Why Carney’s investment summit should be a one-and-done event

Prime Minister Mark Carney has rightly spent much of his tenure selling Canada as a wise place to invest.

He has made the pitch in New York, Davos, the U.A.E., India, Australia, Japan and Saudi Arabia. He has circled the globe promoting Canadian energy, critical minerals, infrastructure, technology and defence. And this week he brought many of the world’s largest investors to Toronto for the Canada Investment Summit .

Countries compete fiercely for capital, and Canada has for too long assumed advantages such as resources, talent and stability would sell themselves. By placing serious global investors in the same room as project proponents and the local governments that can green-light them, the summit could end up being the catalyst for change we’ve been missing.

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But for Carney’s big reset to be truly successful, it should be the last investment summit the government needs to lead.

Canada’s economy cannot rely indefinitely on a prime minister to curate investment opportunities one meeting, one trip and one deal at a time. Our appeal to investors should not depend on who occupies the prime minister’s office, how persuasive that person is in a boardroom or how many international relationships they can build. The inclusion of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the summit program may be an acknowledgement that investors need to see a longer and more stable policy horizon to convince them we mean business this time.

Investment is not a nice-to-have; it’s a need-to-have. When businesses invest, they build facilities, buy better tools, develop new products and hire more people, fuelling momentum in the economy . With it, workers become more productive and wages have more room to rise. When investment stalls, the quality of life Canadians have come to expect from a growing economy comes under pressure, too.