Canada’s lucrative ties to Saudi Arabia

Canada exports more than $1.2 billion in merchandise to Saudi Arabia every year, in construction and infrastructure, mining, transportation and oil and gas, among other sectors. That doesn’t include our trade in services, which involves some of Quebec’s heaviest hitters.

Quebec-based Bombardier, for example, recently won a $514 million contract to help deliver technology for a transit system in Saudi Arabia, including 47 two-car driverless métro trains.

SNC-Lavalin, for its part, boasts of a 24-year relationship with Saudi Aramco, providing engineering services for its oil and gas facilities. It recently won two contracts worth a combined $71 million, and its consortium with a Saudi firm has increased its staff from 350 in 2012 to 800 in 2015.

Then there’s education. There are 16,000 Saudi students in Canada – all paying foreign-student fees and putting $2 billion into the economy. There are 4,000 Canadian-trained doctors in Saudi Arabia.

Two publicly subsidized Ontario colleges – Niagara and Algonquin – have been operating male-only campuses in Saudi Arabia, a major source of embarrassment to Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, a former education minister and staunch feminist. A third, Centennial College, has an apprenticeship training contract in the Gulf country.

Meanwhile, InterHealth Canada, based in Toronto, signed lucrative contracts in 2012 and 2013 to develop and manage two health facilities with the King Saud University Endowment and Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Health. Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, a doctor by training, co-founded the Dhahran Department of Neurosurgery, Saudi Arabia, where he worked from 1992 to 1996.

The deal signed with General Dynamics Land Systems Canada in London, Ont., to sell almost $15 billion in light-armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia accounted for 95 per cent of Canadian military exports in 2013-2014. It will add more than $1 billion to the tally every year for 14 years.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/can-canada-do-business-with-saudi-arabia-and-still-support-human-rights