This is what we call the Canada-in-Asia Conference. We started it in 2023, originally as a partnership between the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and Universities Canada. We worked with Canadian universities to invite their alumni from all across Asia—India, south Asia, southeast Asia, Japan, Korea, China, Australia, New Zealand and so on—to an annual gathering where we bring together business leaders, government agencies, investment attraction agencies, and the provincial and municipal government bodies from Canada and their counterparts from Asia.
We've just done the fourth one this past February. It's anchored in Singapore, where we now have an office with support from the Government of Canada. For the conference itself, we have 30 partners that are financial supporters of the conference across the private sector and public sector. We get over 600 participants coming to this conference. Two-thirds are people based in Asia and one-third are people who come from Canada. More than 200 this past year came from Canada. That is about the balance that we want. Over half of the attendees are people who work in the private sector or in organizations that directly support the private sector.
Japan is a part of this. It's not a Canada-Singapore conference. It's a Canada-Asia conference. We have had corporate support from Japan, universities and other participants. We are working to grow that. We are looking to do more of these sorts of activities in the region.
It's really catching fire. When you bring our leading universities together.... A big part of the Canadian brand is the quality of our human capital and our leading researchers. We bring in the major research hubs, the innovation clusters, the incubators and accelerators, the whole venture ecosystem, and their counterparts from across Asia.
This is the kind of tissue we need to build between Canada and Asia. These sorts of things happen organically between Canada and the U.S., and between Canada and Europe. This kind of fabric is underdeveloped and underwoven when it comes to Canada and Asia. We firmly believe, and Japan is an excellent example of this, that you need that supporting tissue in order to get the business deals. Asia is not a place where you can just go and say, “Here's my product, do you want to buy it or not? Sign the contract.” You have to build those relationships and they have to develop comfort with you.
Much of the reputation we enjoy as Canadians in Asia is due to the work of our leading Canadian companies, such as Manulife, Sun Life, the pension funds and others, for over a century. The more we can expose decision-makers and new audiences in Asia to that, the more we will succeed in our economic, security and geopolitical goals.
