Rod Phillips: Hosting the Investment Summit matters. What comes next matters more

This morning, some one hundred of the world’s most consequential investors will meet in Toronto for the first-ever Canada Investment Summit. Between them they steward trillions of dollars, and for two days they’ll be courted by Canadian companies, financial institutions and politicians to catalyze the $1 trillion in new investment in Canada over the next five years.

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We should be clear-eyed about how far we have to climb. For a decade, capital left our country faster than we could attract it. According to RBC, for every dollar of foreign investment that came in, roughly two went out with more than $1 trillion of investment exiting Canada between 2015 and 2024. That number represents factories and mines that were never built, constricted career opportunities and businesses that chose to grow and prosper somewhere else.

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But that tide is turning. Last year, foreign direct investment reached nearly $100 billion, its highest level since 2015, and for the first time in 10 years, more money flowed in than out. The prime minister has touted Canada’s ambition to mobilize $1 trillion in new investment over the next five years. It’s a bold vision that will ultimately be measured by the projects that get built and jobs that get created.

Canada is convening the world’s largest investors, yet their final decisions will depend on their confidence in conditions on the ground. That is where city regions come in. Investors will choose sites with reliable power and accessible transit. They favour regions with the talent to staff new offices. They prefer jurisdictions where permits are issued when they are promised. And they invest in communities where executives want to raise their families. The federal and provincial governments set the conditions for investment, but it is city regions that translate those conditions into businesses and livelihoods.

Bridging the distance between our national ambition and our regions’ execution is a place where we have underperformed in the past. Historically, 80 per cent of that work has happened in the country’s major urban regions, where global companies find the talent, infrastructure, research institutions and markets they need to grow. If that history is any guide, many of the commitments announced at the summit will become real projects in the city regions of Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver and Halifax, and we must be ready to put in the legwork.

So as much as hosting this summit matters, what comes next matters more. It means having sites project ready, connecting companies with the right people, coordinating governments and Indigenous partners, preparing the talent and staying at the table to work out the details after an announcement has made the headlines.

At Toronto Global, we are doing that work. Toronto Global helped over 350 international companies navigate the Greater Toronto region and establish their businesses. It’s not accidental that household brands such as Samsung, Sanofi, Unilever and Microsoft landed in Toronto. They were all courted, guided and, above all, supported as they expanded in Canada.

The work following this first-ever Canada Investment Summit is clear: we must make compelling cases that our city regions are places to invest and then follow through to land those investments, creating jobs and opportunity in our communities. It will require marrying speed with certainty, because capital that waits for decisions on land, power and permits is capital that leaves.

City regions coast to coast are proving that they’re open for business. Canada has conditions that are hard to beat in today’s volatile word: political stability, the rule of law, an educated workforce and abundant energy. The federal government is marketing all those strengths to investors, and they give every Canadian region a competitive advantage globally.

When the delegates fly home, the work on the ground begins. If Canada’s new ambition is met by execution on the ground, this first Canada Investment Summit can turn over a new leaf for the Canadian economy. That’s the work ahead, and the Greater Toronto Region is ready for it.

Rod Phillips is chair of Toronto Global, the investment attraction agency for the Greater Toronto region, and the former Ontario Minister of Finance. 

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