Prime Minister Mark Carney will meet next week with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, but federal officials would not say whether the prime minister plans to raise human rights concerns during the visit.
At a background briefing ahead of the trip, officials would only point to Carney’s past comments on the issue.
“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.”
Canada and Saudi Arabia have gradually normalized relations since 2023 after a five-year diplomatic rift triggered by the Trudeau government’s criticism of the kingdom’s human rights record.
In 2018, then-foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland called on Saudi Arabia through social media posts to immediately release jailed human rights activists, including Samar Badawi, who had campaigned against the kingdom’s former male guardianship system. Badawi was released from prison in 2021.
Saudi Arabia condemned Freeland’s comments as interference in its domestic affairs, expelled Canada’s ambassador from Riyadh and ordered thousands of Saudi students studying in Canada to transfer elsewhere.
Some analysts support Ottawa’s renewed engagement with Saudi Arabia, viewing the trip — the first by a Canadian prime minister in 26 years — as an opportunity to strengthen ties with a key partner in the Persian Gulf.
Dennis Horak, the Canadian diplomat who was thrown out of Saudi Arabia because of the dispute in 2018, calls the warming of relations long overdue.
“We’re going to have problems with countries, we’re going to have issues, we’re going to have challenges, no question about it,” Horak told CTV News. “But we can’t just ignore every country that has a human rights problem, because it would limit our relationships to a pretty small number of countries these days.”
Horak also said there are ways to raise human rights concerns, without doing it publicly or on social media, like former minister Freeland did. Horak suggests there is an opening for Canada in the various reforms the crown prince has introduced in Saudi Arabia.
“These reforms are really encouraging. What are your plans going forward? That sort of a dialog, I think, is something that that would be constructed, I think would be not badly received in Saudi Arabia either, and it allows (Carney) to touch on those issues, but there’s a real important fish to fry on the economic front for Canada.”
Analysts agree it’s an ‘important trip’
“It’s a very important trip in terms of the diversification of Canada’s relationships around the world,” said Arif Lalani, former Canadian ambassador to UAE.
“I think Canada’s diplomacy on human rights in Saudi Arabia in the past has been very badly executed. We have human rights problems with countries and allies around the world, and we’ve been able to do more than one thing at once. More than ever, Canada needs to be able to have complicated and complex relationships.”
Human rights organizations, however, are urging Carney to raise concerns about political prisoners and civil liberties directly with Saudi leaders during the visit.
