Prime Minister Mark Carney welcomed an agreement on Wednesday under which the Malaysian carrier AirAsia will purchase 150 A220-300 aircraft from Airbus, in what Ottawa described as the largest single order for a Canadian-designed and Canadian-built jet ever recorded.
Every aircraft in the order will be assembled at Airbus Canada's Mirabel plant in Quebec, the home of the former Bombardier C Series programme that became the A220 after Airbus took control in 2018. The Mirabel facility currently rolls out the regional jet alongside an Alabama site.
Mr Carney said the deal would underwrite production at Mirabel for years and support thousands of supply-chain jobs across Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba. Airbus said it would not yet specify a delivery profile beyond an indicative window starting in 2028.
AirAsia's parent group has been adding capacity rapidly across South-east Asia and is replacing some of its older Airbus A320 fleet with the larger-range A220. The order is one of the largest in the model's history.
The announcement is a rare unambiguously positive industrial story for the Carney government, which has spent its first months in office wrestling with US tariff threats and a slow-motion crisis in the Canadian auto sector. Industry minister Anita Anand called it a "vote of confidence" in Canadian manufacturing.
Separately, Mr Carney spoke by phone on Thursday with the President of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, and named former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour as Canada's next governor general.