UAE and Canada Explore New Horizons to Enhance Trade and Investment Partnership

The UAE and Canada are continuing to explore ways to elevate their mutual trade and investment relations by enabling the business communities and private sectors of the two friendly countries to build new partnerships in sectors of common interest.

His Excellency Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, Minister of Foreign Trade, led a UAE delegation of officials and business leaders on an official visit to the Canadian city of Toronto, with the aim of deepening bilateral ties.

The visit marked a significant milestone in the evolution of relations between the UAE and Canada, with His Excellency co-chairing a business roundtable alongside the Honourable Maninder Sidhu, Canada’s Minister of International Trade, which brought together senior business leaders and government officials from both countries to identify opportunities for expanding private-sector cooperation.

The session was moderated by the Honourable Jean Charest, Co-Chair of the Canada-UAE Business Council, former Premier of Quebec and Partner at the law firm Therrien Couture Joli-Coeur.

The roundtable gathered senior representatives of leading Canadian and Emirati companies across sectors including food and agriculture, clean energy, logistics, financial services, infrastructure and technology.

Participants explored opportunities to strengthen bilateral investment flows, reinforce supply-chain partnerships, and leverage the UAE’s position as a global trade hub to facilitate Canadian companies’ access to the markets of the Arabian Gulf states and the Middle East, Africa and Asia as a whole.

Al Zeyoudi and Sidhu renewed the two countries’ commitment to creating an enabling environment for building new partnerships between the private sectors on both sides, while Canadian business leaders highlighted the UAE’s strategic infrastructure, regulatory framework and high level of connectivity as key factors driving their interest in deepening commercial ties.

Al Zeyoudi affirmed that the visit underlines Canada’s importance as a trade and investment partner, saying that Canada possesses world-class capabilities in food and agriculture, clean technology and advanced manufacturing, alongside a financial services sector that complements our economic ambitions, which has made it a destination attracting growing interest from our private sector. Our discussions in Toronto centred on building solid and commercially viable trade links that deliver long-term value for the business communities of both countries.

He added: The depth of Canadian companies’ interest in engaging with the UAE reflects a real opportunity for both sides, and we look forward to building on non-oil bilateral trade, which exceeded 4.2 billion dollars in 2025.

During the visit, His Excellency Dr. Thani Al Zeyoudi held a series of bilateral meetings, including a meeting with his Canadian counterpart, the Honourable Maninder Sidhu. He also met a number of senior officials of the Royal Bank of Canada, among them Neil McLaughlin, Group Head, Wealth Management & Insurance; Lindsay Patrick, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer; Wayne Bossert, Deputy Chairman, Wealth Management; John Stackhouse, Senior Vice President, Office of the CEO; and Thomas Ashcroft, Global Issues Policy Lead.

Al Zeyoudi also visited the Vector Institute, one of Canada’s leading non-profit institutions specialising in artificial intelligence research, where he met Cameron Schuler, Chief Commercialization Officer and Vice President, Industry Innovation; Alan Veerman, Chief Operations and Finance Officer; and Roxana Sultan, Chief Partnership Officer. The two sides discussed ways to translate advanced achievements in artificial intelligence into practical applications with tangible impact, through the exchange of knowledge and expertise, the development of talent, the acceleration of the commercialisation of innovations, and the strengthening of partnerships between the academic and industrial sectors.

The visit also sought to build on the remarkable trajectory of economic relations between the UAE and Canada in recent years, with non-oil foreign trade between the two countries reaching 4.2 billion dollars in 2025, an annual growth of 21% compared with 2024 and an increase of 94.9% compared with 2019.

The UAE’s non-oil exports to Canada grew by 11% year on year to reach 638 million dollars in 2025, led by jewellery products, precious metals, steel structures and perfumes, while re-exports from the UAE to Canada jumped by 67.4% to reach 648 million dollars, reflecting growing demand for Emirati products.

The visit comes as part of the UAE’s active international trade engagement agenda, which aims to raise the value of its non-oil foreign trade to 1.1 trillion dollars by 2031.

Through trade promotion activities, ministerial meetings and trade delegation programmes, the Ministry of Foreign Trade continues to drive economic diversification and consolidate trade partnerships with like-minded countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Source: Emirates News Agency - WAM