250 Elite Investors, 167 Pitches: Some Clean Economy Projects Make the Cut as Canada Investment Summit Convenes in Toronto
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With as many as 250 of the world’s top investors converging on Toronto next week for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Canada Investment Summit, news reports say pipelines, nuclear plants, railways, AI data centres, and more will be among the 167 domestic projects on offer.
The aim of the
summit, co-hosted by Carney, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments), is to attract
$500 billion in foreign investment over the next five years and kick-start
$1 trillion in economic activity to help reduce Canada’s dependence on its unreliable neighbour to the south. Summit participants with nearly $120 trillion under management are expected to show up from as many 28 countries to discuss a collection of projects with a reported minimum value of $200 million.
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CBC
reports the 67-page dealbook for the summit covers eight investment categories, including 63 projects in mining and metals, 31 in a clean energy category that includes carbon capture and storage projects and nuclear power plants, 19 in advanced manufacturing, 16 in marine and port infrastructure, 11 in power and utilities, 11 in conventional energy, 10 in digital technology, and six in transportation.
The Toronto Star
says the list of projects “skews heavily toward energy and natural resources,” with about two-thirds of them involving fossil fuels, renewable energy, and mining. Specific offerings identified by the Star and CBC include:
• A $57-billion expansion of the
Port of Churchill, Manitoba;
• The controversial
West Coast Pipeline, valued at a
likely overly modest $35 billion;
• Equally contentious new liquefied natural gas infrastructure, including $28.5 billion for the
Ksi Lisims floating LNG terminal off the British Columbia coast that the government describes as “fully permitted and shovel-ready”;
• The
Wind West offshore wind project in Nova Scotia, priced at $44 billion;
• $2.1 billion for the proposed Prairie Connector pipeline expansion
toward the United States;
• Expansion of Ontario’s Bruce nuclear power station;
• The massive, new nuclear development proposed for
Wesleyville, Ontario;
• Mining opportunities in the
Ring of Fire in northern Ontario;
• A $10.9-billion high-speed rail line between Edmonton and Calgary;
• A pitch to convert civilian auto parts manufacturers to produce land defence systems and specialty industrial vehicles.
“The rest of the list is comprised primarily of ports, data centres and advanced manufacturing projects, largely in the defence sector,” writes Star business columnist Adam Radwanski. “The heavy resource focus means that the pitchbook is also considerably weighted toward Western Canada and to some extent Atlantic Canada, with relatively few listed projects in Ontario.”
A Who’s Who of Global Finance
A
handful of
news reports, two of them in the last week, have identified many though not nearly all of the investors who are expected to attend the summit. They include:
• BlackRock Inc. CEO Larry Fink;
• BlackStone Inc. President Jon Gray;
• China International Capital Corp. and China Investment Corp.;
• Dutch pension fund APG Groep N.V. executive board chair Annette Mosman;
• Dhilan Pillay, CEO of Singapore’s state-owned fund Temasek Holdings;
• Senior executives from JPMorgan Chase, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, U.S. investment giant KKR & Co., Oslo-based Norges Bank Investment Management, Australia’s IFM Investors and Macquarie Group, Emirati state fossil Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC), and more than a half-dozen Middle Eastern investment funds, including United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Co., and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund;
• More than two dozen of Canada’s biggest investors, including 11 major pension funds and more than 45 prominent corporations, including Cohere Inc. CEO Aidan Gomez and Xanadu Quantum Technologies CEO Christian Weedbrook.
The Globe and Mail
identifies Suncor Energy CEO Rich Kruger, Ontario Power Generation CEO Nicolle Butcher, and TC Energy Corporation CEO François Poirier as panel presenters who will “pitch the country as a stable place to invest in a range of energy assets, from pipelines to nuclear power.” Some sources say former president Stephen Harper, who now chairs the Alberta Investment Management Corp. (AIMCo) pension plan, will be the closing speaker.
Several federal cabinet ministers are expected to rotate in and out of the summit, and all 13 provincial and territorial premiers will be on hand.
Not Just a ‘Signing Ceremony’
Reports in the lead-up to the summit
indicated the government might be preparing to pitch large, public assets to private buyers, but Carney “may not be offering up Canada’s airports, at least for now,” Radwanski writes. “Across the board, the government appears to be seeking equity or financing for projects to build new assets or expand existing ones. The prospectus does not signal any intent to simply sell existing assets to foreign owners.”
