Dominic LeBlanc in his office in Ottawa in December, 2025. Mr. Leblanc will lead a Canadian trade delegation to Mexico will include leaders of approximately 250 Canadian businesses as well as government and industry officials.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
A massive Canadian trade delegation will descend on Mexico on Sunday, as Ottawa attempts to make up for lost time and strengthen economic ties between the two countries in the face of U.S. protectionism.
Led by Dominic LeBlanc, the federal minister responsible for North American trade, the trip will include leaders of approximately 250 Canadian businesses as well as government and industry officials. In an interview, Mr. LeBlanc billed it as “the largest bilateral trade mission undertaken by Canada,” since at least the late 1990s or early 2000s.
The six-day trip is happening against a backdrop of uncertainty about the future of continental trade. The North American free trade pact – known variously as CUSMA or the USMCA – is up for review this year, and there are concerns that U.S. President Donald Trump could walk away from the trilateral deal.
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This week, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said he will mostly negotiate separately with Canada and Mexico, rather than as a bloc, and complained that Canada has been the more difficult country to deal with. That’s been widely perceived as an attempt by the Trump administration to drive a wedge between the partners.
Mr. LeBlanc played down that danger, telling The Globe and Mail that his private discussions with Mr. Greer and other U.S. officials have been more encouraging, and that Prime Minister Mark Carney and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum both remain committed “to really ensuring that it is a true trilateral review.” He also touted a close relationship that he is developing with Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s Economy Secretary.
But while Mr. LeBlanc and his Mexican counterpart will discuss the USMCA state of play during this week’s visit, he stressed that the trip is more about pursuing Mr. Carney’s agenda of diversifying Canada’s trade partners to reduce economic dependence on the United States.
To that end, the trade mission is focused on five sectors in which Ottawa sees particularly strong growth potential for Canadian exports to Mexico: agriculture and food, advanced manufacturing, clean technology, information and communication technology, and creative industries.
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney and Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico City, in September, 2025.YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images
It’s an effort some Canadian business leaders and trade experts say is long overdue. While Mexico is seen by many as an obvious destination for Canadian goods and services – because of geography, transportation links, free trade and mutual integration with the U.S. – it has rarely received sustained focus.
“We’ve been an important partner for Mexico for many years,” said Shauna Hemingway, a former Canadian diplomat who is now an adviser to the Business Council of Canada, based in Mexico City. But this is the first time, she said, that Canada is seemingly developing a “stand-alone strategy” for improving business ties between the countries.
Canada’s commercial relationship with Mexico has grown considerably since the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, and the country is often touted by Canadian officials as our third-largest trading partner. However, trade and investment figures paint a more complex picture and point toward unrealized opportunities for Canadian businesses.
Mexico is Canada’s third-biggest source of imports, having sent $47-billion worth of goods to Canada in 2024. This is led by automobiles and parts, electronic equipment and consumer goods, reflecting Mexico’s role as the continent’s low-cost manufacturing hub and a booming centre for auto production.
The country has also proven an attractive destination for Canadian foreign direct investment, which totalled $46-billion in 2024. More than 60 Canadian auto parts companies and nearly 140 Canadian mining companies operate in Mexico. And a number of Canada’s largest businesses have a sizable footprint in the country.
TC Energy Corp. TRP-T has over US$11-billion invested in 3,600 kilometres of natural gas pipelines in Mexico; Bank of Nova Scotia BNS-T has 440 branches in the country and is Mexico’s sixth-largest bank by deposits; and manufacturers including Bombardier Inc. BBD-B-T and BRP Inc. DOO-T, as well as auto-parts makers such as Martinrea International Inc. MRE-T, Linamar Corp. LNR-T and Magna International Inc. MG-T, have factories there.
At the same time, Canadian exports to Mexico have been underwhelming. Canadian companies shipped around $8.6-billion of goods to the country in 2024. Exports to the U.S., by comparison, totalled around $600-billion that year, while exports to China were around $30-billion.
The trade visit is largely aimed at boosting demand for Canadian products, and fostering more supply-chain partnerships between Canadian and Mexican businesses. It’s focused mainly on introducing small and medium-sized Canadian businesses to the market.
“It’s not the 1990s Team Canada trade trip, where the Prime Minister would stand with the CEOs of some of the biggest companies, and they would sign deals that had largely been prepared weeks and months ahead of time,” Mr. LeBlanc said, while noting that there may still be a few such announcements.
Mostly, he said, this mission will feature “a big contingent of small and medium-sized businesses that may have modest or very limited exposure to the Mexican market, but are interested in scaling up and expanding exports.”
The trip includes stops in Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara, and will involve business-to-business meetings set up by the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service.
Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters president Dennis Darby, who will be participating, said he was initially a bit skeptical of plans for the mission, which emerged after Mr. Carney met with Ms. Sheinbaum in September in Mexico. But Mr. Darby said he has been won over by the sense that it will involve “a lot of networking, as opposed to a lot of speechifying.”
