Carney ends Asia trip pledging to 'transform' economy through budget, diversification

“We have to transform our economy,” Carney said at a closing news conference on Saturday at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Gyeongju, South Korea. 

“Transform it from one of reliance on a single trade partner to one that’s more resilient to global shocks.”

The prime minister began the trip at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Malaysia last week with a plan to pitch Canada as a reliable trading partner and to encourage investment into what he calls nation-building projects at home. 

He stopped in Singapore to speak with major investment firms about drumming up funding for Canada’s trade infrastructure, before meeting with various Asian leaders at the APEC summit.

Carney said Canada is working to secure free trade deals with Thailand and the Philippines, along with the wider ASEAN bloc, within a year. He also signed a defence and security partnership with South Korea, where he says Canada will send a trade mission next year.

“Opportunity comes from fundamentally changing how countries trade, how they partner, how they build, and the technologies that go with that,” Carney told reporters before boarding a flight home to Ottawa.

“Asia is a region, like Canada, that’s at the forefront — at the coal face, if you will — of the global transformation that is gathering pace.”

Carney announced that Canada has offered to host the APEC forum summit in 2029, which hasn’t been done since the 1997 summit in Vancouver.

At various points, Carney sought to advance sectors such as aerospace, mining and artificial intelligence in the region, but his trip was at times dominated by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The prime minister repeatedly noted the need to diversify away from the United States, and frequently faced questions regarding Trump’s anger over an Ontario advertisement that noted former president Ronald Reagan’s opposition to tariffs.

“After all the noise of this week, Canada still has the best trade deal of any country with the U.S.,” Carney said, adding that Ottawa is trying to double its non-U.S. exports in the next decade.

“It can’t happen overnight, but we’re moving very fast. ”

Jonathan Berkshire Miller, a principal with the Pendulum Group lobbying firm, told the Defence Deconstructed podcast in a Friday episode that he was troubled by the way Carney explained his trip, saying that it implied Canada was only now “ready to engage” with the region because of the difficulties with Trump.

“The framing of this, hinged on our relationship with the United States, is inherently problematic,” he told the podcast, published by the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

He noted that Canada’s Indo-Pacific strategy — one that the government now wants to update after three years — had focused on positioning Ottawa as a strong partner and instead of an intermittent peer who comes and goes in the region.

Miller said Carney’s remarks seemed to undercut that effort by suggesting Ottawa only turns to Asia when Canada is in trouble.

“We have to be careful on that framing because it seems very opportunistic — potentially even episodic, which we’ve been accused of before in the region.”

Andreas Schotter, a professor of international business at Western University’s Ivey Business School in London, Ont., said Canada will need to invest in more supports for businesses in order to actually diversify their markets.

“This is the first step, but what Canada really needs is much deeper and targeted activities with these countries,” he said. “That’s where Canada has been falling short for a long time.”

Schotter has lived in Asia at various points in the past three decades, and said Canada has been “underwhelming over the last 10 years” in its outreach to the continent’s high-growth economies.

He said that’s in part because Canada doesn’t have enough trade commissioners, who work out of embassies to identify local industry opportunities and contacts.

Schotter also recommended more outreach to specific Canadian industries about Asian countries they haven’t reached out to, which he’s seen smaller countries like Austria do in order to expand exports.

He gave the example of boosting food processing in Canada to export to affluent customers across Asia, where Canada has had a reputation for being a clean, healthy country.

“We really have to look and help businesses that want to seek other markets, how to do it, where to do it, what is the right step,” he said in an interview.

Carney said his first budget, coming Tuesday, will include details on how his government intends to transform Canada’s economy, adding that it comes at “an important moment in the global economy.”

He is returning to Canada just days before his minority Liberal government introduces the spending plan in Parliament. They will need the support of some Opposition MPs, or have some of them abstain from confidence votes, in order to pass the budget in the House of Commons. 

Opposition parties have been laying out their lists of demands for the government in advance of budget day.

On Saturday, Carney wouldn’t say if he’s confident the budget will pass. 

“I am 100 per cent confident that this budget is the right budget for this country at this moment,” he said. 

“This is not a game.”

If the budget does not pass on a confidence vote, the government would be toppled and Canadians could be headed to another election. Carney was asked if he’s prepared to fight an election over the spending plan. 

“I’m always prepared to stand up for the right thing,” he said. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 1, 2025. 

— With files from Dylan Robertson in Ottawa