Citing a senior government source, Radwanski said the summit is expected to produce specific announcements, but it won’t be a “signing ceremony”. Star business columnist David Olive received similar signals from his own sources.
“We will probably never have more than a rough idea of the summit’s impact,” Olive
wrote last week. “It is a meet-and-greet affair, or more crudely a networking event. It is not a deal-making venue for the elite attendees, who head some of the world’s largest banks, asset management firms, and sovereign wealth funds.”
For those participants, any decisions “to commit billions of dollars to Canadian energy, transportation, and infrastructure projects will be made months or years from now,” Olive added. That long lead time had TD Economics predicting a 10-year “supercycle” of private investment in Canada, with Senior Vice President and Chief Economist Beata Caranci estimating new commitments exceeding $190 billion over the next two years, $500 billion in three to 10 years, and $270 billion beyond that.
“Given the long time frames of these types of infrastructure projects, investment could be sustained as far as the eye can see, with a quarter of the spending estimated to be more than ten years away,” she
wrote.
But so far, those investments are looking elusive for many or most the cleantech and clean energy options that will be needed to build a clean climate economy. The Institute for Sustainable Finance
reported this week that cleantech venture capital in Canada fell to just $600 million in 2025, from an all-time high of $1.65 billion in 2022—even as the global market grew 8%. Elsewhere, Politico
says clean energy is now a casualty of Donald Trump’s global trade wars, slowed down by obstacles ranging from tariffs on solar panels to export controls on critical minerals.
“Trade fragmentation makes green products more expensive worldwide relative to non-green products,” the European Central Bank
cautioned earlier this year. “This undermines the adoption of green technologies, leading to higher greenhouse gas emissions in the global economy.”
Risks and Omissions
In addition to a
counter-summit over the weekend and some hard-edged protests while the main event is under way, the Canada Investment Summit is already generating commentary on who will and won’t be there, and the risks in some of the investments the government is putting front and centre.
“The only people missing are the ones without any shares: the kid with a mental disability, the veteran, the renter, the shift worker, the community that owns the land sitting on top of the minerals CEOs want to get at,” retired federal executive Bhagwant Sandhu
writes for The Hill Times.
“There is no comparable summit gathering doctors, nurses, and personal care workers to confront a health care system buckling under wait times,” he adds. “No summit of municipalities to face a crisis that leaves more than 65,000 Canadians sleeping outside each night. No summit for the 360,000 children pushed into poverty. And no summit—not even a nod to Canadian workers—on wages that haven’t kept pace with the cost of staying alive.”
The other issue backgrounding the summit is a permanent decline in oil consumption, with China reporting an 8.9% reduction in demand this year, according to state-owned oil and gas giant Sinopec. “I’m sure this is a temporary trend (oh it’s three years in a row?!).Well I’m sure it has no bearing on future investment plans that countries are thinking about (oh, Canada is considering a new oil pipeline to satisfy Asian demand?!)”
snarked Morgan Solar Executive Chair Mike Andrade on LinkedIn Thursday. “Seriously, though, I continue to say that people are sleeping on the structural change that has occurred with natural gas and oil demand in Asia.”
The Sinopec report had the Reuters news agency
referring to “oil
demand destruction, or a long-term drop in consumption, at the world’s largest oil importer.” Germany saw its use of fossil fuels in electricity fall by half between 2018 and 2026, and Semafor Climate and Energy Editor Tim McDonnell
says Trump’s prolonged war on Iran, with oil prices now rising above US$100 per barrel, “seems to be hastening the end of the oil age.”
All of those factors help explain the lack of private investment in a new West Coast pipeline, with the absence of any significant private investment
spotlighting the “fundamental risks” associated with the project, Pembina Institute senior analyst Ian Sanderson wrote in a release.
“Under current market conditions, the primary challenge facing Alberta producers is not a lack of export capacity, but uncertainty around future demand, prices, and the economics of long-term oil infrastructure,” he said. “Those risks should not be shifted to taxpayers when the private sector is signalling that the project is too risky to finance on normal commercial terms.”
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