Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as he leaves the Royal Palace in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Thursday.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Mark Carney defended travelling to Saudi Arabia this week to cultivate deeper trade and investment ties – a pivot from his predecessor, who clashed with the desert kingdom over human rights and the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Mr. Carney is the first Canadian prime minister in 26 years to visit Saudi Arabia, where he met Thursday with the country’s Crown Prince and Prime Minister, Mohammed bin Salman. They established the Canada-Saudi Arabia Co-ordination Council, which seeks to deepen co-operation in sectors such as defence and trade.
Mr. Carney said he is seeking new investment and trade partners to help Canada become less reliant on the United States, this country’s top trading partner, and that he doesn’t need to agree with foreign countries to do business with them.
“Engagement is not endorsement, so engaging with the country doesn’t mean that we agree with everything that a country is doing,” Mr. Carney told reporters in Jeddah.
“Lecturing countries from afar is an ineffective strategy,” he said. “It’s satisfying, but it’s ineffective.”
Mr. Carney speaks with Prince Saud bin Mishaal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in Jeddah on Wednesday.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Canada announced that it is re-establishing the position of defence attaché in its Riyadh embassy and expects to sign a foreign investment protection and promotion agreement with the kingdom by the end of 2027. This bilateral investment treaty sets legally binding rules for how each country treats the other’s investors to provide them with more certainty before making capital investments in the other’s jurisdiction.
Mr. Carney said officials from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, will be attending his inaugural Canada Investment Summit in Toronto this September and that Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne will lead a delegation of Canadian pension funds to the kingdom in the coming months to find new investment opportunities.
Lloyd Axworthy, who served as foreign affairs minister between 1996 and 2000 during the Jean Chrétien Liberal government, said he is not comfortable with Mr. Carney’s “transactional” foreign policy.
“He keeps wanting to say he’s erasing the Trudeau legacy. Well, it’s not just Justin Trudeau’s legacy, he’s erasing a legacy that goes back a lot of years for a lot of Liberals,” he said. “I mean, I was a Liberal since I was 17 and finding what he’s doing to be quite disturbing.”
A major diplomatic rift opened between Canada and Saudi Arabia starting in 2018, when Riyadh expelled Canada’s ambassador after the Department of Global Affairs and Chrystia Freeland, who was minister of foreign affairs at the time, publicly called for the immediate release of several imprisoned political activists in the kingdom. Riyadh also recalled its envoy, decrying what it said was “blatant interference” in its internal affairs, and it froze new trade and investment with Canada.
The rupture between Ottawa and Riyadh deepened over the murder of Mr. Khashoggi. As Freedom House, a human-rights think tank, said recently, the kingdom is considered one of the world’s most prolific and visible practitioners of transnational repression – silencing its critics abroad − and the “brutal 2018 murder and dismemberment” of Mr. Khashoggi brought “transnational repression into popular awareness.”
In 2018, Ottawa followed the United States in imposing sanctions on 17 Saudis for the slaying of Mr. Khashoggi. He was murdered in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate in October of that year when he entered to procure documents certifying a divorce. U.S. media, including the Washington Post, later reported that the CIA believed the Crown Prince had ordered Mr. Khashoggi’s killing – contradicting Riyadh’s assertion that he was not involved in the murder.
Canada’s sanctions remain in place today.
Opinion: Canada should deepen its ties with Saudi Arabia
Mr. Carney said he cares deeply about human rights. But, he added, talking to foreign leaders yields results. The Prime Minister said he spoke to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the NATO leaders summit this week about a Canadian consular case that achieved results because of their conversation.
He claimed that he was the first Canadian prime minister to talk to Mr. Erdogan in more than 10 years. Turkey and Canada had a falling out in 2021 after made-in-Canada airstrike-targeting gear shipped to Turkey was illegally diverted to the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. But press releases from 2020 and 2023 detailing conversations between then-prime minister Mr. Trudeau and the Turkish President contradict Mr. Carney.
Western governments and human-rights advocates have for years called attention to what some describe as Turkey’s descent into dictatorship. A failed coup in 2016 prompted the Erdogan government to jail thousands of soldiers and fire or suspend 100,000 public officials and police officers. These include 28,000 teachers accused by Ankara of being supporters of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, an influential foe of Mr. Erdogan.
Mr. Carney provided few details about the consular case but held it up as an example of the benefits of engaging with foreign countries.
“If I sat in Ottawa and pointed out all the things that I might not agree with that Turkey has done or is doing or might do, I wouldn’t have that conversation.”
Mr. Carney was asked if he spoke to the Saudis about human rights, but he replied that the contents of his discussions were confidential.
Mr. Axworthy said he is aware that the Prime Minister has argued that it’s not possible to influence foreign leaders without talking to them. “Is he going to talk about women’s rights? Is he going to talk about dissenters?” Mr. Axworthy asked.
The former minister pointed out that Mr. Carney has released no foreign policy or defence policy. “We don’t know what his foreign policy is – he’s never tabled it. It comes in a series of off-the-cuff remarks given to reporters outside of Canada.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the name of Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund.