests and dealt with behind closed doors.

In 2018, then-foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland’s call for Saudi Arabia to release women’s rights activists sparked a five-year chill. In July, after meeting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, Mr. Carney insisted that “lecturing countries from afar is an ineffective strategy.”

Some critics accused Mr. Carney of silencing values for economic gain, but the Prime Minister nonetheless zealously pursued Gulf partners. The courting of the UAE is a prime example.

Carney focuses on attracting investment and economic growth as U.S. conflict deepens

Weeks after winning the 2025 election, Mr. Carney invited the Emir to attend the G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alta., that June, eliciting a phone call of regrets from Sheikh Mohamed. But the UAE’s foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, did come to Canada that June, along with four other Emirati ministers who met their Canadian counterparts and delivered Mr. Carney an invitation to Abu Dhabi.

In the meantime, Mr. Carney’s government kickstarted talks on a Foreign Investment Protection Agreement with the UAE that had languished, with stops and starts, since 2014 – and signed the deal in July.

Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon visited. Mr. Sidhu and Defence Minister David McGuinty followed.

The Prime Minister’s then-foreign policy adviser and now principal secretary, Scott Gilmore, acted as Mr. Carney’s envoy, shuttling regularly to the Gulf. He was photographed by the state media of Gulf countries meeting senior figures in Doha in August, October and December, 2025; in the UAE in October, 2025, and April, 2026; and in Oman in April. In Gulf countries, where relationships can matter more than titles, he had access to high-level government figures.

The agreements that Mr. Carney and his ministers signed with Gulf nations went beyond investment. Canada posted a defence attaché to Qatar and signed a public safety co-operation agreement. Qatari paramilitary forces brought armoured vehicles to Vancouver before a Qatar-Canada World Cup game ahead of training with the RCMP. In Saudi Arabia, there was a memorandum of understanding on AI collaboration and a promise to lead a delegation of Canada pension funds to explore investing there. It was intended to send a message that Canada wanted a broad, multi-faceted relationship.

Canada ranks highly on trust among global investors but must prove it can deliver the projects, survey says

“The Saudis, in particular, don’t want to be seen as an ATM machine,” said Jeffrey Steiner, the chair of the Canada-Saudi Arabia Business Council.

Among some, there was a welcoming response to Mr. Carney’s pitch that Canada wanted to diversify economically and find new partners in its quest for strategic autonomy – a concept well-understood in the Gulf.

Qatar’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, discussed that as a historical lesson his country had learned. During a Goldman Sachs forum in January, he noted the Gulf’s pearl-diving economy crashed around 1930 with the advent of cultured pearls, before oil and gas became key to its economy. The Qatar Investment Authority is insurance against another collapse, he said, but also a tool to create global companies so that Qatar’s economy is not “capped” by the country’s small size. “Different crises that we have been through have taught us how to become resilient,” he said.

Gulf nations have pursued different investment agendas abroad. The UAE’s state funds and enterprises, the Gulf’s early movers, already have investments in Canadian real estate and financial services, and a controlling stake in Calgary-based Nova Chemicals. DP World, a UAE-based logistics company that handles 10 per cent of the world’s cargo, operates facilities in five Canadian ports.

Saudi Arabia’s investment strategy, however, is aligned to the domestic economy and the country’s Vision 2030 blueprint, with goals that include developing the country’s mineral wealth, and establishing auto and aerospace industries. It is looking for two-way investment that develops Saudi expertise, especially in mining, Mr. Steiner said.

“Canada is number one in the Saudis’ mind when it comes to minerals,” he said.

The Saudis have already indirectly invested in Canadian mining in a deal that highlights their national investment strategy: Its Manara Minerals Investment Company paid US$2.5-billion to Brazil’s Vale S.A. for a 10-per-cent stake in subsidiary Vale Base Metals, which produces nickel, copper and cobalt key to auto and aerospace manufacturing at operations in Sudbury, Voisey’s Bay, Nfld., and Thompson, Man.

Now, there is an effort to build a path for direct two-way investment, though it won’t be completed in two days in Toronto. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne will lead a delegation of Canada’s “Maple 8″ pension funds to Saudi Arabia in November.

There is no doubt about the short-term goal of Mr. Carney’s Gulf initiative, and one day soon, warmer relationships will be judged in the cold terms of investment dollars.