Business Brief: Takeaways from the Canada Investment Summit

Morning. If today is Canada’s chance to show off why investors should bet on the country, yesterday was a reminder that money alone won’t build the projects on Ottawa’s wish list. Today, we look at the high hopes and hard realities emerging from Prime Minister Mark Carney’s investment summit.

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In the news

Trade: Canadian cities brace for tariff pain as the trade war escalates.

Culture: Scotiabank paid music funder FACTOR $11-million in heist case settlement, documents show.

Manufacturing: Big trouble grows in South Africa’s motor city as criminals target severance payments.

In focus

High hopes meet familiar hurdles

At two separate conferences yesterday, leaders from around the world and across sectors shared familiar frustrations about doing business in Canada. Interprovincial trade barriers turn the country into several markets. A lack of skilled labour threatens to stall projects even if the money is available. Even with new agencies aimed at cutting red tape, federal bureaucracy is a buzzkill.

Still, there was a sense of optimism that Canada is making the right moves.

In an interview with The Globe’s Andrew Willis, Prime Minister Mark Carney outlined plans to line up foreign capital behind a strategy to preserve a manufacturing sector that builds electric “autos of the future” while boosting trade with Asia and Europe.

“We are launching the investment super cycle that the country needs,” said Carney, who headlines the formal program today with a speech at 9 a.m. (ET).

No less than Jim Balsillie, a vocal critic of Carney’s economic policies, was heard saying to Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew and federal AI Minister Evan Solomon: “This is working, this is working.”

A few other takeaways from the summit:

The Maple Fund: The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. announced they are jointly launching a $50-billion “Maple Fund” that will make major investments in infrastructure and key sectors in Canada.

Brookfield and CPPIB will each put up as much as $25-billion over the next five years to make equity investments in sectors that Canada considers strategic, as well as critical infrastructure projects, James Bradshaw reports.

“Canada is entering a period of new ambition to advance major projects and build for the future, creating compelling investment opportunities across the country,” CPPIB chief executive officer John Graham said.

Speeding up? Raymond Chun, chief executive of Toronto-Dominion Bank, might agree – to a degree. In an interview with Stefanie Marotta, Chun also said that Canada is on the cusp of an “investment super cycle,” but that reducing regulatory complexities and improving access to skilled labour will be key to attracting investments.

Slowing it down: That last point could represent a bit of a sleeper issue at the summit. Given the scale of planned construction, Ottawa estimates the country must add more than 1.4 million tradespeople by 2033 – just as a large portion of workers are beginning to hit retirement age.

In regions like Halifax, a lack of skilled workers is already holding back economic growth, even before a fresh wave of demand is expected to come from the arrival of Canada’s new submarines. If investors decided tomorrow to shower Canada with enough money to build everything in its pitch book, the labour pool is nowhere near large enough: More than one-third of construction companies already report labour shortages or difficulty recruiting skilled workers, according to Statistics Canada.

A message from Mubadala: Camilla Languille, the Canadian co-CEO of private equity at Mubadala Investment Company, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign investment fund, argued that Canada first needs to “pivot its thinking from transactions to longer-term partnerships.”

“Just spend time with them, visit them in their home countries, come to the UAE not once but regularly, understand the ecosystems, the strategic objectives, their priorities, and how they can partner with you.”

If that wasn’t criticism of the summit itself, the remarks were nevertheless made at a decidedly transactional affair.

A 66-page “prospectus” was shared with summit attendees, framed as “a snapshot of the diverse opportunities available across multiple asset classes, sectors and stages of development.”

At one session yesterday, investors and government officials cycled through rounds of curated one-on-one meetings as a large clock counted down 15-minute sessions. Speed-dating for investors! (The organizers explicitly said it was “not speed dating,” but we calls it as we sees it.)

Languille argued that Canada’s focus should extend beyond matching capital with projects. The best measure of success, she said, is “not how much capital Canada attracts, but really how many global companies are financed, scaled and led from here.”

Manitoba’s maritime push: Premier Kinew pitched investors on plans to expand the Port of Churchill – highlighting the port’s current ability to access the EU more quickly than other ports in Canada.

Kinew’s remarks catch a wave of news circling EU-Canada ties. Later this week, Carney will address the European Parliament and pitch Canada as a strong EU partner. As part of exploratory talks, Eric Reguly reported on Sunday, officials are examining labour and student mobility between Canada and the EU.

The Premier said Manitoba will offer a sales-tax exemption on major capital investments related to the planned $57-billion expansion project.

Strength in AI safety: BCE Inc. announced plans to quadruple the capacity of its artificial-intelligence data centre operations in Saskatchewan. The telco plans to provide up to 1.2 gigawatts of compute power across three new facilities in the province through a series of investments that could top $5-billion.

In an earlier panel, Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Canadian AI company Cohere, said he believes building more data centres would give Canada greater leverage in its international relationships.

“We have many strengths in terms of data centres. We have a cold climate, we have clean energy. We are very well-positioned to become a superpower in data centres to the world. We can do that if we choose to,” he said.

Gomez is featured in more than a few headlines this week. On Sunday, he pushed back on calls from top leaders in AI to slow the pace of development – arguing those already established companies should not set the terms for safety and development.

With files from Andrew Willis, Jameson Berkow, Stefanie Marotta, James Bradshaw, Joe Castaldo, Mark Rendell, Jeffrey Jones, Irene Galea, Emma Graney, and I’m sorry if I’m forgetting anybody.

Charted

Food for thought: The annual rate of inflation was unchanged at 3 per cent in August as a slowdown in rising gas prices was offset by higher rent and travel tour costs, Statistics Canada reported yesterday.

Consumers found some relief at the grocery store as food prices rose more slowly than overall inflation for the first time since July 2024, climbing 2.8 per cent year-over-year.

Quoted

At TIFF, and in Washington, Quebec’s film industry finds itself in the hot seat.

Morning update

Global markets fell after the previous session’s selloff amid concerns ‌that oil prices firmly above US$100 could deepen the energy shock and as global bond yields hit fresh highs.

Wall Street futures were in the red ahead of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s interest rate call tomorrow. TSX futures followed sentiment lower.

Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was down 0.34 per cent in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 slid 0.4 per cent, Germany’s DAX dropped 0.3 per cent and France’s CAC 40 declined 0.42 per cent.

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed little changed, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1 per cent.

The Canadian dollar traded at 71.91 U.S. cents.