Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks during a press conference during the second day of the inaugural Canada Investment Summit in Toronto, on Tuesday.VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images
“What incredible timing, huh?”
That was John Toomey, CEO of Boston-based private equity firm HarbourVest Partners, speaking at an event hosted by the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association on the eve of the Canada Investment summit as foreign investors touched down in Toronto.
It is a unique moment. Mere weeks ago, the Canada-U.S. trade war was bumped up another notch with new tariffs and new threatening memes from President Donald Trump. Now investors controlling trillions in assets are here to be pitched on Canada.
There’s coincidence, in that this week’s summit had been planned for many months. But it wouldn’t have happened without Mr. Trump and the trade war he launched last year. It’s hard to imagine this kind of event happening at any other time, under any other Prime Minister – at least, not like this.
The deals and dealmakers to watch at the Canada Investment Summit
Justin Trudeau organized his own investment summit in 2016, but with less hoopla and a lesser guest list. Conservatives criticized him for being too cozy with foreign investors. And Mr. Trudeau wouldn’t have dreamed of proposing selling off concessions to operate Canada’s biggest airports, as Mr. Carney announced Tuesday – an idea once so controversial that prime ministers wouldn’t go there.
This time around, there was a gala. There were so many black Escalades and Suburbans in Yorkville that you had to wonder how movie stars would get to the Toronto International Film Festival.
The deal book Mr. Carney’s government sent out offers more than 160 projects in mining, energy, port infrastructure, manufacturing and technology, laid out in little rectangles like old hockey cards, but with projects and CapEx instead of players. West Coast Oil Pipeline, $35-billion. Nicola Wind Energy Project in British Columbia, $1.4-billion. And so on.
No other prime minister ever brought the global finance bros to this kind of party to buy Canada’s assets.
That’s in part because Mr. Carney has the contacts in global finance to fill the guest list.
But there is also the moment – the incredible timing.
Read the full transcript of Mark Carney’s speech at the Canada Investment Summit
In one sense, the summit is at odds with the trade war. Investors are sizing up Canadian operations when their access to the U.S. market is particularly uncertain. Some foreign investors aren’t keen on publicizing their interest in Canada for fear it might annoy Mr. Trump’s administration.
But if it wasn’t for Mr. Trump taking aim at Canada, a summit wouldn’t be happening this way.
Mr. Carney talked about that in his opening address Tuesday. How could he not? He spoke about great powers – he meant the U.S. – weaponizing economic integration and using tariffs as leverage.
He said Canada has responded by moving to build projects bigger, deregulate and make investment attractive. Before an audience of foreign investors, he also held out hope about U.S. trade, saying Canada is the U.S.’s best partner and suggesting “those opportunities” will return one day.
But right now, Mr. Trump, the global “rupture,” and the threat to Canada’s economy and sovereignty are the factors that give Mr. Carney the political licence with Canadians to do a summit like this, and to take risks – to announce a big new write-down on capital assets for business, advance Canada Revenue Agency rulings for billion-dollar investments. And airport deals.
Other prime ministers at other times wouldn’t have put on this show.
It would have been too on the nose for pro-corporate Brian Mulroney, who incidentally had to backpedal on stabs at privatizing airports in the eighties. Stephen Harper didn’t do it, though he showed up for Mr. Carney’s summit. Jean Chrétien led Team Canada trade missions, but the little guy from Shawinigan wouldn’t have thrown a love-in for the masters of the financial universe. Mr. Carney didn’t get elected to be an everyman.
A man holds a sign as he leaves a protest on the day of the opening night gala dinner of the Canada Investment Summit in Toronto, on Monday night.Arlyn McAdorey/Reuters
There were protests at this summit, but small ones. Eight premiers attended, including two New Democrats and four conservatives of various party labels.
Yet it is Mr. Carney’s moment, and a defining one. It will be his to answer for.
He has some time, despite the opposition Conservatives’ call for results now.
Foreign investment is certainly important to Canada, but the public consensus isn’t a hankering for foreign firms’ mergers and acquisitions, or banks and funds creating pools to invest. Most don’t share Mr. Carney’s optimism about asset managers operating airports. “Recycling capital” from infrastructure or funding regional airports with the proceeds from leasing big-city airports is abstract. The political test will be about greenfield investment in projects that create jobs.
Mr. Carney has set this summit as a crucial antidote to crisis.
The moment won’t last forever.