Canada’s first investment summit brings in nearly $500 billion in new investment

— File photo by Lars Hagberg, courtesy of the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada

This week Prime Minister Mark Carney, CPP Investments and PSP Investments hosted the first Canada Investment Summit in Toronto, a two-day pitch to the world’s largest investors aimed at drawing $1 trillion into Canadian clean energy, critical minerals, new technologies and AI over the next five years. 

The federal government says the summit produced nearly $500 billion in new investment commitments. Canada’s banks accounted for nearly $325 billion of it, pension funds and insurers close to $100 billion, and investment funds more than $14 billion. 

The largest single commitment came from Bell, which is already building an AI data centre outside Regina and signed a preliminary agreement with Saskatchewan to quadruple its size. The expansion would bring total investment to $52.5 billion, the biggest private capital investment in the province’s history, and create more than 4,500 jobs. 

Ottawa also cut the tax on new business investment roughly in half, to less than half the American rate. Companies choosing where to build now have a stronger case for Canada, and they can write off the full cost of new equipment, pipelines and mining property in the first year rather than a portion each year over a decade. 

All of it is aimed at reversing a decade of money leaving. More than $1 trillion in investment left the country between 2015 and 2024. 

Not everyone welcomed the summit. In an interview with CBC, David Suzuki argued that bringing global investors together to fund projects tied to mining, pipelines and power generation would put economic growth ahead of the air, water and soil that people need to live. 

Former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, now chair of Alberta’s pension manager AIMCo, made the opposite case in his closing address, arguing that Canada’s resources are its comparative advantage and that they sit in a rule of law business environment with the highest environmental standards and far from conflict zones. He welcomed the government’s move to fast-track major project approvals, particularly in the oilsands, and said more needs to be done, because if Canada doesn’t reform permitting, the Americans will remain the country’s only customers. 

The standards haven’t changed either. The Canada Energy Regulator still assesses environmental effects on the projects it reviews (more on that below), industrial carbon pricing remains in force for large industry, and oil and gas methane emissions fell 46 per cent from their 2014 peak to 2024 while production grew. 

That’s the certainty engaged women have been asking for. Our national research found 70 per cent support accelerating regulatory processes to attract capital back to Canada, and women at our Calgary workshop put investment certainty at the top of their list. Two days in Toronto answered part of that, and the rest gets answered by what actually gets permitted and built.