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By Paige Smith
Canada is poised to benefit as its government focuses more on its natural resources and demand is boosted by energy disruptions caused by the US and Israeli attacks on Iran, according to Royal Bank of Canada’s chief executive officer.
“Canada is very much on a mission to go leverage our resources again” under Prime Minister Mark Carney after a decade of “ignoring them,” Dave McKay said Tuesday at an RBC Capital Markets conference. Demand for Canada’s liquefied natural gas and minerals is strong in Asia and Europe, he said. “The world is sensing this unprecedented opportunity.”
Oil prices are up by more than 50% this year as fears the Iran war would hinder supplies from the Middle East increasingly materialize. Four of the region’s giants — Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait — have lowered their collective output by as much as 6.7 million barrels a day, with the war effectively closing the region’s main export route and causing storage tanks to fill up. The UAE’s biggest oil refinery halted as a precaution after a nearby drone attack.
Royal Bank posted record earnings in fiscal 2025, becoming the first Canadian lender to earn more than C$20 billion ($15 billion) in a single fiscal year. In the fiscal first quarter, its provisions for possible loan losses were a bit higher than Wall Street analysts had expected.
The firm also lost a handful of high-yield credit analysts and traders last month after it notched losses linked to the messy collapse of First Brands Group.
Royal Bank is seeing some credit risk, with subprime loans weak on both sides of the US-Canada border, McKay said Tuesday.
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