A Seat at the Table: CanCham’s Roundtable with Canada’s Senate Delegation

In September, CanCham Korea joined a roundtable on Canada-Korea business at the Embassy of Canada in Seoul with a visiting Senate delegation: the Honourable Raymonde Gagné, Speaker of the Senate of Canada; Senator Yonah Martin of British Columbia; Senator Yuen Pau Woo of British Columbia; and Senator Hassan Yussuff of Ontario. Philippe Lafortune, Ambassador of Canada to the Republic of Korea, hosted the discussion, with members of the Embassy’s trade team and parliamentary staff also taking part.

Representing the CanCham community were Melanie Oh, Executive Director of CanCham Korea; Rockey Yoo, former CanCham Chair and international-disputes lawyer; Jinhong (Andrew) Kim, Managing Director of AtkinsRéalis Korea; and Steve Han, Head of Rio Tinto Korea, with Marie Frenette, Business Development Manager, also attending for CanCham. From the Embassy, Jennifer Rodrigue, then Acting Senior Trade Commissioner, and Catherine Gao of the trade team also took part.

The senators came for something beyond formal briefings: a ground-level view of how the Canada-Korea commercial relationship works in reality. They also emphasized their role in carrying business perspectives back into parliamentary committee work.

From market entry to staying power

One theme ran through the discussion: entering Korea is only the first stage. Korea is sophisticated, competitive and fast-moving. Companies that succeed here understand the market early, build the right local relationships, and keep adapting as their needs evolve over the following months and years.

Canada has now led two Team Canada Trade Missions to Korea: 160+ organizations in 2024, and 100+ organizations and over 180 delegates in 2026, both designed to connect Canadian businesses directly with Korean partners and decision-makers.¹ As Minister of International Trade Maninder Sidhu observed following the 2026 mission, “Canadian companies came here ready to compete and collaborate, and they are leaving with new partnerships, new opportunities and new momentum.”²

But the roundtable was clear that commercial follow-through can’t end when the delegation leaves. Trade missions create momentum; relationships, troubleshooting and execution turn that momentum into business. This is where the four parts of Canada’s support ecosystem in Korea each play a distinct role:

When a company needs…	Support can come from
Market intelligence, qualified contacts, government access or help with a market-access issue	Trade Commissioner Service (TCS)
Sector- or region-specific programs, provincial trade missions, or introductions tied to a specific province’s industry priorities	Provincial trade offices
Financing, credit insurance, guarantees or risk capacity for an international transaction	Export Development Canada (EDC)
Ongoing local networks, peer insight, visibility, stakeholder connections, in-market services, and help finding the appropriate organization	. Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Korea (CanCham Korea)

Trade Commissioner Service (TCS) operates within the Government of Canada’s global trade network.³ Export Development Canada (EDC) brings financing and risk tools, backed by a growing Seoul presence. Provincial offices add a layer built around their own province’s priority sectors, as seen later in Alberta’s energy and industrial work in Korea. CanCham’s role is to stay connected to companies before, during and after major missions, spot recurring issues across the membership, and help members find the right door when their challenge changes- not to duplicate TCS or EDC, but to make the ecosystem work as an ecosystem.

Facing a challenge you can’t quite place, or unsure who to ask? That’s exactly what CanCham wants to hear about. The Canada-Korea Business Voices Survey (5 minutes) asks about your biggest operating challenge and what kind of support would help, then we help route it to the right place.

Turning opportunity into bankable projects

Offshore wind was the roundtable’s most concrete example of this ecosystem in action. Drawing on AtkinsRéalis Korea’s long history in the market, Andrew Kim pointed to several areas of Korea’s energy transition where Canadian capabilities could participate: offshore wind, AI and data-centre demand, advanced manufacturing and nuclear.

Korea plans to tender 55 GW of offshore wind between 2026 and 2035, targeting 25 GW of cumulative deployment by 2035, with 4+ GW expected annually.⁴ For Canadian firms, that opportunity spans engineering, project development, marine and installation services, grid connections, financing, insurance and long-term asset management.

Kim raised EDC support as one way to strengthen Canadian participation. EDC’s Korea activity has grown steadily since opening its Seoul office in 2023: roughly C$1.35 billion in business facilitated in 2025, 300+ customers supported annually, and a C$360 million financing package for SK ecoplant announced in March 2026, EDC’s first transaction with the company under a broader strategic relationship with SK Group.⁵

That example illustrates the broader point raised around the table: sometimes the obstacle isn’t finding the opportunity. It’s assembling the financial, institutional and commercial support to execute it.

