Event Archive

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.

The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada is supporting the Government of Canada’s Team Canada Trade Mission to India by bringing a delegation of Canadian women entrepreneurs to Mumbai and Bengaluru in mid-October 2026. 

Led by The Hon. Maninder Sidhu, Minister of International Trade, the Team Canada Trade Mission will help Canadian businesses explore commercial opportunities and build relationships in the Indian market.

APF Canada’s delegation of entrepreneurs includes women-led companies in healthtech, cleantech, renewable energy, and agrifood. Participating entrepreneurs will connect with potential partners in India through business meetings, market briefings, site visits, and networking.

Alongside the mission, APF Canada will convene executive women’s roundtables on Canada-India commercial relations in Mumbai and Bengaluru, bringing together Canadian and Indian business leaders to explore women’s leadership, cross-border networks, and opportunities for commercial collaboration. The discussions will consider how sustained relationships can help women-led businesses access markets and contribute to stronger Canada–India economic partnerships.

Building on APF Canada’s participation in the Team Canada Trade Mission to Japan earlier this year, this initiative forms part of the Foundation's Women’s Business Mission to Asia Series, supporting women entrepreneurs in expanding internationally and advancing Canada’s trade diversification across the Indo-Pacific.

This initiative is made possible through the generous support of the Government of Canada's Women Entrepreneurship Strategy and the Mission Series' Official Airline Partner, Air Canada.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

Details to Follow. Email events@asiapacific.ca 

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech in Davos earlier this year has stimulated a global debate on what the "middle power moment" is, is not, and must aspire to be. This talk presents a Southeast Asian perspective on who the middle powers are; how the middle power moment is unfolding across Asia and the broader Indo-Pacific amid the global polycrisis; and why Canada and ASEAN member states must work more closely together toward a converged middle-powership to cultivate mutually beneficial partnerships across sectors. 

Dr. Cheng-Chwee Kuik, an APF Canada Indo-Pacific Visiting Scholar, argues that although Canada and the ASEAN states will be neither principal allies nor sufficient partners to one another, a survival-driven middle-powership remains not only desirable but imperative. 

Dr. Cheng-Chwee Kuik is a Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies, and his presentation will be based on his new book, Theorizing Hedging: Explaining Shifts and Variations in Alignment Choices (Cambridge University Press, 2026). 

With the increase in Canadian and foreign investment and an expanded military presence, the Canadian Arctic is likely to become a bigger target of hybrid threats, such as cyber attacks and attacks on critical infrastructure, as well as foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI).

This two-day workshop, co-organized by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada (APF Canada), the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Canada (KAS Canada), and Pendulum Geopolitical Advisory, will explore models for how northern and Indigenous communities might build greater civilian resilience against these threats, drawing examples and lessons learned from Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

Join us at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy for a talk with APF Canada's Indo-Pacific Visiting Scholar Dr. Cheng-Chwee Kuik, Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies, on his new book, Theorizing Hedging: Explaining Shifts and Variations in Alignment Choices (Cambridge University Press, 2026).

Professor Kuik argues that hedging — not balancing or bandwagoning — is the modal behaviour of non-great powers navigating high-stakes uncertainty, and offers one of the first theoretical accounts of strategic hedging in world politics. He will explain not only why smaller states hedge, but also why their alignment decisions shift and vary over time.

Professor Kuik will then apply his framework to the current strategic environment, examining how Southeast Asian states are calibrating their relationships with China and the United States, as well as with other middle powers, including Canada.
 

Agenda

A Special Lecture for MANA Mo 2026
Guest Speaker:  Prof Jay L. Batongbacal

Has your Kakehashi experience inspired you to want to return to Japan? Join us for a special online forum with presentations by the Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO), to learn about options for studying in Japan, Japanese higher education, and scholarship opportunities that can help make your dream a reality. 

This English-language event is open to all Canadian & U.S. Kakehashi alumni.