Events

Hosted by Global Affairs Canada and EntrepreNorth and inspired by Weaving Our Worlds Together, this Lounge event brings together Indigenous women entrepreneurs, international partners, government representatives, and business leaders to connect and build meaningful relationships. 

Through facilitated, small-group discussions, participants will share experiences and explore opportunities for trade, investment and cross-border collaboration.

Designed to foster practical connections and knowledge sharing, the Lounge creates new pathways for global business and economic co-operation.

On the margins of the Indigenous Women in Industry (IWI) Summit, the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada will host a half-day training session for IWI Summit registrants on building an export-ready business. 

With presentations from supporting organizations including the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, Export Development Canada, the Business Development Bank of Canada, and Réseau des Femmes d’affaires du Québec, the session will help participants understand what to consider when gearing up to export, the opportunities for Canadian businesses in Asia and Europe, and the resources available to companies interested in expanding into new international markets. 

A panel of seasoned entrepreneurs will share their export journeys, including successes and setbacks, and share tips to avoid some of the pitfalls many companies face when accessing international markets. 

The 2026 Indo-Pacific Forum is taking place as Canada actively considers the next phase of its Indo-Pacific Strategy. Since the Strategy's launch in late 2022, Ottawa has increased Canadian visibility in the region and laid the groundwork for robust and meaningful co-operation with various Indo-Pacific partners. 

The task now, of course, is to follow through on these commitments – not only to reap the benefits of what these partnerships can deliver for Canadians but also to demonstrate that Ottawa's Indo-Pacific focus is not wavering amid upheaval in its relationship with the United States or the appeal of closer ties with Europe.  

The day’s discussions will benefit from the insights of APF Canada’s Indo-Pacific Research Fellows – experts from Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam – on issues that are at the heart of Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, namely, trade, investment, and resource partnerships; defence and security co-operation; and frontier technologies. These discussions will equally benefit from the participation of some of Canada’s top foreign policy thinkers. 

The day will open with remarks from Jeff Nankivell, APF Canada's President & CEO, and conclude with a keynote address by Dr. Evan Feigenbaum of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, followed by networking among the Forum’s participants.

How ready is the Indonesian business community to seize the opportunities offered by the Canada-Indonesia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA)? Findings from the Kadin Indonesia Institute survey show that 84.4 per cent of respondents have either never heard of or know very little about the Agreement. Interestingly, a majority of respondents are already able to identify potential sectors and channels for doing business with Canada.

Through a collaboration between the Kadin Indonesia Institute and the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, these findings are highlighted in the Insights Paper “Indonesian Business Perceptions of the Indonesia–Canada CEPA,” exploring the gap between business awareness and the utilization of Canada-Indonesia CEPA opportunities.

Three years after China's export controls made the vulnerability of critical minerals supply chains more concrete, allied governments have committed extraordinary sums to building alternative supply chains. While public finance in advanced economies has quadrupled since 2023, refining capacity has become more, not less, concentrated, and investment remains similarly clustered upstream in mining rather than in processing capacity, where the chokepoint actually sits. 

With this context in mind, this Expert Roundtable, jointly organized by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and the University of Ottawa through their Canada-Indo-Pacific Critical Minerals Hub initiative, seeks to explore two questions: whether the current toolkit for building alternative supply chains is the right one, and where there might be greater scope for closer Canada-Indo-Pacific co-operation on supply chain resilience. 

Details to Follow. Email events@asiapacific.ca 

Canada's Defence Industrial Strategy released in February identifies securing supply chains for key inputs as a pillar of defence industrial capacity, and the federal government has committed to a dedicated plan for the production, processing, stockpiling, and procurement of defence-critical minerals. 

Meanwhile, China's export controls now reach defence end-users directly, and allies are moving quickly with instruments of their own. 

Co-organized by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and the University of Ottawa through their Canada-Indo-Pacific Critical Minerals Hub initiative, this Exper Roundtable seeks to address the challenges in building the connective tissue between Canada's defence industrial policy, its critical minerals policy, its domestic industrial strategy, and its international partnerships.

Join us Thursday, Oct. 8, at 8:30 a.m. at Université de Montréal for a discussion on evolving security challenges in East and Southeast Asia, from traditional security concerns and maritime security to cognitive warfare, with APF Canada Indo-Pacific Research Fellows Natalie Sambhi of Verve Research and Ronan Tse-Min Fu of Academia Sinica. 

The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and the United States Studies Centre will co-host the Canada–Australia Track 1.5 Strategic Dialogue in Downtown Ottawa.

Building on the March 2026 Australia–Canada Joint Statement, this full-day dialogue convenes government officials, academic experts, and policy leaders to outline a strategic roadmap for deeper bilateral economic and security co-operation. 

Across four focused sessions, participants will address vital shared challenges confronting both middle powers—from fortifying critical mineral supply chains, stockpiling, and regional energy security amid global shocks to expanding defence industrial collaboration and advancing multilateral diplomacy across the Indo-Pacific.

PolyMonde, in collaboration with the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and Le POINT (Polytechnique International), invites you to join us for a forum dedicated to the strategic and economic issues facing South Korea. The conference will provide an opportunity to gain a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges South Korea is facing within the context of Canada's own middle-power perspective. 

Canada-in-Asia: Momentum Taipei kicks off the 2026 Momentum series in Taiwan with a focus on the energy and materials foundations of advanced technology manufacturing. 

Taiwan's semiconductor ecosystem accounts for a growing share of national electricity demand, with credible estimates placing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) alone at close to 8 per cent of total consumption. 

Taipower's own chairman has captured the policy in three words: electricity is competitiveness. The supply side is under strain. Taiwan holds approximately 150 days of oil reserves but only about 11 days of spare LNG. The demand side is moving fast. TSMC has brought its RE100 commitment forward to 2040 with a 60 per cent renewable target for 2030, and Taiwan intends to tender 15 gigawatts of offshore wind between 2026 and 2035.  

Canada is arriving with a track record and the intention of answering what comes next. Energy technologies, LNG, renewables, critical minerals – all are services and goods Canada can partner with Taiwan on to support Taiwan’s semiconductor and advanced manufacturing ecosystems. 

This Momentum event seeks to illuminate the needs and the pathways for co-operation.

Canada-in-Asia: Momentum Tokyo closes the 2026 Momentum series with a focus on the energy and materials foundations of Japan's economic security. 

Japan's semiconductor, electronics, photonics, and battery firms make the wafers, chemicals, magnets, and optics that global technology runs on, and they import almost every element that goes into them, along with the power to process them. 

Fabrication is an electricity business before it is a chip business. The supply side is concentrated. METI records that, pre-Iran war, Japan depended on the Middle East for more than 90 per cent of its crude oil imports, and the 2026 Strait of Hormuz disruption turned a structural exposure into an operational one. On materials, the March 2026 Canada-Japan Comprehensive Strategic Roadmap registered both countries' grave concerns over economic coercion and over export restrictions on critical minerals and established a bilateral Economic Security Dialogue on the premise that "economic resilience is vital to both national security and long-term prosperity."

Canada has cargoes already sailing and new capacity coming online. LNG, LPG, heavy crude, uranium and small modular reactors, germanium, gallium, indium and rare earth metals – all are goods and services Canada can supply to underwrite Japanese advanced manufacturing. 

This Momentum event identifies the needs and the pathways for co-operation, three months before APF Canada's annual Canada-in-Asia Conference (CIAC2027) convenes in Singapore.