\n<\/p>\n
Amid trade tensions with the United States, Canada has been looking to expand its economic opportunities across both the Atlantic and Pacific, said Dr Balakrishnan.<\/p>\n
He noted that Canada and the US have a \u201cspecial relationship\u201d and remain tightly integrated economically, politically and at the people-to-people level.<\/p>\n
He said that it was not Singapore\u2019s role to become directly involved in the \u201cto-ing and fro-ing\u201d between the two neighbours.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving said that, I think it is a path of no regret for Canada to explore opportunities across both the Atlantic and the Pacific, because Canada does have goods and services and products and resources which are in demand all over the world, and Canada should maximise its opportunities for trade and investment across the Asia Pacific and in Europe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, what is happening now, and the fact that Canadian bandwidth is now allocated across a much broader spectrum of the world, is an opportunity, and it’s an opportunity for us in Asia, and in particular for Singapore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Balakrishnan said he hoped to see a \u201csignificant breakthrough\u201d in negotiations for an ASEAN-Canada free trade agreement. Singapore takes over the ASEAN chairmanship from the Philippines on Jan 1, 2027.<\/p>\n
\u201cCanada is now looking for opportunities … on a global level, as I said, across the Pacific and across the Atlantic, and the fact that Canada is now focused on doing this is an opportunity, especially for us in the Asia Pacific, where we see Canada as another like-minded partner.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe in globalisation, rules-based, liberal, free and fair trade. It’s a source of investment, a source of technology, a source of energy. So it’s a complementary relationship, which I would say is overdue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut now that the stars are aligned, we should maximise the opportunities in this relationship,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
ASEAN-CANADA FTA\u00a0 Amid trade tensions with the United States, Canada has been looking to expand its economic opportunities across both the Atlantic and Pacific, said…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":86144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--1ypuqGmT--\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2026\/09\/19\/vivian_balakrishnan_0.jpeg?itok=-om_sbO4","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[30275,4308,8588,5186,6608,300,7192,6403,8426,6926,22,8316,4307],"class_list":["post-86143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-anticipates","tag-balakrishnan","tag-canada","tag-disruptions","tag-east","tag-energy","tag-exploring","tag-fuel","tag-middle","tag-potential","tag-singapore","tag-source","tag-vivian","wpcat-2-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/86144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}