Carney’s values-free foreign policy is on display in the UAE

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The choice of the United Arab Emirates as host of the 2023 United Nations climate summit was, to say the least, controversial. As an autocratic petrostate with dubious environmental and human-rights records, critics charged that the UAE would use the COP28 summit as a public-relations exercise to burnish the country’s oil-drenched image.

They were not wrong. The president of COP28, UAE Industry Minister Sultan Al Jaber, is also the chief executive of the country’s state-owned oil giant, ADNOC, with ambitious plans to boost crude production both domestically and abroad. At COP28, the UAE and other Persian Gulf oil-producing states led the pushback against calls for a pledge to “phase out” fossil fuels. In the end, participating countries simply agreed to “transition away” from them.

Still, from a public-relations perspective, COP28 provided the UAE with a priceless global platform to showcase its massive wealth and growing geopolitical influence. And many of the world’s leading renewable energy investors were only too willing to play along.

Doug Saunders: Only the UAE can end the atrocities in Sudan – and the least Carney can do is demand it

Among them was Mark Carney, then both a UN climate envoy and head of transition investing and vice-chair at Brookfield Asset Management. Mr. Carney also has a strong working relationship with Mr. Al Jaber. Mr. Carney secured a deal that tapped Brookfield to manage billions of dollars from the UAE’s climate investment fund, ALTÉRRA, which Mr. Al Jaber also happened to chair.

The UAE’s leader, President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, was so appreciative of Mr. Carney’s role in making COP28 such a “success” that he awarded him the First-Class Order of Zayed II, the country’s highest civil decoration.

The only thing surprising about Mr. Carney’s current visit to the UAE, where he is courting Emirati political and business leaders to invest in Canada, is that it took him a full eight months into his tenure as Prime Minister to get there.

As a former global financial executive and ex-governor of two central banks, Mr. Carney knows where the money is.

The Canada-UAE Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement that Mr. Carney and Sheikh Zayed signed on Thursday aims to “attract capital to nation-building projects and help create high-paying careers,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a readout of the meeting between the two leaders. The investment-protection deal is a prelude to a trade agreement that would “facilitate billions of dollars of UAE investment into … Canadian ports, mines, LNG, data centres and critical minerals.”

At what price?

Opinion: Canada will need to consider growing its relations with non-democratic Gulf States

Since becoming Prime Minister, Mr. Carney has mercifully spared Canadians and the world the sanctimony of his predecessor’s foreign-policy pronouncements. But that does not mean Canadians should be thrilled with their new leader’s values-free approach either.

Mr. Carney appears equally eager to cozy up to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He invited MBS, as he is known, to attend this year’s Group of Seven summit in Alberta. The Crown Prince declined. But the invitation alone confirmed – if there was still any doubt left – MBS’s rehabilitation after his brief pariah status in the wake of the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. A 2021 U.S. intelligence report concluded that MBS directly approved the operation to “capture or kill” Mr. Khashoggi.

The Crown Prince’s visit this week to the White House – where U.S. President Donald Trump shamelessly fawned over him and dismissed his alleged role in the journalist’s murder – took the concept of values-free foreign policy to a disturbing new level. Mr. Carney must not go that far.

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Both Canada and the United States have good reasons for wanting to buttress relations with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. They are both unfathomably rich and indispensable partners in stabilizing the Middle East. But Mr. Carney, at least, must balance his enthusiasm for investment dollars from the UAE and Saudi Arabia with firm calls for reforms.

Canada must defend basic human rights wherever they are denied.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia are among the worst offenders. The UAE ranked 119th out of 167 countries on The Economist’s 2024 Democracy Index. It scored zero out of 10 points for “electoral process and pluralism” and 2.65 points on “civil liberties.” The country is widely reported to be the main supplier of weapons to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, which is accused of committing widespread atrocities in that country’s civil war.

Saudi Arabia was even further down the list, in 148th place. The kingdom also scored zero on electoral process (no national officials are elected) and a mere 1.47 points on civil liberties.

At just 40, MBS is seen by many foreign-policy experts as capable of learning from his mistakes and keen to modernize his country. But he has shown no sign of being willing to democratize it. Quite the opposite. The same goes for Sheikh al Zayed and the UAE’s other leaders.

Canada’s Prime Minister must never ignore that.