Prime Minister Mark Carney is hosting over 100 global investors overseeing more than C$100tn in assets at a two-day Toronto summit. As Canada faces a bitter trade feud and potential tariffs with the United States, Carney is leveraging his global finance background to pitch energy, resource, AI, and infrastructure projects to international wealth funds.
Pitching Global Wealth to Build a Resilient Economy
Over a little more than 18 months since Prime Minister Mark Carney declared that Canada’s century-old economic and military relationship with the United States was over
, the country has found itself navigating an increasingly unstable geopolitical climate. The escalation of a tariff war, collapsing trade talks, and Donald Trump’s remarks about making Canada a 51st state
have driven a bitter feud between the two North American neighbours.
Stepping up as Canada’s top pitch man, Carney is using personal connections from his career in top-tier global finance—including a start at investment bank Goldman Sachs and his time leading the central bank—to attract the world’s wealthiest asset managers. Toronto is hosting more than 100 global investors who collectively oversee more than C$100tn ($72tn; £53tn) in assets. Speaking at a pre-summit gala on Sunday, Carney told attendees that investors will come to ‘peer into our shop window’ because the world is looking at Canada differently
.
Sovereign Wealth Funds and Wall Street Chiefs Gather in Toronto
The two-day summit at a luxury hotel features high-profile figures from major international finance institutions. Guests include representatives from sovereign wealth funds in the United Arab Emirates and Norway, alongside chief executives like BlackRock’s Larry Fink and Blackstone president Jon Gray. Carney is set to open Monday with a private dinner, followed by a keynote address on Tuesday morning. Stephen Harper—who originally appointed Carney to lead Canada’s central bank—is scheduled to close the conference.
These were personal invites in many cases, literally,
said Goldy Hyder, president and chief executive of the Business Council of Canada, noting it is a group of former financiers calling on former peers rather than standard political lobbying. Miville Tremblay, a former Bank of Canada colleague who worked alongside Carney during the 2008 global financial crisis, added that Carney understands finance deeply and would know when they are bluffing and when the understatement meant that something really bad was happening
.
Shifting Away From the US Trade Pivot
The push to secure foreign capital aims to build a more independent and resilient Canadian economy, targeting sectors such as energy, resources, artificial intelligence, defence, transportation, and infrastructure. A recent report by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board—which is co-hosting the summit—cautioned that the scale and depth of investible opportunity remains the country’s greatest weakness, hampered by a domestic track record of lengthy project approvals.
Global capital is looking for opportunity, but opportunity alone does not make a market investible,
said Naomi Powell, director of the CPP Investments Insight Institute. For the past 25 years, trade ministers pitched foreign investors on Canada’s easy access to the US market; as Tremblay noted, This line doesn’t work anymore.
The Long-Term Stakes of Bilateral Trade
Despite the ongoing trade tensions, economists stress that a permanent economic divorce from the world’s largest economy remains a daunting prospect for Canada. Bradley Saunders, North America economist for Capital Economics, noted that trade exports to the US account for 20% of Canada’s GDP, representing one of the highest bilateral trade rates in the world. Saunders noted that securing the future of the trade deal is crucial, observing that long-term investment requires a stable environment and that won’t come until Canada has a certain trading relationship with the US
.
Tremblay stated that ultimately, both sides will have to sit down and make a compromise
when addressing the future of cross-border trade.
