Carney pitches Canada to global investors amid US trade war — SkimNews
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- Mark Carney opened a two-day, invitation-only Canada Investment Summit in Toronto hosting roughly 300 global investors who oversee nearly $120 trillion in assets, as part of a push to attract $1 trillion in investment over five years backed by about $280bn in public money.
- The US-Canada trade war escalated recently after talks collapsed: Washington imposed 50% levies on about $20bn of Canadian goods, and Ottawa retaliated with 15–50% tariffs on a similar value of US imports — a rupture from the pre-tariff era when nearly 80% of Canadian exports went south.
- A leaked summit prospectus lists 167 potential investments heavily weighted toward resources: minerals and metals alone account for nearly 38%, and adding energy and power infrastructure pushes the resource share to roughly 70%.
- Carney's government has set up a Major Projects Office and a "one project, one review" approach to compress federal-provincial approval timelines for projects it deems to be in the national interest.
- NDP leader Avi Lewis accused Carney of "selling our airports and our ports and privatising more of our economy to the benefit of foreign investors," while labour, Indigenous, housing and climate groups plan a Monday rally dubbed "The Many vs. the Money" outside the venue.
- Analysts Vina Nadjibulla of the Centre for Strategic Statecraft and Rachel Ziemba of the Center for a New American Security flagged execution risks — long regulatory reviews, projects still at concept stage, and a tilt toward capital-intensive resource sectors that may not replace the jobs lost from US-integrated manufacturing.
Why it matters: Canada is trying to rewire an economy that sent nearly 80% of exports to the US, but the 167-project prospectus reveals the pivot is really toward mines, pipelines and power (~70% of offerings) rather than diversified manufacturing — meaning Canada may trade US dependency for resource-extraction dependency, and the NDP plus a planned "Many vs. the Money" rally say ordinary Canadians won't share in the upside.
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