ABU DHABI — Prime Minister Mark Carney says Ottawa is working on a $1-billion project aimed at expanding critical minerals processing capacity in Canada, while securing the equivalent of $70 billion in investment from the United Arab Emirates.
The announcements came as Carney concluded a visit to Abu Dhabi that focused heavily on trade amid concerns about the war in Sudan.
“I’m pleased that an agreement valued over $1 billion is in the process of being finalized,” Carney said in a Friday morning speech to the Canada-UAE Business Council.
“(It) will expand critical minerals processing capacity in Canada, creating jobs, boosting (the) long-term supply of minerals essential to energy technologies and advanced manufacturing. More on that soon.”
Carney said the new project will boost both economic growth and human development.
“We are a global leader in AI, in quantum and life sciences. And we realize it’s time to begin to commercialize these strengths, for the benefit of humanity,” Carney said.
After announcing this week a new investment protection pact and the launch of trade negotiations with the UAE, the prime minister personally invited Emirati investors to visit him in Canada to help spur more major projects.
“We welcome UAE investors to visit Canada — I will personally host them — to explore investment in Canada’s transformative projects,” he said.
To that end, Carney’s office said Friday that the UAE had agreed to invest US$50 billion in Canada.
A news release from the Prime Minister’s Office said this investment is expected to go toward critical mineral development, the energy sector, ports and artificial intelligence.
Carney’s office said the funding is part of a bilateral investment framework agreement and did not indicate when the dollars are expected to flow.
His office said the funding is a vote of confidence in the Canadian economy, which has been suffering from the U.S. trade war and productivity issues.
In his speech Friday, Carney said he is “very confident” that Canada and the UAE can more than double their trade in less than a decade.
He said Canada and the Gulf countries are aligned as trading nations and energy superpowers pursuing green tech.
“To the uninitiated, Canada and the UAE can appear as different as snow and sand, yet we’re deeply, deeply aligned,” he told investors.
“The level of penetration usage of artificial intelligence is the highest in the UAE and it’s one of the largest and most sophisticated sets of investors in the world.”
Carney said AI will be a major focus of a trade mission to the UAE next year, along with energy and agriculture. He said the two countries are starting “a new chapter” following his visit, the first by a sitting Canadian prime minister since 1983.
Representatives of UAE sovereign wealth funds will also visit Canada next year to identify investment opportunities, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a media release.
Carney also told reporters that he raised Sudan’s civil war with UAE President Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, whose government denies claims it is fuelling ethnic violence in that country.
Carney did not say whether he believes the UAE government or the human-rights groups that accuse it of supporting the Rapid Support Forces militia. He said he and the UAE president talked about U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempts to broker peace in Sudan.
“We did discuss the situation in Sudan,” Carney said, adding that this conversation focused on the so-called Quad process involving the U.S., the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Carney’s speech to investors came shortly before he was set to board a flight to Johannesburg for the G20 leaders’ summit.
The Trump administration says it will have no senior American officials present in South Africa, which it accuses of allowing anti-white violence to take place. The South African government says Trump’s views do not reflect crime statistics or reality.
Canada has listed five priorities for the G20 summit: improving critical-mineral supply chains, using AI for sustainable development, preventing wildfires and disasters, reforming global development funding and debt, and advancing gender equality through economic growth.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 21, 2025.
Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press
