Carney’s Canada Investment Summit Lands Nearly $500 Billion in Pledges

The first Canada Investment Summit produced nearly $500 billion of new investment in Canada, the prime minister’s office said¹. Prime Minister Mark Carney used the event to unveil what was billed as a “Mega” tax deduction for investors², part of a set of aggressive and broad tax writeoff terms intended to lure new investment³. Carney also said Canada will have the lowest net debt to gross domestic product ratio in the Group of Seven².

The federal government will deploy $700 million in new funding through the Business Development Bank of Canada to accelerate growth¹. At the summit, the same bank announced it was allocating $1 billion under its Defence Platform to strengthen Canada’s defence investment ecosystem⁶. Visa rules with the European Union were also on the table, Carney said⁴.

Why it matters to investors

The guest list is the story. BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink and Blackstone president Jon Gray attended⁸, alongside Apollo Global Management’s Marc Rowan and KKR’s Joseph Bae⁹. Royal Bank of Canada chief executive Dave McKay and Northleaf Capital Partners managing partner Stuart Waugh discussed growth equity in Canada on one panel⁴. Carney, a former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, has extensive contacts among those institutions⁵.

The pitch is aimed squarely at capital that might otherwise go south. The Associated Press framed the summit as Carney courting global investors while President Trump tries to pull investment to the United States⁵. The BBC called it a gamble on the world’s biggest investors betting on Canada, made in the midst of a trade war with the US⁷. The underlying problem is domestic: levels of productivity and business investment have been lacklustre enough that a senior Bank of Canada official declared as much in 2024³.

What to watch

Pledges are not deployments. The figure announced is new investment unleashed rather than capital already committed to projects¹, so the test is how much converts over the coming quarters, and how quickly the expensing terms are legislated³.

Trade is the second variable. Trump has said the United States could reach a Canada trade deal soon², which would change the calculus behind the whole exercise. Carney also used the platform to call for a global technology body to boost artificial intelligence guardrails, with McKay arguing that uniform access to the most capable models matters for safety over time¹⁰. That widens the summit’s agenda beyond capital into the rules that will govern where it gets spent.