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Agenda for Carney's Saudi Arabia visit shows shift in Ottawa's priorities to trade over rights
ANKARA, TURKEY — In 2018, Chrystia Freeland, who was then Canada’s foreign affairs minister, caused a major diplomatic dispute with Saudi Arabia with a single tweet.
She had posted on what was then Twitter (now X) about an activist named Samar Badawi, who had been imprisoned by the Saudi regime for advocating for women’s rights. Badawi is the sister of the famous Saudi dissident blogger Raif Badawi, who was arrested in 2012 on a charge of insulting Islam and was sentenced to 1,000 lashes.
“Very alarmed to learn that Samar Badawi, Raif Badawi’s sister, has been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. Canada stands together with the Badawi family in this difficult time, and we continue to strongly call for the release of both Raif and Samar Badawi,” Freeland wrote in response.
The reaction was swift after Freeland’s 2018 tweet. Saudi Arabia expelled Canada’s ambassador and froze trade with Canada. The country also suspended flights from Canada and removed thousands of Saudi scholarship students from Canadian schools.
But Freeland doubled down. In a further statement , she wrote, “Canada will always stand up for the protection of human rights, including women’s rights and freedom of expression around the world,” adding “we will never hesitate to promote these values.”
(Samar was released from prison in 2021 after serving a three-year sentence. Her brother was released from prison in 2022, and received only 50 of the lashes he was sentenced to, but is forbidden from travelling outside of Saudi Arabia and reuniting with his wife and three children, who are now Canadian citizens.)
Eight years later, Freeland is no longer in government, Canada and Saudi Arabia are talking again since re-establishing diplomatic ties in 2023, and priorities in Ottawa have shifted.
On Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Mark Carney will leave the NATO summit in Turkey and head to Saudi Arabia, the first visit by a Canadian prime minister in 26 years.
Human rights in an absolute monarchy that eschews civil liberties, political dissent, and freedom of expression, is not a priority on the agenda.
During his visit, Carney will meet with the crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, to “deepen” both countries’ partnership across energy, critical minerals, defence, infrastructure and investment, according to an official press release. (Bin Salman’s father, King Salman, is elderly and unwell and has transferred responsibilities to the crown prince.)
Carney will also use his time in the country to take part in a business forum, where he will engage with key members of the Saudi business community.
“These efforts will focus on expanding trade, promoting two-way investment, and advancing cooperation in priority sectors, including mining, artificial intelligence, cleantech, agriculture, tourism, infrastructure, and life sciences,” adds the release.
Former Canadian diplomat Arif Lalani, who served as ambassador to Jordan, Iraq, Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates under former prime minister Stephen Harper, said Carney’s visit to Saudi Arabia is a positive development and was long overdue.
“It’s the right thing for him to do,” he said. “I think Canada has to diversify its relationships, well beyond Europe, and the Gulf states, in particular, are key to attracting investment.”
Ahead of the trip, Canadian officials told reporters, during a not-for-attribution briefing, that Carney’s visit marks a “milestone” in the reset of Canada-Saudi Arabia bilateral relations, which began with re-establishing ties three years ago.
Carney’s meeting also follows visits earlier this year to Saudi Arabia by Minister of International Trade Maninder Sidhu, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand and Minister of Artificial Intelligence Evan Solomon to lay the groundwork for future collaboration in different sectors.
Canadian officials have touted Saudi Arabia as Canada’s second-largest two-way trading partner in the Gulf region, with bilateral trade with the country totalling $3.5 billion in 2025.
They have said the focus of this visit is “very much trade and investment” and it aligns with the government’s ambitious objective to double non-U.S. exports in the next decade.
Some Canadian companies are notably expected to take part in the trip in Saudi Arabia.
But there is pressure on Carney not to completely avoid the issue of human rights.
“This visit is a true test of Prime Minister Carney’s ‘principled’ approach to foreign policy,” said Amnesty International Canada’s Secretary General Ketty Nivyabandi in an email.
“Amnesty International expects the Prime Minister to raise the grave situation of human rights defenders facing long prison sentences, unfair trials, and travel bans,” she added.
Officials would not say, in response to repeated questions from reporters in advance of the trip, whether Carney would raise the issue of human rights abuses, but instead pointed to public comments Carney has made in the past.
“The prime minister has been clear that we must be able to address these areas of disagreement without destabilizing opportunities for co-operation,” one official said.
“He’s been clear that engagement does not equal endorsement.”
Lalani, who is now a senior advisor at the lobbying firm StrategyCorp and a distinguished fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs, said it is important that Carney demonstrates that Canada “can have complex, complicated relationships where we can raise concerns and still engage.”
Since his release from prison in 2022, Raif Badawi’s family has been asking Saudi Arabia to lift his travel ban so he can reunite with them in Canada.
Asked if Carney would raise Badawi’s case directly to the crown prince, one senior governmental official said they could not discuss details of a particular consular case. They added they would not “interfere with the judicial affairs of a sovereign country at this time, nor would we want them to interfere in ours.”
Lalani said that the way the government managed human rights concerns through social media when Freeland was in cabinet with Justin Trudeau as prime minister was “badly executed” and “didn’t really advance the human rights file.”
“As a result, we wasted seven or eight years and became increasingly irrelevant to Saudi Arabia at a time when Saudi Arabia was becoming more relevant to the global economy.”
National Post calevesque@postmedia.com
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