Thank you very much, Your Excellency, Minister Fahad bin Abduljalil Al-Saif, for your leadership and your partnership. 

It is important to make these connections, translate them into action, and translate action into full partnership. That’s the spirit of this forum. 

His Excellency gave me a debrief on some of the conversations that took place today – the quality and level of ambition behind those conversations. 

In a moment, with the signing ceremony, we’re going to see the product of the work that’s been done.

I complimented His Royal Highness this afternoon on many things. His leadership, his vision, his attention to execution and action. His steady hand. His focus on what we can control in a world that has many risks and volatilities. 

This region knows it. Canada knows it. In different ways, but it’s the same lesson.

I also complimented him on the quality of the military band of the royal household, because they played an absolutely flawless O Canada. And they have not played O Canada for 26 years, because that’s when the last Canadian Prime Minister visited. 

I hope that, now that they’ve learned it, they will put it into practice multiple times – and they will.

Saudi Arabia is Canada’s second-largest trading relationship in the Gulf. 

The private sector has kept the commercial relationship alive, but we’ve barely scratched the surface of the relationship’s potential. 

Today is part of the next phase of building out. 

You will have increasingly seen the Canadian government here in Saudi Arabia. 

Four of our ministers have been here in recent months: the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Anita Anand, the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, Evan Solomon, the Minister of National Defence, David J. McGuinty, and the Minister of Finance and National Revenue, François-Philippe Champagne. 

You will be seeing Minister Champagne again in a few months, when he’s back with our large pension funds, our major capital providers.

The scale of investment opportunities, partnership opportunities, asset recycling opportunities, and growth equity venture opportunities here in Saudi Arabia is immense, as are our opportunities in Canada. And we will be stronger building together. 

We will also be stronger over time, building platforms that help serve other regions and the rest of the world, as we bring our complementarities together.

One of the areas that’s top of mind for many representatives in the room is the mining sector. 

About four years ago, I attended the first Future Minerals Forum. I was impressed at the scale of ambition, but I suspect if we look back at that forum, it has already been surpassed by the level of activity and investment today. 

Now there’s about $2.5 trillion of untapped mineral wealth here. The combination of Canadian expertise, Canadian capital, our shared learnings from geological surveys, and the application of engineering expertise can further develop this.

This is just one aspect of the educational collaboration that’s going on, because there are thousands and thousands of jobs that will be created here in the mining sector.

Forty per cent of the world’s listed mining companies are in Canada, and so that is the type of financial ecosystem we need to develop between our countries. 

Yes, this includes mining giants, but also those junior miners and others that take the risk and build out the sector.

We’re natural partners here with immense opportunity, at a time when the world needs new partners in mining. 

We, individually and collectively, can supply much of what is needed for a more stable world. 

The same can be said in energy. We each bring perspective and expertise, whether it’s in nuclear, engineering, co-investment, additional infrastructure that will be built here to diversify and help to build stability, and opportunity in Canada in LNG and beyond.

Coming back to mining, we have pursued a strategy that Saudi Arabia is about to pursue, which is to develop critical metals and minerals, in part by using government as a stabilising force through offtake agreements and stockpiling. 

This is a strategy the United States is using as well – it’s good for the world and supports with initial development. 

To put it in context, in the last 12 months we’ve signed 69 critical minerals partnerships, with $20 billion of offtake and stockpiling. This is real scale being developed, and that’s scale that then can be syndicated.

I’m going to say a couple of words about Canada and where we are right now. We draw, in many respects, on the ambition of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 – the scale of ambition, a thriving economy, an ambitious nation. 

We strive to be an ambitious nation that is building at speeds not seen in a generation. Becoming the fastest-building economy in the G7 – not for one year, not for one quarter, but consistently. 

We’re looking to catalyse $1 trillion in investment between now and the end of this decade. We’re embarking on a defence industrial build that’s half a trillion dollars. We’re looking to double our non-U.S. exports and are on track for that. We’re growing jobs at twice the rate of the United States. 

In Canada, we’re at the highest level of foreign direct investment in 20 years, twice the pace of our nearest G7 peer, adjusted for the size of the economy. 

We’re now rated as the most attractive investment infrastructure destination in the world. We have a lot more to do, but we’re getting started. We’re getting traction. 

You know the story here – you set ambitious goals, you track against those goals, you reset, and you keep moving.

If you start to hit those ambitious goals, as the Minister of Finance knows, you make more ambitious goals. 

And when the world throws you a crisis, which it will, when it throws you an economic problem, when it throws you a geopolitical challenge, you keep focused on your long-term plan. 

Yes, you do what you can to help in times of crises, but you keep focused – because building strong is what’s needed. 

I’ll just close and say a word of appreciation and admiration for the vibrant society that is being created here. The transformation that’s underway.

I say that as someone who first came to the Kingdom in 1994, and so I’ve seen some of the tangible shifts that have happened. 

But I have also seen, and the world has seen, this pillar of a vibrant society where the Kingdom is becoming a nexus of global commerce, culture, and creativity – world-leading video game companies, the Esports World Cup coming virtually, the FIFA World Cup coming in 2034, international film festivals, the world’s fastest Formula One circuit.

I’ll finish just by saying how pleased we are to be here, how pleased we are to hear the energy in this room. 

Everything that’s behind the deals we’re going to see signed in a moment, and how excited we are about everything that’s going to come. 

So, we’ll be hearing lots more of O Canada, I hope, and we’ll be hearing lots more from the Kingdom in Canada.

Thank you very much.