Reducing cross-border risk: a Vancouver-Seoul arbitration corridor

Rockey Yoo raised an idea for further consideration (not an existing government initiative): giving Vancouver and BC a stronger role in Canada-Korea international commercial dispute resolution. Companies weighing a major foreign investment want confidence not just in the opportunity, but in how disputes get resolved if complications arise.

The Vancouver International Arbitration Centre has operated since 1986, and BC’s arbitration framework is positioned as a neutral venue for international arbitration.⁶ Seoul has its own well-developed ecosystem through the Korean Commercial Arbitration Board (KCAB).⁷

The proposal is not a new bilateral institution. It is to deepen working links among existing centres, counsel and arbitrators, and thereby reduce one source of uncertainty that can deter the commitment of capital. Vancouver also sits, geographically, roughly midway between the principal commercial centres of Europe and Asia, and is widely regarded as a neutral North American venue.

Strategic attention can travel beyond one project

Steve Han (Rio Tinto Korea) noted a rise in approaches from Korean conglomerates exploring Canadian lithium and aluminum assets during the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project competition. This wasn’t about that procurement’s outcome, but about a signalling effect: high-visibility government-to-government engagement can spread interest into resources, investment and industrial partnerships well beyond the original sector. (Canada announced in July 2026 that Germany’s TKMS was selected as preferred supplier for up to 12 submarines, with Korea’s Hanwha Ocean as reserve supplier⁸). The forward-looking question: how does Canada preserve and broaden that Korean corporate interest now that the file has moved on?

That connects to energy security, where the relationship is visibly moving past simple buyer-seller trade. Senators asked what happens to the case for long-horizon Canadian oil and gas investment as Korea expands renewables. The answer is that Korea’s transition is balancing semiconductor, AI and manufacturing demand against grid constraints, nuclear, offshore wind and continued hydrocarbon use as petrochemical feedstock. In June, Canada and Korea agreed to deepen cooperation on critical-mineral stockpiling, strategic-resource investment, LNG, LPG, crude oil and hydrogen; energy was Canada’s largest export category to Korea in 2025 at C$2.2 billion.⁹

Alberta has been especially active in 2026: a simplified origin-documentation framework giving eligible Alberta crude zero-tariff access under the Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement (CKFTA), an Alberta-Hanwha MOU spanning energy, industrial development, defence and shipbuilding, and Korean government commendations in August for two Alberta Korea Office officials.¹⁰ The opportunity is increasingly two-way: Korean capital and technology in Canadian projects, Canadian resources and engineering more deeply embedded in Korean industry.¹⁰

Beyond the roundtable: the Senate delegation’s Korea visit

The roundtable was part of a broader September 6-12 visit led by Speaker Gagné, including meetings with Prime Minister Han Seong-sook (defence, AI, energy, technology and Korean concerns about Canada’s steel tariff-quota measures)¹¹ and National Assembly Speaker Cho Jeong-sik,¹² plus a stop in Gwangju for cultural and people-to-people exchange.¹³

From access to execution

For Canadian businesses, Korea increasingly represents more than a final destination for exports. Its strength in batteries, semiconductors, shipbuilding, engineering, construction and advanced manufacturing means Korean partnerships can also connect Canadian companies with wider Asian and global value chains.

At the same time, technical capability alone may not be enough to win large international projects. Financing, guarantees, insurance, institutional access and local relationships increasingly sit alongside engineering or product competitiveness, which is why the roles of TCS, EDC and sustained in-market organizations matter together rather than independently.

For businesses already established in Korea, continuity remains critical. Trade missions, parliamentary delegations and ministerial visits create access and attention, but commercial value is often built in the months and years that follow: through repeated contact, troubleshooting, market intelligence, and the ability to reconnect companies with the right decision-makers when circumstances change.

The roundtable created an avenue for that dialogue to continue. Senator Martin proposed a future virtual engagement involving CanCham Korea, Ambassador Lafortune and members of the Canada-Korea Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Group, an opportunity for perspectives from the wider business community to be brought into a subsequent discussion.

Add your voice to the follow-up!

CanCham Korea is working with the Embassy, TCS, EDC and provincial partners to turn this engagement into practical business outcomes, and we want the next conversation to reflect more than the people who fit around one table.

What opportunities are you seeing in the Canada-Korea relationship? Where is your company hitting friction? What support would actually help?

Responses will be summarized in aggregate or de-identified form to inform CanCham’s follow-up with participating senators and other stakeholders.