Carney arrives in Manila for ASEAN summit, seeks trade pact with Philippines

MANILA — Prime Minister Mark Carney has arrived in the Philippines for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit.

Carney is visiting the capital Manila as he looks to finalize a trade deal with the Philippines and another with the wider ASEAN group of 11 countries.

Carney landed in Manila in the early morning hours of Saturday, local time, and was set to meet Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. later in the day.

The ASEAN summit involves 20 heads of government, including guests from outside the region such as U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Southeast Asia is one of the world’s fastest growing economic regions and the ASEAN bloc includes nearly 700 million people.

Ottawa says trade between Canada and ASEAN countries amounted to $52.3 billion last year, a fifth larger than the previous year. The group is key to Carney’s goal of doubling exports to countries other than the U.S. by 2035.

Vina Nadjibulla, co-founder of the Centre for Strategic Statecraft, said the ASEAN summit — along with two others in the region this week — is a chance for Carney to reinforce the importance of Asia to Canadians.

“So much of his diplomacy over the last few months has been focused on Europe, understandably so. But we also need to remind everyone that Canada is a Pacific nation, we have an Indo-Pacific strategy, and the region is really critical to Canada’s prosperity,” she said.

Carney signed a trade deal with Indonesia last autumn. This summer, he signed a strategic partnership agreement with the Philippines. It called for more labour mobility and climate resilience projects between Canada and the Philippines, a country with more than 110 million people.

In 2025, bilateral merchandise trade between the two countries totalled $3.4 billion, with Canada exporting mineral ores, meat, cereals, fertilizers and aircraft, while importing cooking oils, leather and rubber products from the Philippines.

Canada and the Philippines have been in talks on a bilateral trade deal since 2015. Carney and Marcos restarted those efforts a year ago.

That work stemmed from the Indo-Pacific strategy the government released four years ago.

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said a year ago that she had asked her officials to update the strategy to better align with Carney’s priorities, such as doubling non-U.S. exports by 2035 and making Canada an energy superpower.

Queen’s University professor Stéphanie Martel, who studies ASEAN and international diplomacy, said Carney has a narrower policy approach to the region than his predecessor Justin Trudeau, who she said tended to offer “lofty, general commitments.”

Carney has focused on strategic sectors, she said, particularly trade and military collaboration — such as naval exercises in the Taiwan Strait and efforts to help countries like the Philippines detect Chinese boats used in territorial disputes.

Canada also has appointed a defence attaché for the Indo-Pacific region who has one of the highest military ranks.

Martel said the trade and navy ships are welcome but they miss a key point.

“That’s not the way that ASEAN countries approach security,” she said. “These countries all have a very strong tradition, in government and in their military, to look at security in what they call a comprehensive way.”

Southeast Asian leaders see security as linked to climate change, regime stability through economic growth, and the involvement of women in military and security issues, she said.

That includes leaders of authoritarian states who see regime stability as a matter not just of protecting borders but also of having enough economic development to prevent widespread protests.

“I worry that this is getting sidelined to refocus on the most immediate, strategic sectors like AI and food and energy, and supply chains,” Martel said.

“This narrow, trade-focused, short-termist perspective … has been creating some issues when it comes to moving the whole relationship forward in a more comprehensive way.”

Nadjibulla said Canada’s challenge is to ensure it has enough partnerships in Asia that touch on defence-industry co-operation, digital trade, mobility and education.

“We need to do a lot more in not just exporting more to the region or doing trade with the region — but also becoming part of the production and supply chains in the region,” she said.

Federal officials who briefed reporters ahead of Carney’s trip noted Canada is selling the region more than just raw supplies for food. It’s also selling technology that boosts the protein content of lentils or improves the quality of pork.

Canada’s work in Asia has gone beyond trade deals toward crafting mechanisms to resolve trade conflicts on specific goods.

That effort might be put to the test later this month, with the Philippines pondering a ban on many pork imports. Carney said Thursday in French that he was “fighting for this industry.”

Canada exported about $279 million in pork products to the Philippines in 2024.

This weekend’s ASEAN summit comes as numerous countries in the region cope with heavy smoke from Indonesian wildfires linked to climate change and palm-oil extraction.

It also comes at a time of rising geopolitical and economic competition between the United States and China. Nadjibulla said that competition has been a factor in most ASEAN summits in recent years, particularly as it affects semiconductors, critical minerals and tariffs.

“Canada wants to be there as an alternative, as a partner that is similar to Japan, Australia, and others who give more options to ASEAN, so that they’re not stuck between these two superpowers,” she said.

Carney is also pushing to get Pacific Rim countries to trade more with the European Union, and is positioning Canada a bridge between larger markets that want to preserve the rules-based trading system being undercut by American and Chinese coercion.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2026.

— With files from Catherine Morrison in Ottawa

Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press