Prime Minister Mark Carney met with potential investment partners in Singapore on Tuesday as his first official visit to Asia entered its second phase.
The transient stopover in Singapore comes between Carney’s trips to 2 economic summits, where he’s pitching Canada as a reliable trading partner for Southeast Asia and as a pretty place for investment.
On Sunday, he told a business audience in Malaysia that Canada has learned over the past 12 months that “we want to construct at scale at home.” He said Canada needs roughly half a trillion dollars in investment “in most of the areas that I believe most of the investors and businesses here would find attractive.”
Global Affairs Canada said Singapore led Southeast Asia because the region’s biggest source of foreign direct investment in Canada in 2024, at $9 billion. The country is home to many heavyweight international investors and funds which have had prior contact with Carney.
On Tuesday, the prime minister had a series of personal meetings with executives from sovereign wealth funds, including the pinnacle of the Government of Singapore Investment Corp., which has investments in Canada. He also met with the present and former CEOs of Temasek, a state-owned global investment company which has invested in Canadian carbon capture technology.
The Prime Minister’s Office said Carney planned to encourage more investment in areas like AI, clean technology, critical minerals and nation-building projects in Canada.
He also toured the facilities of port operator PSA International and met with its CEO. The corporate has terminals in British Columbia and Halifax, and Carney’s office said he planned to “encourage PSA International to capitalize on Canada’s upcoming nation-building projects.”
Carney’s visit to Singapore comes after plans for him to go to Japan were overturned by political shifts in Tokyo.
Senior Canadian officials, who were authorized to transient media about Carney’s trip on the condition they not be named, suggested the prime minister likely would have visited Japan as a substitute this week had the country’s coalition government not collapsed earlier this month.
U.S. President Donald Trump also visited Japan on Tuesday and met with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who took office just last week.
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Takaichi might meet with Carney on the APEC summit in South Korea, which the prime minister is scheduled to attend starting on Thursday.
Carney began the trip in Malaysia on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations leaders summit, referred to as ASEAN.
The 11-country block includes a number of the world’s fastest-growing economies, including Singapore. A lot of the group’s members are consistently navigating the superpower rivalry between the U.S. and China.
Stéphanie Martel, a professor specializing in Southeast Asia at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., said Ottawa must prove its relevance if it desires to secure investment and trade from the region.
“Canada probably needs ASEAN way greater than it needs us — and so they understand it, but I don’t think we necessarily do,” said Martel. “They’ve much greater fish to fry, so we want to truly make a robust and convincing case about (our) added value.”
Carney’s visit attempts to construct on the Indo-Pacific strategy the Liberal government released three years ago, which pledged closer partnerships in Southeast Asia.
The strategy repeatedly noted that many within the region consider Ottawa has been engaging inconsistently, with periods of intense outreach followed by years of silence.
Martel said it is sensible for Carney to deal with trade, given the pressures facing Canada’s economy from U.S. tariffs. But she said he also must discuss broader issues, comparable to security and climate change, that resonate with people in Southeast Asia.
“I’m a bit concerned that we’re again forgetting the need — including when eager about securing those trade and investment gains — of really providing this view of Canada being a reliable and constructive partner, across the board,” she said.
Martel said that’s increasingly essential for all parties grappling with Trump’s trade and security policies.
“For our partners within the region, it’s also becoming crystal clear that the US is unpredictable, unreliable and destabilizing. And this may cause them to skew towards China out of necessity, and only China shall be comfortable about that situation,” she said.
“There’s also a window of opportunity for Canada — amongst other partners which can be similarly invested within the preservation of predictability, common rules in trade and other domains — to assist alleviate a few of that pressure.”
While ASEAN declared Canada a strategic partner in 2023, it has been not noted of a comprehensive partnership that will include it in ASEAN talks on issues like defence.
“We’ve been adamant for years that we wish to achieve access to those, but we haven’t been capable of make a robust case for what we hope to perform being there and the way we are able to contribute,” Martel said.
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim told Carney in the beginning of a bilateral meeting Monday that his cabinet has agreed to push for a deeper partnership with Canada that features trade, research and education and investment.
Canada and ASEAN have pushed back the timeline for completing a trade agreement. That deal was alleged to be signed this 12 months but has been delayed to next 12 months.
Martel said the delay isn’t surprising, because the ASEAN bloc includes countries with vastly different interests and levels of development. She said it was smart for Canada to sign a separate take care of Indonesia this 12 months and announce plans to speed up trade talks with the Philippines.
“That is clearly the pragmatic approach, to develop negotiations on the multilateral and bilateral sides,” she said.
Carney has also been meeting with leaders he’s prone to see on the summit circuit next 12 months. He met with Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., ahead of the Philippines hosting the ASEAN summit next 12 months.
Carney also plans to satisfy with Chinese President Xi Jinping later this week on the APEC summit in Korea. China will host the APEC summit next 12 months.
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