Carney pitches Canada to global investors as Trump tries to pull investment south

TORONTO -- U.S. President Donald Trump wants factories and investment moving south to the United States. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is betting 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 $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. “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 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.

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 authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

But the summit comes at a critical moment for Canada. Trade talks collapsed Aug. 21, then Trump imposed 50% tariffs on about $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 U.S. government contracts.

Trump’s tariffs and efforts to shift manufacturing south of the border are undermining what was long one of the country’s biggest attractions to foreign investors: reliable access to the enormous U.S. market under continental free trade.

Carney and business leaders will urge global investors to look past the trade war and make a bigger bet on Canada.

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 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, defense, 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.