“I’m going in very hopeful,” he said. “This is the ground game that we have to do.”
Mexico City on Jan. 30. Mexico is Canada’s third-biggest source of imports.ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images
Canadian interest in Mexico was growing even before the trade war with the U.S. raised the stakes for trade diversification.
American tariffs on China, which started in 2018, and supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have made Mexico a more attractive manufacturing hub for North American importers. And Canadian companies are increasingly seeing Mexico as a springboard to the rest of Latin America, said Michael McAdoo, a director of global trade and investment at Boston Consulting Group.
“It is a place where you can get world-class facilities with very attractive factor costs and access, not just to the other North American markets, but Mexico is one of the countries with the greatest number of free-trade agreements,” he said.
“The more exposure Canadian business leaders and executives have to Mexico, the more I think they will like it.”
Meanwhile, Canadian exporters have had some notable successes in getting into Mexican supply chains in recent years, said Jorge Rave, Export Development Canada’s vice-president for Latin America and the Caribbean, who is based in Mexico City.
He pointed to the Mexican retailer Soriana, which runs one of the country’s largest grocery chains, and Axtel, a Mexican telecoms company.
In both cases, EDC – a Crown corporation dedicated to boosting Canadian exports – provided low-cost financing to the Mexican companies on the condition they buy from Canadian suppliers. Mr. Rave said procurement by both companies from Canadian suppliers is up more than 500 per cent over the past seven or eight years.
“There’s a much more interesting story on diversification of trade and interest in the Mexican market that we are seeing on the ground, versus what the data alone is telling us,” he said.
Companies such as Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. CP-T are betting on this growth. One reason CP bought the Kansas City Southern Railway in 2021 was to create a continental network that encompassed Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. This has allowed products to be shipped directly between Canada and Mexico in a single train car – a link that CPKC chief executive Keith Creel has dubbed a “land bridge” between the two countries.
In a fourth-quarter earnings call last month, Mr. Creel said that Canada-Mexico shipping volumes, in both directions, had grown by $140-million compared to the previous year. “We see opportunity there to add on to that pretty significantly,” he said.
Doing business in Mexico can still come with its challenges.
That includes the rule of law, particularly after Ms. Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, introduced judicial reforms – notably, relating to the election of judges – that heightened concerns around political influence and corruption.
The regulatory environment can also be constraining. Mr. López Obrador reversed an opening of Mexico’s energy market, and around US$3.5-billion worth of investments in Canadian mining projects in the country have been stalled by regulatory challenges, according to the mining committee of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Mexico.
And there can be safety concerns that come with operating in certain Mexican regions plagued by drug cartel violence. This was brought to the fore last week when Canadian mining company Vizsla Silver Corp. VZLA-T, which is developing a mine in the troubled Sinaloa state, said that 10 of its local employees were murdered.
A funeral procession for Ignacio Salazar Flores, one of the miners kidnapped and murdered last month from a mine run by Canada’s Vizsla Silver Corp., in Sombrerete, Mexico, on Tuesday.Edgar Chavez/Reuters
Such concerns might not apply to the smaller potential exporters participating in the trade mission. But the trip will nevertheless attempt to address them with briefings for delegates on how to contend with some of the business-environment challenges.
While the mission is mostly about boosting business-to-business ties, it’s also a sign of improving relations between Ottawa and Mexico City, which could be crucial in the USMCA negotiations.
Only a year ago, the relationship appeared to have frayed, with Mexicans upset by suggestions (particularly by Ontario Premier Doug Ford) that Canada could deal with the U.S. separately and leave Mexico to fend for itself. There was also a sense among Mexican officials that then-prime minister Justin Trudeau had not prioritized the relationship.
That perception has changed under Mr. Carney, who visited Mexico in September to mend fences. Still, there are visible differences between how the two countries are approaching the trade-deal review.
Mexico City has responded to U.S. concerns about Chinese products entering the North American market by increasing tariffs on Asian products, while Ottawa broke rank with Washington and lowered its tariffs on some Chinese electric vehicles.
Two weeks ago, the U.S. Trade Representative and Mexican Economy Secretary released a statement saying they would work together on “possible structural and strategic reforms” to the continental trade pact including “stronger rules of origin for key industrial goods, enhanced collaboration on critical minerals, and increased external trade policy alignment.” Canada was not mentioned.
Ms. Sheinbaum did praise Mr. Carney’s landmark speech in Davos, Switzerland, last month, in which he called on middle powers to unite. And Juan Carlos Baker, a former Mexican undersecretary for foreign trade who played a leading role in the last round of continental trade negotiations, said he’s not seeing much nervousness in Mexico about alignment with Canada.
With all the uncertainty, one hope is that the trade mission this week will serve as evidence of why free trade is worth preserving in the first place.
“I think the high-level message,” said Ms. Hemingway of the Business Council, “is that the best way to guarantee a continuance of CUSMA is to use it.”