Canada and UAE Sign Free Trade Deal and Open Talks on Extradition Treaty

Canada and the United Arab Emirates have signed a wide-ranging free trade agreement and opened negotiations on an extradition treaty that would let Abu Dhabi request the handover of people accused of crimes, Ottawa announced on Tuesday.

The announcement came after the first visit by an Emirati crown prince to the Canadian capital. Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan spent two days with Prime Minister Mark Carney this week. The two sides also signed a memorandum of understanding creating a Joint Military Committee, covering military education and training, joint exercises, cybersecurity and information exchanges.

The trade pact, called the Canada-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (Cepa), was negotiated in a record 47 days for either country. Carney said in a statement that it will reduce or eliminate tariffs on over 99 percent of Canadian exports to the UAE starting next year. He pointed to new markets for farmers growing pulses and canola, makers of industrial machinery and power generation equipment, and the aerospace sector.

Maninder Sidhu, Canada's minister of international trade, said on Wednesday that the deal will double two-way trade from $2.4bn to nearly $5bn over the next decade and give Canadian firms greater access to the UAE's $500bn economy.

A year ago, after Carney visited Abu Dhabi, the UAE pledged $50bn in investment in Canadian energy and development projects, particularly in the Arctic. Carney said this week's talks "delivered significant progress" on that pledge, but he did not elaborate.

Stuart Trew, director of the Trade and Investment Research Project at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, told Middle East Eye that the Emiratis are essentially dangling those funds in front of Ottawa. "It looks like Canada is willing to agree to basically anything to try and get that money," he said. He questioned an extradition treaty with a state he described as a paranoid surveillance state, and a defence cooperation deal with a country he accused of fomenting war and rights violations across Africa. Rights groups and Middle East Eye correspondents have reported evidence that the UAE finances the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan's civil war, and the RSF stands accused of genocide. The UAE denies any involvement.

The agreement fits a wider push by Carney to diversify Canada's partnerships as relations with Washington have frayed. He declared the old Canada-US relationship "over" in May 2025, and US tariffs introduced in March 2025 hit most Canadian goods at 25 percent and Canadian energy at 10 percent. Carney's statement said Canada now has preferential access to 1.5 billion consumers across 16 free trade agreements and 51 countries.

That effort has included a visit to China in which Beijing agreed to lower tariffs on Canadian canola oil to 15 percent while Canada takes in 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles. Carney also visited Doha in January, Saudi Arabia in July, where he secured 13 commercial agreements and MoUs worth $700m, and Turkey last week, where talks began on a Canada-Turkey free trade agreement. In September, Kuwait and Canada signed a defence and security MoU.

Trew called the approach "a confusing strategy" and said the government has identified the wrong crisis and exaggerated its need for foreign funding. He argued that nothing can fully replace the US trade relationship. "We barely export anything anywhere else," he said, noting that automobiles are Canada's second biggest goods export after energy.