CBC News has learned Prime Minister Mark Carney has invited 100 of the world’s biggest investors to a summit in Toronto this September. The conference aims to pitch organizations that control trillions of dollars in capital on investing in Canada.
The organizations include private investment firms such as Blackrock and some of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth funds, including Singapore’s GIC. Invitations were sent out this week, and none of the invited parties responded to CBC News before publication.
The summit is part of a broader effort to draw global investment back to Canada as the world grapples with deeper uncertainty and global volatility. Carney has been meeting with world leaders and private businesses during his trips abroad in an effort to attract more investment to Canada.
Part of the pitch is that, amid geopolitical turmoil, trade upheaval and conflict, Canada offers a reliable place to invest in ports, pipelines and infrastructure projects.
“Canada is in a really good place. Canada is cool again,” said Michel Leduc, senior managing director and chief public affairs officer at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which will host the meeting.
WATCH | IMF warns Middle East war could spark global recession:
He said the summit will pitch “Canada, Inc.” to investment firms looking for a safe, reliable place to grow in an increasingly unstable world.
“We want to showcase what Canada offers to the world of global investors,” he told CBC News in an exclusive interview. “It’s a little bit like a large public company holding their investor day.”
The summit comes at a crucial time for this country.
For more than a decade, investment in Canada has lagged behind its peers. Canadian business investment was weak, some of Canada’s biggest pension plans were spending more money outside the country and large investors were putting more money abroad.
More recently, however, foreign investment in Canada has shown signs of picking up.
“Foreign direct investment in Canada reached the highest level since 2007, while Canada’s outward investment flows cooled in 2025,” wrote Maria Solovieva from TD economics.
Part of the drop off in investment was, at least initially, due to the collapse in global oil prices in 2015. But critics say Liberal government policies at the time made the investment climate even worse by adding multiple layers of new regulation and uncertainty.
Carney has vowed to change that. He has promised to streamline the approvals process. He launched the Major Projects Office and designated a suite of plans as being in the national interest. They range from the Contrecoeur Container Terminal Project at the Port of Montreal to the McIlvenna Bay Foran Copper Mine Project in Saskatchewan.
But business leaders in Canada say plans, memorandums of understanding and words alone are not enough.
Goldy Hyder, the CEO of the Business Council of Canada, said a summit like this is a good opportunity to promote Canada and help fund those kinds of projects.
He said the federal government has been saying many of the right things. But Canada needs to show investors that it is a country that can do and build big things — something he said it has repeatedly failed to do in the past.
Hyder said he hopes this time is different.
“If we don’t get our resources out of the ground expeditiously in an investment-friendly regulatory climate, we are going to miss this window one more time and I don’t know how lucky of a country we think we are, but we don’t have the nine lives of a cat,” he said.
Leduc said he hopes the conference, tentatively titled the Canada Investment Summit, will establish long-term relationships with some of the biggest names in investing.
“It’s a one- or two-day event, but it’s obviously more than that. We hope that it’s the start of something bigger, something exciting that will catalyze and create bigger opportunities going forward over many years,” he said.
Organizers did not want to get into which specific projects will be pitched and what, if any, projects are off limits.
“If you think of the big things we offer to the world — energy superpower, sovereign AI and data centres — we have one of the best financial sectors in the world,” said Leduc.
While summit organizers have not said which projects will be pitched, business leaders and analysts broadly agree on the sectors where Canada is under pressure to attract capital most urgently.
The oil and gas industry has been calling for new investment in pipelines and LNG terminals. And despite a year’s worth of talk, there’s still no new proponent to build an oil pipeline to the West Coast.
New housing construction hit a new low last month in spite of the government’s promises to build more.
And Ottawa has promised to spend more than $80 billion in the defence sector over the next five years.
WATCH | Federal government sets aside additional $81.8B over 5 years to build up military:
Leduc said foreign investment firms have taken notice of Canada’s plans. He believes the time is right for Canada to capitalize on that interest and draw in more investment from abroad.
The summit is set to be held in Toronto in mid-September. Invitations under Carney’s name have been sent out. It’s being co-hosted by the country’s two biggest pension plans, CPPIB and PSP, in collaboration with Invest in Canada, an agency that promotes foreign direct investment in Canada.
But inviting participants to a meeting is a far cry from actually getting money invested in specific projects. As of publication, CBC News had not confirmed which, if any, of the invitees planned to attend.
