The Stockpile Aimed Squarely at China
Canada and Japan are exploring something rare between market economies: shared physical reserves of the minerals Beijing can cut off. It is industrial policy dressed as friendship.
Theme
Economy
Canada’s economic relationships — trade, investment, energy and industry — and the diplomacy around them, including its reliance on U.S. market access, efforts to diversify, and its position in critical-mineral and clean-energy supply chains.
Key topics
- CUSMA/USMCA and Canada–U.S. trade tensions
- Critical minerals and clean-energy supply chains
- Canada–EU trade (CETA) and Indo-Pacific trade
- Agricultural exports and market access
- Investment, pension capital, and foreign investment screening
- Energy exports and the LNG question
- Industrial policy and economic security
Briefs
No briefs published in this theme yet.
Explainers
The $600-Billion Tech Region That Ignores the Border
From Portland to Vancouver runs a single innovation belt the size of Belgium's economy, now betting jointly on AI. The only thing slowing it down is a visa system that hasn't caught up to how the region lives.
The Elements America Can't Get Without Canada
Nickel, cobalt, uranium, rare earths: the United States can't build its future without minerals it lacks and Canada holds. The two countries are quietly turning that geology into one of the healthiest parts of the relationship.
Canada Became a Gas Exporter. Japan Helped Build the Dock.
The first cargo left Kitimat in June 2025, and Canada joined the ranks of LNG exporters. A Japanese trading house owns a slice of the terminal — and a quarter of the gas is bound for Japan.
The Canadian Banks Are Leaving After a Hundred Years
Scotiabank and CIBC were once as much a part of Caribbean high streets as the churches. In 2026 they are cashing out — and the region is left asking who becomes its banker now.
The Quiet Deal That Feeds Japan Canadian Pork and Canola
Long before the strategic partnership, a trade pact was already rewiring the food relationship. It may be the most concrete thing the two countries actually share.
The $15-Billion Japanese Bet on Ontario That Quietly Fell Apart
Honda promised the biggest auto investment in Canadian history. Two years later it is shelved. The private-sector spine of the Canada–Japan relationship bends with the market and the trade war.
Ottawa Has Signed the Deals. The Mines Are Another Matter.
Canada has spent eighteen months turning its mineral wealth into diplomacy. Whether any of it becomes a working mine is the harder question.
Canada's Most Powerful Foreign-Policy Instrument Answers to No One in Ottawa
Eight pension funds move C$2.5 trillion around the world. Almost none of it is coordinated with anything Canada calls foreign policy — and that is starting to look like a choice worth revisiting.
This Canada Day, Canada Faces Bigger Question Than CUSMA's Survival
As Washington signals it may let CUSMA lapse rather than renew it, the 2026 review is becoming the clearest test yet of Carney's bet that Canada can afford to walk away from a bad deal.
The Country That Runs the World's Mines Is Losing Control of Them
Canadian companies mine in over a hundred countries. The bargain that made that possible — extract cheaply, take the profits home — is coming apart, and Ottawa's critical-minerals push is caught in the contradiction.
The Superpower Canadians Don't Know They Have
Canada feeds a large share of the world and controls a third of the mineral that makes crops grow. In an era of choke points and supply shocks, that footprint has quietly become strategic.
How CUSMA/USMCA Works
The trade agreement that governs roughly three-quarters of Canada’s exports — how it replaced NAFTA, what changed, and why its 2026 review matters.
Profiles
The Tim Hortons Booth Is Canada's Town Square
Open early, open late, open to everyone. In a big, cold, spread-out country, the local Tims has quietly become the public living room where Canadians actually gather — retirees at dawn, hockey teams at dusk, and most of the nation in between.
Saskatchewan's Boring Rock Became a Strategic Asset Overnight
Nutrien mines the mineral that grows the world's food. A war 8,000 kilometers away turned its Saskatchewan reserves from a commodity into something closer to leverage.
Shopify Is the Biggest Canadian Company Nobody Calls Canadian
It moved $378 billion in goods last year and let a weaver in Ghana sell straight to a customer in Berlin. It is also a Canadian champion the country has never learned to claim.
The Artery of North American Energy Runs Through Canada
Enbridge moves most of the oil Canada sells to the United States — the continent's busiest energy link, and lately a pioneer of Indigenous ownership and an all-of-the-above energy strategy.