Name: Canada announces new strategic partnership with Qatar
Uploaded: 2026-01-18T15:52:02.896Z
Duration: 6 min 24 s
Description: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has secured a new strategic partnership with Qatar to increase trade, investment and defence co-operation. Carney has been meeting with political and business figures during his trade tour in the Arab country, as he looks to diversify trade away from the U.S.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has secured a new strategic partnership with Qatar to increase trade, investment and defence co-operation. Carney has been meeting with political and business figures during his trade tour in the Arab country, as he looks to diversify trade away from the U.S.

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Prime Minister Mark Carney has made the first official visit by a Canadian leader to Qatar, where he announced a new strategic partnership between the two countries. The agreement aims to deepen cooperation in trade, investment, defense, and artificial intelligence, and includes significant Qatari investments in Canadian infrastructure and energy sectors.

A new Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement is expected to be finalized in the summer, following reciprocal visits by sovereign wealth and pension fund representatives. The partnership is part of Canada's ongoing efforts to diversify its trade relationships beyond the United States, with recent similar initiatives involving China.

Canada announces new strategic partnership with Qatar

We begin in Qatar, where Prime Minister Mark Carney has been meeting with political and business leaders to drum up more trade opportunities. It marks a new era for our relationship, one in which we move from being close friends to strategic partners. You heard Mark Carney there talking about what he is calling a, quote, ambitious new partnership. Carney says the two countries have agreed to a new framework with the goal of deepening ties across trade investments, defense, and artificial intelligence. This is the first time a Canadian Prime Minister has made an official visit to Qatar, as Carney continues to attempt to diversify trade away from the United States. Linda is looking into this story much more closely this morning. You were also listening to that news conference this morning. What more can you tell us about his trip to Doha and what he said today? Yeah, we're learning a lot about what came out of that meeting between Carney and the Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. He hammered out a new deal with Qatar for Canada. Now, Qatar will make significant investments, we're told, in Canada's nation-building projects. Carney says this capital will speed those projects up, it will bolster energy industries, create thousands of jobs, and he underscored the importance of new partnerships at a time when traditional relationships are eroding. Global landscape is changing rapidly, leaving businesses and workers in a state of uncertainty. These changes are also undermining the effectiveness of our multilateral institutions on which middle powers like Canada and Qatar have historically relied. And in response, Canada is focused on what we can control, securing new trade and investment partnerships so we're not reliant on a single country, but are stronger and more resilient to global shocks. And one of those partnerships that he is still working on with Qatar is called a new Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement. Now, this is gonna be finalized this summer after a visit from representatives from Qatar's Sovereign Wealth Fund. This is one of the largest in the world. They will come to Canada and representatives from some of Canada's leading pension funds will go to Qatar. The Emir will also, we're learning, attend the World Cup match between the two countries this June and then that agreement is expected to be finalized at some point this summer. Other discussions centering around efforts to make it easier for Canadians to work in Qatar and vice versa, and appointing a new defense attache from Canada to Doha to deepen the defense relationship between these two countries. The Prime Minister thanked the Emir for Qatar's work in securing peace deals, particularly in the Middle East. Carnegie, of course, fresh off of that visit to China where he hammered out a new trade deal with that country to diversify trade relations in the wake of the ongoing trade dispute with Washington. And he'll soon be on his way to Davos, Switzerland for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. There he'll have a chance to meet more corporate powerhouses, but world leaders as well. And he'll come face to face, we know, with US President Donald Trump. All right, thanks so much for this, Linda. You're welcome. And Jamie Gillies is a political science professor at Fredericton's St. Thomas University. And he has more analysis on what we heard from the Prime Minister last hour in Qatar. Well, I think what stood out for me initially is the words that the Prime Minister said, which is he's focusing on things we can control. And I think that goes into what happened last week in China about his geopolitical view of the world and where Canada sits. He called Canada a middle power, like Qatar. And he discussed Canada in a way that I think recognizes the challenges of having big players, not just the United States. And so I found this, the questions illuminating that were asked by the journalists, but also his answers were careful and very specific about what Canada can actually control. So there was a consistency throughout as he talked about his role as Prime Minister. You're absolutely right. Listening to the wording there, talking about uncertainty, but then the need for Canada to focus on what you said, what it can control. Let's talk about what was accomplished in this meeting with the Emir of Qatar, talking about investments by Qatar into the nation building projects here in Canada. Was there anything more you were hoping to hear or based on what we did hear from the Prime Minister, does that satisfy what so many were listening for on what the impact would be potentially for our country? Well, I think we're gonna hear a lot more of the specifics of what that means. He also mentioned the sovereign wealth fund and the potential of that fund investing in Canada, as well as the pension funds in Canada going over to Qatar. So there's not just sort of nation building projects here, but larger economic partnerships. And Qatar, it's an interesting place for Carney to start. Canadians elected him as Prime Minister as a central banker. And he is the kind of person who can open doors with Emirates and Gulf States and at this economic forum in Davos coming up where he can hold court with people that he's known for decades. And so, there are people in the country who are probably concerned about this kind of diversification with new partners and new countries that perhaps we don't know as much about their economic cultures, their business cultures. But Carney seems very confident that by going to places like Qatar and China and having these discussions, that it's going to lead to results in the short to medium term to diversify that Canadian economy. Jamie Gillies is a political science professor at St. Thomas University.

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Canada announces new strategic partnership with Qatar

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