What the announcements tell us — and what still has to happen
The first two blogs gave us a decoder ring for investment announcements and a primer on how projects actually get financed. Now we can put both to the test.
The context
Canada’s Investment Summit produced substantial commitments, serious investor attention and a pipeline of ambitious projects. There is plenty to be encouraged about. But the headline numbers include very different forms of capital, and the real test is what moves from announcement to financing, construction and operation.
1. $500 billion — but not all the same kind of money
The commitments announced around the Summit include several very different forms of capital.
Canadian pension funds, insurers and other institutional investors committed nearly $100 billion in new capital to Canadian assets. That includes the new $50-billion Maple Fund launched by CPP Investments and Brookfield Asset Management to invest in critical infrastructure and strategic industries, an additional $25 billion in Canadian investment from PSP Investments, $10 billion from Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and $5 billion from Sun Life.
Canada’s major banks also announced nearly $325 billion in new financing capacity for Canadian businesses and infrastructure. TD committed $150 billion over five years, Scotiabank more than $100 billion, and BMO $70 billion over ten years, alongside more targeted commitments from CIBC and RBC.
Investment funds announced plans to invest or mobilize another $14 billion, including more than $10 billion from Power Sustainable and $4 billion through Radical Ventures’ new fund for Canadian AI scale-ups.
These are meaningful commitments. But equity investment, lending capacity, capital to be mobilized and money committed to a specific project are not interchangeable. That does not diminish the announcements. It tells us where we are in the investment process.
2. Some things moved considerably closer to reality
There were also announcements tied much more directly to specific investments and projects.
- Bell Canada announced a planned expansion of its AI infrastructure in Saskatchewan that could ultimately provide 1.2 gigawatts of capacity, with total capital investment of up to $52.5 billion.
- The Canada Growth Fund committed approximately $140 million to Generation Mining’s Marathon copper-palladium project in Northwestern Ontario — a fully permitted, shovel-ready critical minerals project.
- The federal government also announced the Productivity Mega Deduction, significantly expanding the assets businesses can deduct immediately and making immediate expensing permanent.
These developments are different from simply identifying attractive projects in a prospectus. Capital, tax policy or financing has actually been attached to an investment decision.
3. Capital matters. But capital isn’t the only constraint.
One of the most useful lessons from the Summit may be that Canada’s investment challenge cannot be reduced to finding more money. Investors and business leaders also pointed to regulatory complexity, interprovincial barriers and shortages of skilled labour. Ottawa estimates Canada will need more than 1.4 million additional tradespeople by 2033.
From a project-finance perspective, there are other pieces as well. Projects need permits. They need customers and, in many cases, long-term offtake agreements. They need infrastructure, appropriate risk allocation, experienced developers and management teams, and financing structures that match the risks and stage of the project.
Having capital available and having financeable projects are two different things. That was one of the central points of our project-finance primer, and the Summit reinforced it.
4. Where does the missing middle fit?
The Summit understandably focused considerable attention on major projects and very large pools of capital. But Canada also needs to think about the projects and companies that sit below that threshold.
Where does a $40-million first commercial facility fit? What about a $100-million scale-up project? Or a Canadian clean technology company that needs $30 million to expand manufacturing, commercialize its technology or deliver on major customer contracts?
There were encouraging signals. RBC announced plans to invest and mobilize nearly $1.5 billion for Canadian technology companies with high growth potential, including access to commercialization opportunities, partnerships and expansion support.
CIBC committed $2 billion in financing for small and medium-sized Canadian businesses in defence and dual-use sectors, including energy, infrastructure and advanced technologies. Power Sustainable’s commitment of more than $10 billion includes areas such as power and grid infrastructure and environmental solutions.
Those initiatives begin to connect the major-project agenda with the financing needs of the companies developing and supplying the technologies those projects will require. But that connection needs to become much more deliberate.
5. Building in Canada — and building Canadian companies
This may be one of the most important distinctions to emerge from the Summit. Attracting capital to build projects in Canada is important. But building projects in Canada is not necessarily the same thing as building Canadian companies.
Canada’s next generation of infrastructure will need technologies related to power, grid management, energy storage, water, critical minerals, industrial efficiency, carbon management, advanced materials and many other areas where Canadian companies are developing solutions. Those companies need to be able to become suppliers and partners in the projects Canada is trying to build. They also need capital themselves.
Camilla Languille of Mubadala Investment Company made a particularly useful observation during the Summit: the best measure of success should not simply be how much capital Canada attracts, but how many global companies are financed, scaled and led from here. That is a much more ambitious measure of success.
6. The real measure comes next
Canada’s first Investment Summit accomplished something important. It brought some of the world’s largest investors together around Canadian opportunities. It generated significant new investment commitments and financing capacity. It helped move some projects forward. And it demonstrated that there is serious interest in investing in Canada. Those are reasons for optimism. But an investment summit is necessarily the beginning of a process, not the end.
CPP Investments CEO John Graham captured the challenge well at the conclusion of the Summit: “The real measure of this Summit will be what happens next.”
Canada now has something important to work with: capital, investor attention and a pipeline of ambitious projects. The challenge is converting that momentum into projects that get financed and built — while ensuring that Canadian technologies and Canadian companies have the opportunity to scale along with them.
That is where the next phase of the work begins.