Far from “building Canada strong,” the prime minister’s visit to Abu Dhabi marks the culmination of a decade-long push to secure access for Canadian capital in a lucrative Gulf market. If that requires overlooking the victims of Canadian weapons sales and the brutal consequences of UAE policy in Sudan, the government has shown it is more than willing to do so.

On November 21, Mark Carney landed in Abu Dhabi, becoming the first Canadian leader in more than 40 years to visit the capital of the United Arab Emirates. Ottawa portrayed the trip as a move toward trade diversification—a strategy cast as urgent after Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats against Canadian sovereignty—but the visit also brought Canada into direct contact with a Gulf power implicated in some of the world’s deadliest conflicts.

Not only did the official talks in Abu Dhabi deliberately bypass any mention of the UAE’s funding of war crimes and possibly genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region, but the subsequent media coverage in Canada also conspicuously failed to address the Canadian government’s own entanglement and complicity in these atrocities.