TORONTO (AP):
United States President Donald Trump wants factories and investment moving south to the United States. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is betting that he can make billions flow north.
About 300 CEOs and senior executives from some of the world’s biggest investment firms will descend on the Four Seasons in Yorkville, a tony Toronto enclave of high-end restaurants and designer boutiques, for Carney’s Canada Investment Summit this week.
The investors collectively manage more than US$120 trillion in assets, underscoring the scale of capital Carney hopes to tap as Canada tries to attract billions in new investment and reduce its economic dependence on the United States.
“Canada is about so much more than being next to the United States,” Carney said at a news conference last week in Banff, Alberta. “We have what the world wants.”
Carney pointed to Canada’s vast energy and critical-mineral resources, its highly educated workforce, and trade agreements that give businesses based in Canada access to roughly 1.5 billion consumers around the world.
He said the turnout showed that investors were interested in Canada on its own merits.
“They are coming because of Canada,” he said. “If they wanted to go to the United States, they would go to the United States.”
Few people know this crowd better than Carney. He ran the central banks of Canada and England, spent 13 years at Goldman Sachs, and later chaired the boards of Bloomberg L.P. and Brookfield Asset Management, putting him very much in his element among the global investors and money managers gathering at the Four Seasons.
Carney will court that capital in separate meetings with the CEOs of Sydney-based Macquarie Group, whose asset-management arm is the world’s largest infrastructure investment manager, and Singapore state-owned Temasek Holdings, a major global investment company.
A Canadian official described the summit as the largest gathering of investment decision-makers ever assembled in Canada, alongside Canadian CEOs bringing projects at varying stages of readiness. But the official cautioned that the summit is not expected to produce a rush of deals this week, with the most significant results likely to emerge over the next 12 to 18 months. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly about the matter.
TRADE WAR RAISES STAKES
But the summit comes at a critical moment for Canada. Trade talks collapsed on August 21, and then Trump imposed 50 per cent tariffs on about US$20 billion in Canadian goods, and Canada retaliated. Washington then raised the stakes again, announcing bans on some Canadian imports and moving to shut Canadian products out of large, long-term US government contracts.
Trump’s tariffs and efforts to shift manufacturing south of the border are undermining what long was one of the country’s biggest attractions to foreign investors: reliable access to the enormous US market under continental free trade.
Dominic Barton, the new chair of Invest in Canada and former global head of McKinsey & Company, told The Associated Press that concerns that Trump’s trade war would keep investors away from the summit have not materialised.
“People are here,” Barton said. “I haven’t seen an iota of that.”
Barton said Trump’s trade upheaval is forcing Canada to become less dependent on the United States and more ambitious abroad. He recalled former Quebec premier Jean Charest suggesting that Canadians might one day “thank Trump” for shaking the country out of its complacency.
“This is a good jolt,” Barton said. “Let’s use it.”
Barton said the US would remain a critical market, with roughly three-quarters of Canadian exports still going south, but argued that Canada needs to push much harder into Europe, Asia, and other markets.
Barton said Carney’s longstanding relationships with global investors, along with the deep ties built by Canada’s major pension funds, helped bring investors to the summit.
Carney and business leaders are urging global investors to look past the trade war and make a bigger bet on Canada. His government also said on Monday that it would fast-track tax rulings for investments of US$1 billion or more, giving major investors more certainty before they commit capital.
Carney is drawing a pointed contrast with Trump’s America, pitching Canada as a stable, rules-based alternative to an increasingly unpredictable United States.
Investors coming to Canada will find “a country that respects rule of law and a country that is reliable”, Carney said.
“That combination is pretty rare in the world,” he said. “And it’s an attractive combination.”
Carney sharpened the message on Sunday, telling Canadian business leaders that Canada’s greatest strength was something “that cannot be found on any balance sheet: trust”.
John Graham, CEO of CPP Investments, one of the world’s largest institutional investors and the manager of Canada Pension Plan assets, is helping host the summit. He said the fund compares investment opportunities in Canada with those around the world.
“The conversation about Canada is changing,” Graham said.
The summit is aimed at matching global capital — including Canada’s pension funds, which rank among the world’s biggest institutional investors — with major projects in critical minerals, technology, defence, advanced manufacturing, and energy.
Carney’s private meetings will be tailored to investors’ portfolios and the types of projects they are interested in financing, according to a Canadian official.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and Blackstone President Jon Gray will headline a public discussion on global capital, while former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is scheduled to close the summit. Carney then heads to Europe, where he will address the European Parliament later in the week as Canada seeks a broader strategic partnership with the EU.
